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 →
“Top emission RGB OLED is not going to be around a year from now.” 😳
With the announcement of the FSI XMP550, a 55” QD OLED with a peak brightness of 2,000 nits which will retail for $19,995 USD, it’s interesting to travel back in time 4 years, when Sony launched their dual layer LCD BVM-HX310, and listen to Bram Desmet, CEO, FSI, share his thoughts on the future of... Continue Reading →
Making Curves for ETTR Footage
So, we've exposed to the right in order to reduce noise in the image; we've chosen the logarithmic color space of the hero camera as our working color space; and our timeline luminance matches the output color space. How are we to normalize the footage to prepare it for grading? There are a number of... Continue Reading →
The blocking by Netflix of shared accounts works: in the US, subscribers have not grown like this since the days of COVID
The Italian tech website DDay reports: "Antenna's analyst report seems to confirm that Netflix's new policies are working. The number of new users registered to the platform in the USA has in fact skyrocketed, surpassing the peaks reached during the pandemic. Netflix's policy to combat shared subscriptions is working, at least in the US. This... Continue Reading →
RCM: We Tested Some DRTs. Here’s What We Learned
In order to learn how DRTs affect the image, an R3D clip was processed three different ways in DaVinci Resolve Color Management: (1) with input and output DRTs set to DaVinci; (2) with input and output DRTs set to NONE; (3) with output DRT set to RED IPP2 with medium contrast and very soft highlight... Continue Reading →
“Exposing to the right is one of the best ways to set yourself up for success in your color grade”
It turns out that Cullen Kelly's a big fan of exposing to the right. Below, screen shots of an image that's been underexposed 2 stops and one that's been exposed to the right by +2 stops. Photo: Cullen Kelly. Underexposed 2 stops Photo: Cullen Kelly. ETTR +2 stops Kelly’s video on ETTR is remarkable for... Continue Reading →
Will the Vision Pro crush all OLED televisions currently on the market?
This could potentially allow viewers for the first time to enjoy HDR content in a virtually perfect environment, free of window light and light bouncing off walls in the room that destroy contrast, preventing us from seeing details in the shadows. Regarding the displays, FlatpanelsHD writes: “DSCC added that for the two micro-OLED displays in... Continue Reading →
Brace yourselves: HDR is coming to the skies, folks.
In an article entitled "4K OLEDs arrive on planes. United will bring 300,000 screens and 67W USB-C to high altitude," Italian tech website DDay.it reports that, "By 2025, United Airlines will install 300,000 4K OLED screens on its aircraft....When Panasonic Avionics introduced Astrova, 4K OLED screens were only available in 13” or 16” cuts. In... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 