Many Unaware They’re Watching HDR

Much streamed HDR content is virtually indistinguishable from SDR. Nate McFarlin, Staff Content Engineer, Dolby Laboratories, says that film schools are partly to blame for failing to teach HDR acquisition and post-production.

Joey D’Anna: Are people adopting HDR more now than they have before? Or is it still kind of that niche, nerdy thing for us display geeks?

Nate McFarlin: No, that’s a good question. And I think the good thing is that you’re correct in the sense that, from my point of view, and you know, if you talk to most folks at Dolby, they would unanimously agree that HDR is as accessible as it’s ever been. And a big proponent of that, like you mentioned, is the Apple ecosystem. Obviously, they have the scale and the raw numbers to support something like this, right? Just to give a side anecdote, a lot of the trainings I start, especially when I’m doing trainings for folks that are maybe newer to HDR, not as well-versed – think universities, education partners, things like that – whenever I’m in person, one of the first questions I’ll ask is, ‘Hey, who here has knowingly watched any sort of Dolby Vision or gone to a Dolby Cinema?’ And if you have a 50-person class, you usually get a handful of hands, right? And I’ll say, ‘Okay, who has an iPhone 10 or later?’ And then, like 75% of the class raises their hand. And I’m like, ‘Any of you guys ever watch streaming services on there?’ And everybody keeps their hand up. And I’m like, ‘Okay, so without knowing it, you’ve been watching HDR, Dolby Vision for years now, right?’ And this is even permeating into things like social media. I mean, we have a ton of influence going on in that space. And we’re seeing the numbers there. I mean, we have a lot of social media platforms overseas launching HDR and Dolby Vision capabilities. You can even upload HDR to YouTube now. So, there’s a lot of momentum there. But to your point, Joey, I think that the thing we’re seeing is that while it’s accessible, I don’t think a lot of people really know that they’re watching it, right?

Joey D’Anna: Is that a bad thing?

Nate McFarlin: I don’t think it is.

Robbie Carman: Yeah, I was going to say, the success of the technology means seamless, right? Instead of making somebody think about it, they go, ‘Oh, I got this Dolby Vision TV. I’m getting better results.’ That seems like a win, too.

Joey D’Anna: So when do we get to, if you had to put your crystal ball, when do we get to the ideal, my ideal world of HDR is just the default. And we’re kind of looking at SDR like we look at 4:3 safe?

Nate McFarlin: That’s a really good question. I’d be curious to hear Bram and David’s answers to that. But I would say we’re at least another five years out. I think there’s a lot of hesitation in the legacy creative community as well. Especially on set is an issue that we’ve seen in the past. And we’ve tried to address that pretty directly at Dolby with a lot of our newer education initiatives and helping folks better understand how to manage HDR on set too. But I think the good news is that, as the displays become more accessible, the price barrier to get into HDR on set and during content acquisition has come down quite a bit, too. And I’ve heard a lot of pretty high up DPs saying like, you can’t really use the budget excuse anymore. Like this is something that you should be considering. But I think that also requires a pretty big overhaul in education as well. I mean, you get into any of these top echelon of film schools in the US and even overseas, they’re teaching SDR predominantly still. And that needs to change to enable the next generation of content creators. But I think having accessibility on iPhones and social media certainly helps.

Edited for clarity

The Offset Podcast, Ep.30
Hosts: Robbie Carman, Supervising Colorist, DC Color
Joey D’Anna, Colorist, Blackmagic Design Certified Trainer
Guests: Bram Desmet, CEO Flanders Scientific
Nate McFarlin, Staff Content Engineer, Dolby Laboratories
David Abrams, Sr. Product Manager, Portrait Displays