The number one resource for information about HDR technology, workflows, tutorials, news and opinion.
The viewer’s eye can be drawn to the subject in a number of ways. Two of the techniques employed here are color separation, achieved through split-toning, and obscuring the surroundings using a mask and reducing brightness. Another approach is to create textural depth by accentuating the texture in cooler, darker backgrounds while de-emphasizing grain in... Continue Reading →
Over at Projector Central, Michael J. McNamara, former Executive Technology Editor of Popular Photography magazine and a renowned expert on digital capture, storage, and display technologies writes: “Does using 4:2:0 subsampling significantly degrade image quality for movie viewing versus using 4:2:2? Not according to most viewers who've enjoyed any number of 4K UHD SDR and... Continue Reading →
During an appearance on Cullen Kelly’s Grade School, the brilliant colorist Jill Bogdanowicz revealed a secret to accenting texture without it looking over-processed. While working on Joker, the colorist used Live Grain - which separates out the red, green and blue channels, creating grain that resembles scanned film - to accentuate texture in the cooler,... Continue Reading →
A few caveats: first, the original footage was green and overexposed; secondly, we didn't use the recommended DaVinci Wide Gamut; and lastly, as we do all of our grading before the LUT, the original footage looked nuts when we removed the LUT for the grade reveal, so we normalized it for the video. https://youtu.be/3Bv3RUGbwEc
According to at least one study, in order to achieve a comparably error-free 3D-LUT to those used for SDR, a LUT size larger than 55x55x55 is required for 12-bit HDR (Rec.2020 ST2084). "In 10-bit SDR, in order to achieve unnoticeable interpolation errors using the trilinear interpolation method, a 3D-LUT larger than 41×41×41 is necessary. However,... Continue Reading →
DaVinci Resolve firmware update 17.4.6 addresses an issue that caused the app to crash when using some of the HDR controls with Apple Silicon. Prior to the update, clicking on any of the range indicators in the HDR palette - the small icon to the upper left of each of the HDR wheels that allows... Continue Reading →
Author, consultant, pro audio/video specialist, tech journalist and broadcaster Allan Tépper voices his suspicions that Apple’s Studio Display is not a true 10-bit panel at all but 8-bit FRC and discovers that it is limited to a single framerate/refresh rate, making it a much less attractive proposition for video editing/grading. “Despite it’s raved internal speakers... Continue Reading →
For video editing, the MacBook Pro has virtually the same performance as the desktop, plus you get the great keyboard and the best display found on any laptop on the market today. https://youtu.be/V8lc3ORcFL4
This comment by a frustrated reader over at DPReview that we just came across illustrates why we no longer make recommendations for those wanting to use a hybrid camera for both stills photography and video. There are just too many features, like burst rates, pixel shift, auto bracketing, EVF resolution, stills RAW formats and dozens... Continue Reading →
As consumer HDR displays have differing peak luminance and contrast capabilities that are not infrequently less than the mastering display, it's necessary to map PQ content to match the capabilities of the target consumer display device. This scaling or mapping is controlled and managed by metadata. According to YouTube's help page, "HDR videos must have... Continue Reading →
Here at the Daejeon Chronicles, we've tirelessly championed RAW for a long time now, for a multitude of reasons: it responds better to grading than heavily compressed, low bit rate chroma subsampled codecs and is less prone to banding; sharpening, noise reduction and white balance aren't baked into RAW files, giving more flexibility in post;... Continue Reading →
This video is the culmination of the many changes we've made since around the time we switched over to P3-D65 - some tiny, some significant - from shooting S-Gamut3.cine rather than S-Gamut3, avoiding yellow in the false color guide of the Ninja V for anything but specular highlights, monitoring with video levels instead of full... Continue Reading →
Not only does Faruk Korkmaz set the bar when it comes to gorgeous looking reviews, he also addresses our most pressing concern from the very start - which is how fast the computer can transcode footage to HEVC 10-bit in Apple Compressor. As it turns out, the Mac Studio finished the job around 80% faster... Continue Reading →
Good to see that SDR displays are finally being recognized as outdated tech by reputable reviewers. The Verge had this to say about Apple’s Studio Display: “The real issue is that $1,599 is a lot of money, and here, it’s buying you panel tech that is woefully behind the curve. Compared to Apple’s other displays... Continue Reading →
The German website Slashcam, currently testing the Venice 2, had nothing but superlatives for its rolling shutter performance, pronouncing it the very lowest they have ever measured for a non-global shutter, leaving the competition in the dust. “When measuring the rolling shutter reading times, Venice pushed us to our limits. Or to the limits of... Continue Reading →
A little while back, we reported that Blackmagic Design had added support for HEVC 4:2:2 Main10 on Apple Silicon in DaVinci Resolve. What we didn't realize at the time was that the render page now had three selections for encoding HEVC: Main (8-bit), Main10 (10-bit 4:2:0) and Main 4:2:2 10. Using Invisor, an app brought... Continue Reading →
Last year, we reached out to Atomos to ask why they didn’t upload more HDR content to their YouTube channel and they replied that not all projects are suited to HDR. Which is patently false: the video doesn’t exist whose image quality cannot be dramatically improved by mastering and uploading to YouTube in HDR.
Video details: Sony a7s III, Sony FE 50mm f/1.2 GM, ProRes RAW, S-Gamut3.cine/S-Log3, ISO 640, f/2.8. Edited in DaVinci Resolve 17 Studio HDR Rec.2020 PQ (P3-D65 limited) using an LG 55CX and MacBook Pro (late 2021). https://youtu.be/zq4aY8KpqSg Grain adds texture to an otherwise squeaky clean, sterile digital image and, as HDR is rather unforgiving, is... Continue Reading →
Split-toning is a characteristic of film stocks where you’ll see cool shadows and warm highlights adding color contrast to the image. This is accomplished by un-ganging the channels and adding a few pixels of blue and green to the shadows, a tiny bit of red and green to the highlights. Once you’ve made your adjustments... Continue Reading →
"A few years back, a couple of years back, the consensus really was that HDR doesn't affect anybody: you don't have to shoot differently, you don't have to edit differently; it's really just an extra step in the grading. And I think over the last couple of years, we've really learned a lot and we're... Continue Reading →
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