HDR LUT

[Dan McCain]

I shot some footage for a client. We recorded to Prores with the Rec. 709/HDR color baked in profile loaded. The client is now saying the footage was recorded in log and therefore needs a lut and are asking me which lut they should use. After trying to explain to them it wasn't recorded in log and saying it looks washed out they are still demanding a "LUT" for the footage.

So what should i give them? Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

I shot some footage for a client. We recorded to Prores with the Rec. 709/HDR color baked in profile loaded. The client is now saying the footage was recorded in log and therefore needs a lut and are asking me which lut they should use. After trying to explain to them it wasn't recorded in log and saying it looks washed out they are still demanding a "LUT" for the footage.

So what should i give them? Any advice is appreciated.

Mixing REC 709 with HDR is like mixing M&Ms and Skittles in a candy bowl. Yuck!

There are many HDR gamma curves, but if the one you selected was HDR10+, you might find these helpful: https://www.mysterybox.us/store/hdr10-to-sdr-conversionsv10

In the future, if you are shooting for HDR, use a wide gamut color space (such as REC 2020). If you are shooting for real HDR delivery, then check your work on an actual HDR monitor and make sure that your client will be using a real HDR display device. That "washed out look" is the result of using the wrong display monitor, not having the wrong LUT. With the right monitor, your client may then gripe about the REC 709 colors. You can run your REC 709 colors through a matrix conversion with these coefficients to get REC 2020 out the other end:

Convert 709 (HDTV) to 2020 (UHDTV):

0.9498, 0.0456039, 0.00459609
-0.0543343, 1.03836, 0.0159787
-0.00293135, -0.00986865, 1.0128

But all your RED goodness will have already been wrung out in the initial REC 709 baking.

 

[rand thompson]

Thanks for all this info Michael!

 

[Marc Wielage]

I shot some footage for a client. We recorded to Prores with the Rec. 709/HDR color baked in profile loaded.

Just curious: why was this done? Speaking purely from a post perspective, if somebody asked me if they should do this, I would say, "good god, no -- just give us the camera raw and let us worry how to make Rec709 and HDR out of that." Don't bake in anything, unless it's Toll-House Cookies.

At the worst, record in Raw, then immediately create ProRes dailies with a nominal Rec709 look for editing. Nothing wrong with that. And then have them conform with the Raw and use whatever workflow they want in final color.