A study where participants watched video content on an HDR display under various ambient lighting conditions and asked to complete questionnaires to document their observations and subjective preferences as well as any visual fatigue they might have experienced found that subjects reported experiencing little to no visual fatigue. Test Setup Researchers used a Dolby 37” prototype... Continue Reading →
Christopher Nolan Praises 4K UHD HDR
You might say that Christopher Nolan’s a huge fan of HDR. During his acceptance speech upon receiving the DEG Vanguard Award during the 4K Ultra HD Summit at Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center in 2018, Nolan recounted how home viewing has impacted the structure of his films and shared his enthusiasm for 4K Ultra HD... Continue Reading →
Sr. Colorist, Marvel Studios: All Streaming Productions Monitored In HDR & SDR On Set
postPerspective's Randi Altman interviewed Marvel Studios’ Senior Finishing Colorist Matt Watson during a virtual roundtable. Randi Altman: Do you often create LUTs for a project? How does that help? Matt Watson: Yes, we create show LUTs for every project. To be specific, we design our looks within the ACES framework as LMTs, which represent the visual... Continue Reading →
Can Your TV Reproduce These Colors?
This twitter account has a number of illustrations of colors that can't be reproduced by HDTV (designated in gray). Photo: dot-color.com
Future-Proof Color Management Strategies
In this excellent seminar, FilmLight's Daniele Siragusano discusses future-proof color management strategies optimized for multi-delivery (SDR and HDR). He's also the first to point out (to the best of our knowledge, anyway), how diffuse white level affects our perception of color. https://vimeo.com/298131298
3D-LUT Optimization for High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut Color Processing
In A Review of 3D-LUT Performance in 10-Bit and 12-Bit HDR BT.2100 PQ, published in the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal in March 2020, JD Vandenberg and Stefano Andriani concluded that HDR requires larger LUTs to achieve error-free interpolation comparable to those used for SDR, writing: "Tetrahedral interpolation outperformed all other interpolations for both SDR and HDR... Continue Reading →
Massive 201″ Micro-OLED Virtual Theater? 4K? Only 79 grams? 1/10th the cost of Apple’s Vision Pro? We’re all in!
One of the biggest issues facing HDR is not so much that flagship TVs by Samsung, Panasonic, LG and Sony aren’t able to display stunning picture quality, but that ordinary people don’t watch movies and TV shows in a room with 5 nits surround luminance, 6500 K bias lighting and walls sitting back 20 feet... Continue Reading →
Dolby Vision Technical Webinar | Summer 2023
Just a few highlights from Dolby's webinar Changes to Dolby Vision Licensing New Guidance on Setting the Mastering Display New Recommendations Regarding Full & Video Levels Dolby Vision License In the Legacy Program, components (Trims License, eCMU License and Professional Tools) were bundled together for $2,500 for a period of 12 months. The new program... Continue Reading →
Diffuse White Level of Most Episodic HDR Content Nowhere Near 203 Nits
We've written elsewhere that the majority of HDR narrative work has a diffuse white level much lower than that recommended by the ITU and that it's a constantly shifting target. This may frustrate those desperate for hard and fast rules, but this approach has a number of advantages, not the least of which is that... Continue Reading →
Colorists on Declining to Use HDR’s Extended Brightness
“There are filmmakers who I work with whose answer is identical: 'I want the HDR to be identical to the SDR. I want it to have the same dynamic range. I want it to have the same color gamut. I want nothing whatsoever to change. All I want to change is the deliverable itself because... Continue Reading →
Short Takes: HDR Productions Only Use 0-5% of HDR Range
Nate McFarlin, currently Senior Content Engineer at Dolby Laboratories, talking about Canon's lineup of production monitors when he was still a Senior Quality Engineer Specialist at Canon USA: "Whenever we announce the next monitor with even higher brightness, there's a whole horde of people that are always extremely excited because now they have so much... Continue Reading →
Graeme Nattress on Highlight Roll-Off
Graeme Nattress was kind enough to answer some questions we had about highlight roll-off in RED's Output Transform LUT. According to the Red.com website, ‘very soft’ highlight roll-off compresses highlights the least, while 'hard' compresses highlights the most. But 'very soft' makes HDR footage resemble SDR and ‘hard’ allows highlights to sparkle. So, what exactly... Continue Reading →
RCM IPP2 Still Broken
We still can't recommend using a Resolve Color Managed workflow with RED's IPP2 output DRT because it causes lifted blacks that can be seen in the title cards that precede and follow videos made in this manner. This doesn't happen when using RED's output transform LUT in a node-based color managed workflow, which is what... Continue Reading →
Sky UK’s Admirable Delivery Specs
One of the most surprising documents we've seen since I began covering HDR was the Technical Specifications for the Delivery of Content to Sky UK. The first of the specs that caught our eye were the minimum camera requirements for scripted HDR content, which stipulate 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, 12-bit color depth and a dynamic range... Continue Reading →
Dolby’s stopped promoting HDR
It's been ages since the Dolby YT channel has even talked about HDR, which is as sure a sign as any that there's been a lot of pushback against it in the filmmaking community.
RED’s Output Transform LUTs: Highlight Roll-Off Comparison
Really liking DaVinci Resolve's Video Collage effect. It might be best to avoid Very Soft and Hard highlight roll off when using RED's output transform LUTs. https://youtu.be/Gmg21dc7_JI
New Tool Plots Gamut Rings In Just 60 Seconds
At Display Week 2023, Dr. K. Masaoka demos software that is able to measure 600 patches and plot gamut rings in just sixty seconds. At Display Week 2023, the ever genial Brian Berkeley introduces Dr. Kenichiro Masaoka of NHK, the ‘father’ of BT2020, who demonstrates a new tool that can measure over 600 patches and... Continue Reading →
Cullen Kelly is BaseLight Curious
Cullen Kelly's interested in the texture tools available in BaseLight and HDR4EU thinks you should be, too! “Here's what I would say [about] texture: I feel like I've talked about BaseLight a couple times today. I'll just go ahead and leak to you guys - I am BaseLight curious. I'm a big fan of the... Continue Reading →
Sony Product Mgr: “There are many kinds of scenes that could benefit from 1,000 nits full screen.” 😳
Andy Munitz, Professional Audio and PVM-X Series Monitor Sr. Product Manager, Sony, talked with ProductionHUBTV about the PVM 4K HDR monitors during lockdown. “We realized that in the world of monitoring that we're in today - and certainly if production 4K is really prevalent - and so we needed this monitor to be able to... Continue Reading →