Just as with the Venice, Sony sells licenses to unlock features on its high-end reference monitor, the BVM-HX3110, with one going for $2,500.
You Won’t Believe How Much Sony Charges For These
Is AV1’s FGS Suboptimal?
AV1 is of particular interest to the industry because it’s royalty-free; it offers better compression efficiency and takes up less bandwidth than HEVC; it suffers fewer instances of buffering and has improved video quality. However, we're primarily interested in the codec’s film grain synthesis, because as things stand now, film grain just looks like trash... Continue Reading →
A Fundamental Difference Between SDR & HDR
“The cinematographer’s job to do good HDR is don't clip the signal.” Juan Cabrera, Senior Colorist & Founder at LightBenders From On the Calculation and Usage of HDR Static Content Metadata by Michael D. Smith and Michael Zink “A simple histogram analysis shows the distribution of pixel values within an image and can be used... Continue Reading →
What Is Judder Anyhow?
Apple Vision Pro will be the first home entertainment device offering Disney's HFR versions of James Cameron's movies at home. In the future, Pixelworks intends to establish a logo certification program for TVs and other consumer devices featuring TrueCut Motion, ensuring that devices like TVs play the HFR version of the movie exactly as intended,... Continue Reading →
Dolby Vision Profile 20
Profile 20 is the first Dolby Vision profile which supports MV-HEVC and enables the delivery of Stereoscopic (3D) video. All other Dolby Vision profiles only support monoscopic (2D) video, whereas profile 20 is able to carry stereoscopic views and target new devices and use cases. Dolby Vision profile 20 brings forward new capabilities for playback... Continue Reading →
Maxine Gervais & Josh Pines Talk HDR
Evolution of Tech & HDR, a segment from the YouTube series ‘Color Masterclass with Joshua Pines and Maxine Gervais’ produced by Portrait Displays, coincided with Netflix’s release of The Brothers Sun, which was graded by Maxine Gervais. Joshua Pines claims that when HDR was in its infancy, all studios endeavored to make the brightest grades... Continue Reading →
The Brothers Sun: The Worst Cinematography Of 2024?
“I like 20Ks and T12s pounding through windows.” DP C. Kim Miles "The show is one of the first important TV releases of the year 2024 on Netflix after its launch on January 4, 2024. The Brothers Sun received a score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes..." - The Economic Times After reading interviews with cinematographer C.... Continue Reading →
Create Textural Depth Redux
From time to time, we go back and see if we can't improve upon some of the color grading techniques in the Monster Guide. This is an easier way to create textural depth. During an appearance on Cullen Kelly’s Grade School, the brilliant colorist Jill Bogdanowicz revealed a secret to accentuating texture without it looking... Continue Reading →
High Brightness: The Fly In The Ointment
There’s one crucial aspect that researchers who conducted the viewer brightness preference studies we’ve shared overlooked, and that is 24p motion judder. We doubt that participants in the studies would have preferred 4,000 nits over 1,000 nits had they been shown clips of actors walking in front of bright windows, as students do in the... Continue Reading →
Is Shadow Detail Really HDR’s Greatest Advantage?
“HDR's consumer appeal is based upon image elements that are considerably brighter than the portrayal of diffuse white, having as much as three or five times higher luminance.” Charles Poynton “A High Dynamic Range System (HDR System) is specified and designed for capturing, processing, and reproducing a scene, conveying the full range of perceptible shadow... Continue Reading →
Perceptually Matching Displays In Post Production
https://youtu.be/aQ2jK13-P5U?si=ymgPsB_3_8eRCNIO David Abrams, along with colorist Josh Petok, demonstrates how to correct for observer metamarism. The shots they’re looking at are from “Meridian” (2016), a 4K 60p HDR test video with a peak brightness level of 4,000 nits created for Netflix in partnership with Sony, Dolby and RED Studios. The video includes old, grainy footage... Continue Reading →
Study Finds Substantial Preference For 4,000 Nits Over 1,000 Nits
Subjective Quality Evaluation of High Dynamic Range Video and Display for Future TV by Philippe Hanhart, Touradj Ebrahimi, Pavel Korshunov and Yvonne Thomas. SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, May 2015 The following excerpts are from a study carried out at the European Broadcasting Union and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2015. Why 100, 400, 1000 and... Continue Reading →
Dolby Vision Analysis Tuning Feature in Resolve Studio 18.6
This feature introduces a new and improved analysis algorithm that allows colorists to select the strength of highlight retention and the amount of mapping applied. Users can now choose from a predefined set of spatial filters. Selecting the "Legacy CM4 L1" option matches the analysis of the original CMv4 algorithm. Older projects from software versions... Continue Reading →
No, Josh. Not Right.
"Every year there's some new technological thing that's going to change the world, like you know, when sound entered or color; so you know it's like, 'Oh, digital cameras!' Like yeah, right. Or you know, digital projection, 3D stereoscopic, uh you know and some of them have legs and stay and some of them are Smell-O-Vision:... Continue Reading →
Josh Pines and Maxine Gervais Talk HDR
https://youtu.be/jIw0RNIJJX0?si=PCcu-SrozX-hzjHM&t=165 “One of the problems is, they [SDR and HDR] look different, so if you’re doing a movie or episodic, can you simultaneously think about making two things that look different? Usually there’s a vision, there’s a creative intent, that you want preserved across all the things… so what we wound up having to do... Continue Reading →
Canadian Media Engineer Confirms That LG Has Not Rolled Out FW Update To Disable G3 Auto-Dimming Beyond USA
“Hi, my names Rich and I'm a media engineer for Animal Logic in Vancouver, Canada. One of our DI colorists told me about your website and forums [liftgammagain], so I thought I'd share what we've been doing in order to try and turn off the fabled dimming on the LG G3. We got a Canadian... Continue Reading →
Hollywood Colorists: TV Marketing Is Wrong. With HDR The Important Thing Is Not Brightness
Panasonic, which has been partnering with Company3 CEO Stefan Sonnenfeld since 2017, invited reviewers to visit the post-production house to promote their TVs. Paolo Centofanti of the Italian tech website DDay.it writes: "According to the colorists of Company 3, the company responsible for the post-production of 80% of Hollywood series and movies, you don't need... Continue Reading →
How Ads Limit Dynamic Range
At the close of episode 3 of the Korean zombie series All of Us Are Dead, the beam of a helicopter searchlight gradually grows larger as the chopper approaches the high school where undead are feasting on classmates until the entire screen is engulfed by blinding white light, and we were eager to see what... Continue Reading →
2025 The Year Of Blue PHOLED
Whether you’re a colorist or videophile; whether purchasing your very first display or replacing an older one: if a new reference monitor or TV is not a top priority in 2024, you might be better off waiting until next year, when many analysts expect manufacturers to rush blue PHOLED, which should enter mass production this... Continue Reading →
Flanders Scientific Announces 32” QD-OLED Reference Monitor
The XMP310 is a 31.5" UHD resolution HDR and SDR reference monitor built around the same industry leading QD-OLED panel technology as our HPA Award Winning 55" XMP550. With 1,000nits peak luminance, 1.5Million:1 contrast, and an exceptionally wide color gamut the XMP310 is ready to handle your most demanding HDR and SDR monitoring needs. The... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 