The number one resource for information about HDR technology, workflows, tutorials, news and opinion.
Concerning the often asked question of how HDR scopes should appear in your NLE, one significant difference is that in SDR, the signal can ordinarily fill out the scopes, say, from 0-1023, while in HDR PQ, the bulk of the signal will usually be bunched up toward the bottom end of the waveform, from 0-200... Continue Reading →
Part I: The State of HDR Film Emulation LUTs Part II: Moving Beyond Traditional Film Print Emulation Part III: Negative and Print Clarified During an episode of Grade School, a weekly YouTube Live session where he answers questions on all things color grading, Cullen Kelly untangles the confusion surrounding the order of operations, print vs. negative... Continue Reading →
Acknowledging that HDR monitoring for every display on-set for the entire length of a production is prohibitively expensive for most productions, Netflix proposes three alternatives: CAMERA TESTS (E.G. HAIR & MAKEUP TESTS) Camera tests for hair and makeup are typically the first time images are evaluated and sent through the entire production pipeline. Some productions... Continue Reading →
We wrote about this back in August. Supposedly, Blackmagic was on top of it. The highlight tool hasn’t worked properly when using the HDR panel in Resolve 17 since day one. X-Rite WB Card Power Window + Highlight Tool Adjusting Global wheel in HDR tools breaks highlighter. Adjusting Offset wheel in Primaries, highlight behaves normally.
DP Daria D'Antonio demonstrates an understanding of HDR in her sumptuous work on Sorrentino's semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film The Hand of God, now showing on Netflix. Unfortunately, the brightly lit exterior scenes lit up our entire room, reflecting back onto the screen and ruining the experience - making us wish we could paint the walls black!
If you leave the house, walk around and point your camera anywhere, it's all but impossible not to encounter luminance values measuring in the hundreds or even thousands of nits. But turn on the TV and watch a Dolby Vision program on Netflix and 99% of the time, it seems like there aren't any luminance... Continue Reading →
“Although there is no official standard regarding the dynamic range definition of HDR, it is generally recognized that a lower threshold for HDR is 13 stops or 8000:1, advancing via 14 stops or 16,000:1 to the current de facto ‘standard’ of 15 stops or 32,000:1. Most of the latest generation of digital motion picture cameras... Continue Reading →
Several YouTubers have said that in 99% of cases, they saw no advantage to spending the extra money to upgrade from 32GB to 64GB RAM for the 16" M1 Max MacBook Pro. Our findings may surprise you. We'll begin with Final Cut Pro and Apple Compressor. Timeline in Final Cut Pro. Two ProRes 4444 4K... Continue Reading →
This deceptively titled advert featuring Asus spokesperson Darren Mostyn might lead the viewer to expect to witness some dazzling HDR grading in DaVinci Resolve by an experienced colorist, but we see nothing of the sort. Not only that, but they couldn't even be bothered to shoot the ad in HDR. Watching this video reminds us... Continue Reading →
One week ago, not a single shop had any 16" M1 Max MacBook Pros in stock and we were told that it would take anywhere from eight to ten weeks to get one; but by some miracle it arrived in just seven days. Using Migration Assistant, Time Machine and a slow portable hard drive, transferring... Continue Reading →
One year ago, almost to the day, we published a video entitled Why Are HDR Shows So Dark?, which turned out to be one of our most successful rants on YouTube. We've since identified no fewer than a half dozen different contributing factors, including: most shows continue to be lit in an SDR environment using... Continue Reading →
As today's consumer displays can attain brightness levels up to fifteen times higher than legacy SDR screens, the traditional 2D color gamut diagram no longer suffices to characterize the behavior of displays, necessitating a third axis to describe luminance. Nevertheless, although color volume plays a far more important role in color reproduction in HDR than... Continue Reading →
Following the praise lavished on Apple's new MacBook Pro lineup featuring Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED displays, industry watchers are now betting on rivals sitting up, taking notice and following suit, increasingly incorporating either OLED or mini-LED displays in their own notebooks. This can only be a good thing, as the 270m notebook market lags deplorably... Continue Reading →
In a forum thread about the new MacBook Pros, sleazy BMD contributor and colorist Marc Wielage compares Apple's marvelous new Liquid Retina XDR miniLED display to dime-store garbage, saying, without a hint of irony: "I can add to this discussion by saying I got the new MacBook Pro M1 Max about 3 days ago and it's been great... Continue Reading →
We've written extensively in these pages about how to use false color and how it makes nailing exposure idiot proof, but for some reason it never occurred to us to make a video illustrating just how stupid fast it is. So today, we redress that oversight. https://youtu.be/tTZnp4CVLXo
All we’ve got to say is how grateful we are for the handful of intrepid YouTubers working with less than Grade 1B reference monitors, because it seems the only ones who can justify purchasing $30,000 displays are post production houses working on multimillion dollar shows that are lit in an SDR environment and monitored in... Continue Reading →
Saturation While the extended color volume of HDR results in perceptibly more vibrant colors able to retain saturation and brightness without compromise, it pays to be cautious with saturation. Glowing skin and radioactive foliage are indications that saturation is cranked up too high. To assess saturation, use the vectorscope. In order to see the highlight... Continue Reading →
Download 4.2K 23.976 ProRes RAW HQ. https://youtu.be/kcdZGA7LW44
In what could turn out to be seriously exciting news for HDR video creators, Apple is said to be exploring OLED or microLED panels for its MacBook Pros - possibly as soon as 2025! The two-stack tandem structure of the rumored OLED panels would consume less energy, allow ProMotion similar to the iPhone 13 and... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 