WHAT IS HDR VIDEO?

[jacob.schwarz]

My company, MYSTERY BOX, has just posted Part 1 of our jounery and experience with HDR Video over the last year written by our Post-Production Supervisor Samuel Bilodeau. Love to hear your thoughts on our post.

Part One: What is HDR Video?
http://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2016/10/18/hdr-video-part-1-what-is-hdr-video

Part Two: HDR VIDEO REFERENCE HARDWARE
http://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2016/10/19/hdr-video-part-2-hdr-video-reference-hardware

 

[Noel Evans]

Im very interested to read part two. I've spent the past four months studying as much as I can and still have some unanswered questions. Im hoping a few light bulbs will go off in part two.

Covered it well btw.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Nice article!

 

[jacob.schwarz]

Thanks Part two come out tomorrow.

 

[Owen Rennie]

Nice work on the article. Most of it is too advanced for my brain but I'll keep following along. One question, does filming techniques or equipment change or can any of our current work be shown inHDR? I'm assuming it's all about the grade and Tv?

 

[Adam Rook]

I LOVE stuff like this. Some of it I don't fully understand but I don't care. It fascinates the nerd side of me. I can't wait for part two. Bring it on!

 

[jacob.schwarz]

Nice work on the article. Most of it is too advanced for my brain but I'll keep following along. One question, does filming techniques or equipment change or can any of our current work be shown inHDR? I'm assuming it's all about the grade and Tv?

Yes it all about the grade and the TV. The great part is if you shoot red, even RedOne you have enough information to do a nice HDR grade down the road.

 

[Marc Pilato]

Thanks for this article.Waiting for part 2.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

There’s an actual physiological and psychological response to the image that you don’t get with standard dynamic range footage - not simply an emotional response to the quality of the image, but the higher brightness levels actually trigger things in your eyes and brain that let you literally see it differently than anything you’ve seen before.

What physiological and psychological response ?

Which things are triggered in your eyes and brain ?

What does that do ?

 

[Owen Rennie]

Yes it all about the grade and the TV. The great part is if you shoot red, even RedOne you have enough information to do a nice HDR grade down the road.

Great to know. Keep up the good work

 

[jacob.schwarz]

Here is Part Two: http://www.mysterybox.us/blog/2016/10/19/hdr-video-part-2-hdr-video-reference-hardware

 

[jacob.schwarz]

"Part Three: HDR VIDEO TERMS EXPLAINED" come out tomorrow as well.

 

[jake blackstone]

"Alright, first, the bad news. Professional grade reference displays for HDR are expensive. And there are only two: The Sony BVM-X300 and the Dolby PRM-4220. Both cover 100% of DCI-P3 space, but the BVM-X300 operates in and covers most of BT.2020, has a 4K resolution, a peak brightness of 1000 nits, and uses OLED panels for more detail through the darks. The PRM-4220 is an excellent display, but is only 2K in resolution and 600 nits max, though it operates with a 12 bit panel for better DCI reference."

Sorry, but hat information is incorrect. Dolby PRM-4220 is an SDR monitor. Even though it is capable of 600 nits, it doesn't mean that it is an HDR monitor. People frequently confuse brightness with HDR.
The Dolby monitors that are HDR capable are Pulsar (4000 nits) and the newer and less expensive one as well, that I can't remember the name right now.
At this time Sony X300 is the only professional monitor, that you can actually purchase, unlike Dolby's monitors. And because of that, even though it is $30k, it is slowly becoming a standard for HDR mastering around the world.

 

[jacob.schwarz]

What physiological and psychological response ?

Which things are triggered in your eyes and brain ?

What does that do ?

Physiological refers to the reaction of the eye and visual system - your pupils will dilate, your inhibitors will scale your perception of the contrast as it would in the real world (where you can see further into shadows if you block out the light part)

The Psychological response has to deal with the perception of the image as not being an image - it’s how it *feels* closer to reality. Bright *feels* bright, darks *feel* dark, and your mood and perceptions are affected accordingly.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Physiological refers to the reaction of the eye and visual system - your pupils will dilate, your inhibitors will scale your perception of the contrast as it would in the real world (where you can see further into shadows if you block out the light part)

The Psychological response has to deal with the perception of the image as not being an image - it’s how it *feels* closer to reality. Bright *feels* bright, darks *feel* dark, and your mood and perceptions are affected accordingly.

Excellent.

Let's go a bit further with physiological and psychological.


So...


1) What happens with the biomechanics of a visual system with longer exposure to high intensity stimuli in general, and especially with a high DR, non-linear, non-controllable, information-packed stimuli ?

2) What happens with neural activity with longer exposure to high intensity stimuli in general, and especially with a high DR, non-linear, non-controllable information-packed stimuli ?

3) What happens to a physical body stuck on a couch due to staring at the enchanting wall ?

4) What happens when a society glued to the wall gets a better wall ?

5) What happens with perception of reality if fake starts to seem "better than real" ?

 

[Marc Wielage]

The Dolby monitors that are HDR capable are Pulsar (4000 nits) and the newer and less expensive one as well, that I can't remember the name right now.

The Pulsar is only rentable, I think for $2000 a day (valued at $100,000), and the other monitor is the Maui. My understanding is that the Pulsar will do 4000 nits and the Maui does 1000 nits, but I'm going to check on that. Dolby keeps this information fairly confidential.

Last I heard, the Pulsar requires three 20-amp power connections (as of last summer), but I don't know if this is still true.

Canon has two HDR displays as well (at slightly lower prices than the Sony BVM), but I dunno if they're shipping yet.

5) What happens with perception of reality if fake starts to seem "better than real" ?

I'm still waiting for Doug Trumbull's Brainstorm helmet, which basically predicted VR before anybody:

You will recall that the Brainstorm experience gave you sight, sound, smell, as well as the sense of touch, up to and including pleasure and pain. Fun for the whole family.

 

[jake blackstone]

The Pulsar is only rentable, I think for $2000 a day (valued at $100,000), and the other monitor is the Maui. My understanding is that the Pulsar will do 4000 nits and the Maui does 1000 nits, but I'm going to check on that. Dolby keeps this information fairly confidential.
Last I heard, the Pulsar requires three 20-amp power connections (as of last summer), but I don't know if this is still true.

It's actually closer to $250,000 and it requires a 3 phase power hook up, like any standard power devices.

 

[Marc Wielage]

It's actually closer to $250,000 and it requires a 3 phase power hook up, like any standard power devices.

I saw three thick AC cables on the monitor I saw locally last year, but as I said in my message, this was June of last year. Again, Dolby has zero information on their website.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

This is really good but as a founding member of the Secret Society of Pedantic Gamma Cultists I cringe at your portrayal of different gamma spaces.

Gamma should never affect how you aesthetically see an image. If two different gamma encodings look aesthetically different someone fucked up. The point of gamma is to avoid quantization and banding... period. The idea is that whatever gamma you encode an image in should be reversible and therefore ultimately irrelevant. Gamma should be invisible to everybody in the entire imaging pipeline except to automagically reduce banding and even then a good dithering engine should hide all but the most difficult cases.

Edit: Just one editorial note, I'm not sure if you were just trying to illustrate the concept but if you were hoping to be exact: your bit depth gradient scale actually shows 8, 9 and 10 bit relative to one another. 2^n doubles with every bit so 10 bits would be 4x as many gradient steps as 8 bit and 12 bit would be 16x as many.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I saw three thick AC cables on the monitor I saw locally last year, but as I said in my message, this was June of last year. Again, Dolby has zero information on their website.

Ultra mega super extra ultra hyper.

4000 nits is garbage, that's not even 10000. If I don't see an 80KW truck parked in front of the studio, I'm not even entering a grading suite and taking my welding glasses elsewhere.