Top 10 Things to Know About Producing HDR

Streaming Media's article by Jan Ozer brings to light 10 tips on color grading and optimizing your HDR video projects for the blackest blacks. Deepen your know-how on how to glean the most out of your high dynamic range production:

High dynamic range, or HDR, gives video producers an expanded range of colors and brightness to display their videos. From a standards perspective, it’s the journey from Rec. 709 video to Rec. 2020, as you can see in the excellent simulation shown in Figure 1. From a brightness perspective, it’s the journey from 300–500 nits to 1,000–4,000 nits. And from a marketing perspective, it’s the promise of the blackest black viewers have ever seen on their screens.

While the transition from HD to 4K was straightforward, the transition from standard dynamic range (SDR) to HDR is much more profound, and it requires many new tools and workflow changes. In this article, I’ll identify the 10 things you need to know about HDR and introduce you to some HDR producers and technologists, and to technologies these producers leveraged along the way.

1. It’s actually quite simple...[continue reading]