Garden variety 8-bit SDR TV has a displayed dynamic range of around 32:1, or 5 stops, while HDR has in the neighborhood of 14 stops, which corresponds roughly to the sensitivity of the human eye for a single, or static scene. HDR also has a vastly greater color volume than SDR. Videos uploaded to YouTube… Read More
Calibration Obsession
If I want accurate colors from my a7s III, I shoot the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport Video, and in post, (1) I pull diffuse white down to 200 nits; (2) white balance using the white, grey and black chips, color curves and RGB overlay; (3) correct colors using the color chips, vectorscope and hue vs. hue;… Read More
Apple’s Been Listening!
It looks like we can expect to see significantly redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros in the 2nd half of the year, with flat-edged top and bottom, slimmer bezels, mini-LED backlighting, HDMI port, SD card reader, physical keys rather than a touch bar and a return to the MagSafe power cable, along with other design… Read More
LG 2020 OLED HDR Calibration
Prior to using your LG OLED TV as an HDR grading monitor, you’ll probably want to calibrate it. LG recommends a burn in time of 100 hours of HDR content for the most consistent pixel response. In order to calibrate using a Mac, you’ll need VMware Fusion 12 Player, Windows 10, a colorimeter, a USB… Read More
HDR: The Single Most Overlooked Aspect?
There’ve been countless videos and articles explaining what high dynamic range is, with nearly all focusing on the technical aspects: capture requirements (e.g. frame rates, resolution, bit depth, color gamut, dynamic range and so forth), followed by reviews of consumer televisions (measurements of screen uniformity, peak brightness, color accuracy, etc.) and more recently, tests of… Read More
HDR Reference White
In my blog post detailing the color correction workflow for HDR10, a reader asked where reference white and 18% gray should fall on the waveform monitor, and I incorrectly answered 100 nits for reference white and in the 40s for 18% gray. While typical white levels presently used in PQ production range anywhere from 145 –… Read More
iPhone 12 Pro as a Consumer Reference Display (cont’d)
A few years back, when a younger, more handsome Vincent Theo of HDTVTest declared in his review of the Sony BVM-X300 reference monitor, “When I say that something is reference, it means that you know this accurately reflects the director’s and producer’s intention because this is in fact the monitor that is used in post-production… Read More
HDR Grading Tips
My longest HDR video to date, it took Compressor a ridiculous 4-1/2 hours to create the HEVC 10-bit file and an additional 24 hours for YouTube to finish processing the HD version! I’ve received many requests to do an HDR grading tutorial on YouTube, but a screen recording with QuickTime would be in SDR with… Read More
Sony a7s III HDR-10 Color Accuracy
For whatever reason, whether shooting S-Log3 internally or ProRes RAW via the Ninja V, Rec. 2020 PQ colors are far less accurate than Rec. 709. In the image below, we can see that the color chips of the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport Video line up almost perfectly on the vectorscope in Final Cut Pro in rec.… Read More
Get Amazing Color From Your a7s III!
Color Correction Workflow in FCP: Get Spectacular HDR10 Colors From Your Sony a7s III!
In the comments section of my YouTube channel, I’ve gotten numerous requests for an HDR color correction workflow. The problem with trying to do a tutorial on YouTube is that QuickTime screen recorder only captures in SDR, resulting in a dark image and wacky colors, so for now, screen captures are the way to go.… Read More
