FS7: HDR another buzzword for 2017 TV Marketing ?

jpham said:
does PC decode Youtube HDR VP9 correctly? is there a HDR test screen video that we can calibrate to?
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Nope. You probably have the TV connected as the Windows Secondary Display; even if your graphics card is configure properly (10bit, 4:2:2) I don't think it's able to switch your TV into its proper HDR mode. Before I successfully reconfigured my Samsung (see my post below), I tried playing back some HDR YT movies this way and failed. The only way to force it into HDR is either via a specialized video card like BMW Decklink (and software which can insert HDR flag into the HDMI stream, like Resolve) - or by feeding one of the TV's HDMI input directly (from the USB stick, USB HDD, or - which is the easiest now - by casting to it via your LAN).

Piotr
 
For those who are able to cast to their Premium UHD TVs: a suite of nice HR videos

Interestingly, they state on that page:
"Video created by Samsung to promote their SUHD HDR TVs. Buy a Chromecast Ultra for your 4K HDR TV: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1278867-REG/google_ga3a00403a14_chromecast_ultra.html "

- but I have no hardware Chromecast device, and still can watch it in the full HDR10 glory all the same... This is something I still don't quite understand: who really needs the hardware Chromecast devise? Would it be a sort of a plot by Google to make more money on those who are still lost in this emerging HDR world?

Piotr

PS. Another HDR channel full of mind-blowing stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LTx4h7D_0

Within those many HDR clips, there is one especially interesting to those who'd like to assess the true capabilities of their HDR TVs; it displays a series of white squares (in succession - from just 5% through 25% etc. up to 100% area of the 3840x2160 screen), and each of these squares is displayed for 5 seconds at 100, 300, 100, 2000 and 4000 nits (I might not be very precise with those values from memory - one thing is sure: the most demanding test is of course the entire screen at 4,000 nits). My Samsung has passed the test brilliantly - even though, of course, subjectively one of the smaller square (was it 25% area?) I perceived super -bright indeed at those 4,000 nits... And this is how you grade for HDR: the majority of any given scene should stay at around 100 nits (as in SDR) - with just direct light sources or specular highlights being so much brighter; I never go as high as 4,000 nits with them (1,400 nits is what I grade for in Resolev), but the mere presence of them - however sparse - within the "normally" bright scene at 100 nits is what makes the picture sing... And the whole HDR grade is not so much about pumping up the brightness of those brightest areas (this is an easy part), but about keeping the 100 nits "majority" nice and clean from any noise, and in spite of how dark it looks - full of color and details...
 
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From Google:
"By 2020, IHS Markit expects that nearly all of the 112 million 4K TVs shipped worldwide will be compatible with HDR, but only 30 percent will have true HDR performance capabilities."

Am I understanding this correctly?

External recorders such as the Shogun and Ninja series allow you to see your log footage on an HDR display, but the reality is most people, even by 2020, will not own HDR TVs; therefore,
what the recorders are doing is allowing you to see something that most of your audience will not be able to. Am I interpreting that correctly?

And if that's true, then what's the point of having an HDR monitor display? Is it just future proofing and marketing hype?

Am I missing something?
 
Tom Roper said:
Yes but it is not HDR, different grade. The HDR version is not on YouTube, sorry.
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True, but at least the content is more complete so I can learn what this trailer is about. The short HDR version is not even a trailer; it's a teaser :)

Piotr
 
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karma17 said:
And if that's true, then what's the point of having an HDR monitor display? Is it just future proofing and marketing hype?
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It's for future-proofing, I'd say :)

And now speaking for myself only: I don't have time to watch TV much, so the lack of HDR content doesn't worry me a bit. With my Samsung SUHD, I can a) grade to HDR and b) watch my own production in HDR. Plus - from time to time - that of other people like Tom or Darek.

Piotr

PS. Will anybody explain to me what's the idea of the Chromecast device, if I am perfectly able to cast to my Samsung without it (using my home network)?
 
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So what are some cheap, decent HDR UHD TV set that will last a couple years before the next big thing?
 
Any Premium UHD TV will do. With the caveat that OLED should NOT be used as a grading monitor because of burning in easily. In 2016, the 1,000 nits rated Samsung SUHD presented the best value for the buck, so I bought one (it's capable of much more than 1,000 nits on smaller screen areas, which is totally OK for HDR grading). But today's Premium UHDs are rated 1,400 nits and more - and I don't think this value will go much higher in the near future as anything brighter than that is impractical for an average TV viewer.

Piotr
 
moldcad said:
Any Premium UHD TV will do. With the caveat that OLED should NOT be used as a grading monitor because of burning in easily. In 2016, the 1,000 nits rated Samsung SUHD presented the best value for the buck, so I bought one (it's capable of much more than 1,000 nits on smaller screen areas, which is totally OK for HDR grading). But today's Premium UHDs are rated 1,400 nits and more - and I don't think this value will go much higher in the near future as anything brighter than that is impractical for an average TV viewer.

Piotr
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I bet Sony would disagree... ; ). But I also gather that you're talking about consumer sets. I have three professional OLED's and two OLED VF's and I don't have any problems with burn-in. I also don't have any problems with burn-in on my LG OLED at home, either. But, of course the home set is not subject to having the same image, graphics, etc. up on screen for any real length of time.
 
An interesting outlook at HDR as it stands today (with typical 10-bit Premium UHD panel TVs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdKwfEv145A&t=18s

The most striking eye-opener for me at least (pun unintended) is this statement that the author presents at about 8:25 into the movie:

In Rec. 2100 characterized by following display parameters -

a) Peak Luminance: greater than 1,000 nits
b) Black Level: 0.005 nits or less
c) Dynamic Range: 17.5+ stops

- ONLY 3 stop advantage over Rec. 709 is in highlights while us much as 7.5 stop advantage over Rec. 709 is in the shadows !!!

This confirms what I arrived at after many months of my HDR10 (PQ) grading endeavors, using the mid-range HDR10 display in the form of the Samsung SUHD TV (model 49KS8000) as the reference display: it's so much more rewarding to squeeze us much as only possible from the shadows (constantly and over entire screen) than it is from simply increasing the maximum brightness here and there, now and them (i.e. within a small portions of the screen and for a very limited length of time)... But at the same time, it's also the most difficult part of the whole exercise!

Piotr
 
I'm beginning to like the idea of HDR myself... I know I was held back at first, but honestly, even just on normal monitor, the hdr footage just looks better. I can't put a word on it... it's a more visually pleasing image to look at. Speaking mostly from watching YTs HDR channel.

But then I began to look into the efforts behind creating this.

Am I correct in assuming that you could actually squeeze some HDR footage from a FS7 II clip if it was exposed correctly?

About the hardware... what do we need? I take it that the guys behind the YT films had access to some pretty hefty grading suits with proper reference monitors, but can we achieve something similar on a small business level?

What is the main reason that we are always told that we shouldn't be using a (in this case HDR) tv for reference monitoring? Why couldn't it substitute a pc monitor when going through Resolve?

What about graphics cards and operating systems? At the moment, I'm sitting at a "decent" Benq monitor hooked to a 980ti card on Windows 8.1?

Now I accept that I'm not going to get HDR from that Benq monitor... I did have the option to swith to 10bit (8bit +frc) in ycbcr 422, but that disappeared when I updated the latest Nvidia driver (DOH!)
Apart from that, it looks like Windows 8.1 doesn't actually support HDR at all? I'm pretty sure the 980ti does, and its display port should be able to carry the signal if windows and the monitor would allow it.

So what to do?

My point of view, without even having tried to grade and HDR finished product, is that... "why not...". Wouldn't it make sense to just finish it up in HDR if one had the options to do so? Would HDR on a SDR monitor / tv not look as good or better as rec 709 finished footage on an SDR? If so, then I would feel like that in terms of image quality I was to some degree already future proofing my own material, in case for some unlikely reason some of it was ever used in x years :D

Am I putting too much weight into this?

To reiterate my first impression... I think HDR looks a hell of a lot better even on a SDR monitor.
 
I started out 2 1/2 years ago asking some of the same questions. Why not? There are no reasons not to. There are some technical aspects to be aware of:

1.) There are multiple variants of HDR. Most are in the family of SMPTE-2084 PQ EOTF, Dolby Vision, HDR10, a few others closely related.
2.) There is one that is substantively different, Hybrid Log Gamma. It is unique that it does not require metadata for SDR playback.

I'm not going to go into each one, but they all possess some unique features while having a lot in common, about the final image.

A camera that can record 10 bit log footage is all you need for a starting point for creating HDR content.

The main distinction from SDR or PC monitors for all except HLG is at a minimum, support for HDMI 2.0b and HEVC playback compatibility.

SMPTE-2084 is different in a fundamental way, and needs hardware support on the monitor/pc. HLG less so but still benefits from it. Saving HLG for later, let's start with HDR10. The HDR10 monitor instead of using a scene referred gamma uses display referenced brightness. Each pixel is addressed in absolute terms of brightness that you can put a number to from a light meter whereas gamma is a relative measure where the brightness of each pixel is in relation to each other, not an absolute brightness amount. You can try to approximate the "look" of an HDR10 image on an SDR monitor with modest success.

If you do have an HDR10 compliant tv/monitor, you can use it, but how you get it to "switch into" the display referenced 2084 mode varies according to where the source is originating from; TV app, cloud servers, HDMI 2.0b (UHD-Blu-ray), USB thumb drives, streamed media, display port and internal user selectable menu selection.

The main reason colorists will give for not recommending consumer HDR TVs is the consumer feature set(s) that vary brand to brand, model to model, that deviate from the base processing with special circuits that change what the consumer sees on his display. Some common examples include: Dynamic Contrast, Black Tone, Flesh Tone, Custom Color Space, Custom Gamma, Color Tone, Digital Clean View, Mpeg Noise Filter, HDMI Black Level, HDMI UHD Color, Film Mode, Auto Motion Plus, Smart LED, Cinema Black. No one knows precisely how all of those and other picture settings interact with HDR10 to affect the images when you are trying to grade to a consistent baseline, or whether they can even be defeated.

You should aspire to a video display adapter with the above support as well.

But there is always a way around the obstacles. My first project was graded on a Samsung consumer TV that I still have, grew that into a small niche of HDR content that played on retailer showroom floors around the globe including the flagship Sony Z9D. My advice then, is go for it!
 
I just completed my first HDR shoot today after getting a call over the weekend from a long time client now at Dolby Labs that I had to learn a new technology and an absolutely foreign camera system for a shoot 4 days away. Well I didn't get much sleep and didn't get a chance to even see anything on a real HDR monitor till last night, but it seems like we were a success. I'll be happier when I hear that from the Post department though.

The camera, supplied by Dolby, was a traditional B4 type 2/3" Broadcast style but it was a 4K Grass Valley LDK86 Universe. Ever work with a Grass Valley camera - well neither had I and this was not an ENG type camera . The only output was through a heavy 150' fibre optic control cable and though you could get to menus on the camera it was meant to be controlled from a CCU connected to an XCU fibre optic base station ( multicam style.). Even changing an ND filter had to go through a CCU. Yikes - what a learning curve let alone scouring the web just to get up to speed on the basic parameters. Kudos by the way to the series of blogs on HDR by Mystery Box which I found extremely helpful and also to Art Adams' blogs on the Provideo coalition and to our own indefatigable Piotr ( better known as Moldcad) who helped me with some initial counseling. Also especially to Bay Area tech extraordinaire Louis Block who got into the weeds with me and made me look like I knew what I was doing.

The shoot for Dolby was to showcase Dolby Vision HDR ( aka SMPTE 2048- In think?) at their NAB booth and they picked out a Glass Blowing factory for its range dynamic range. It was the first time I had seen an HDR TV at all and like a number of people here have said - once you get used to it an old fashioned set starts to look pretty dingy. Of course we had the creme de la creme- a $60K Sony X-300 30" monitor.

We were shooting Dolby's PQ DolbyVision (2048) format directly at UHD 60P instead of shooting RAW or SLOG because this camera did that. Probably designed for live events like sports. Recorded on an Atomos Shogun Inferno at DNX HR HQX at 10 bit 422 because that was the highest recording quality we could get for that input. We also shot some 1080 60P to an Odyssey 7Q at 444 to see how it compared. The interest was from the supposition that the higher frame rate of 60P provides so much temporal resolution increase that it will up-grade very well to 4K. We'll see.

Check it out at NAB. Hopefully i didn't screw it up too badly. I want to do more of this stuff and explore how to shoot Slog or RED for HDR next.

legrevedotcom - To answer a couple of your questions as best I can for a newbie. First I would say - go to the Mystery Box blogs about HDR for a nice discussion of using SDR monitors for shooting and grading HDR. Its possible but apparently you need a set with as many nits as possible. That's one of the reasons many people use an Atomos Inferno on the set . It's 1500 nits compared to around 400 or less from an Odyssey 7Q. (I'm surprised Convergence hasn't updated their screen yet with all the competition.) Mystery Box suggests using the Small HD 1703 P3X which is 900nits or the Atomos Sumo 19. They've also created special LUTs for looking at HDR on both Atomos and Small HD monitors. However their LUTs are tricky to use. Because you'll never see the full detail of HDR on a non HDR set they created 3 LUTs for different ranges. A mid for general use and a high and low range to check out the brights and the shadows. Kind of like the the user button on the Sony FS7 that lets you use a 709 LUT for normal shooting & exposure choice, but can switch to a view of the highs or shadows just to check what your getting.( I forget what that's called. ) I don't know anything about posting this stuff yet except that Dolby Vision ( 2048) is probably more complex because it includes metadata that tells the TV to adjust to the dynamic range of every shot thus optimizing the HDR for different exposure ranges. HDR10 as I understand it is a more basic static assigning of values. I think some people on this forum like Moldcad have been using consumer TV sets for grading and doing OK.
 
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Congratulations on the good job, Lenny :)

Piotr

PS. Now that you have some experience with Atomos Shogun Inferno while at the same time - as I understand - you really like the HDR picture, I can tell you that with this monitor/recorder, a 4K and HDR capable card from BMD and your FS7, you are all set to start your own HDR10 grading yourself! You don't even need a consumer (like my UHD TV) or professional (like the Sony you saw in action) preview monitor - the Shogun is quite enough for starters (although it can be not very comfortable to use for extended periods of time due to its smallish size). But the 1,500 nits max brightness Atomos advertise is real, and the results are more than spectacular. I must admit that because of getting some hue discrepancy between my HDR HEVC deliverables and the grades source in Resolve - trying to exclude my TV from equation as the potential culprit - I added the Shogun to my grading set of hardware (by connecting the Shogun to my Decklink 4K 12G's SDI output, with its HDMI output still feeding the Samsung SUHD TV)... I was literally taken aback with the experience: while the brightest parts of my 1,300 nits max grades already start to look devoid of detail, signalling it's too much for the TV to display properly (after all, it's only rated for 1,000 nits max brightness) - it still was looking great on the Inferno. In fact - increasing the brightness of very limited portion of the scenes (the Gain color wheel in Log mode is the best for it) - I managed to get a 1,500 nits grade still looking gorgeous on this little beast - with detailed and super-hyper bright specular highlights, and the portions reflecting the gold but still very bright sun already very low on the skies (winter time!). Enough said that - after completing my experiments - I never removed the Inferno from my Resolve grading setup, and am now using two monitors (fed by the same Decklink card). Of course it's much more convenient to look at the 49" TV screen for many hours, but each time a very bright grading is involved - controlling it with the Inferno gives me the advantage of knowing how my "products" will look on something better than my 2016 Samsung model... Recommended!

Piotr
 
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Lets say you have a finished edit and grade which you finished on a hdr suit. Can you then easily make a sdr version as well or is that jsut about adding meta tags so that a sdr monitor / tv fits the values into its own ranges or is it a question of rutine that you simply refit the grade on a second timeline and export that for sdr?
 
LennyLevy said:
I just completed my first HDR shoot today after getting a call over the weekend from a long time client now at Dolby Labs that I had to learn a new technology and an absolutely foreign camera system for a shoot 4 days away. Well I didn't get much sleep and didn't get a chance to even see anything on a real HDR monitor till last night, but it seems like we were a success. I'll be happier when I hear that from the Post department though.

The camera, supplied by Dolby, was a traditional B4 type 2/3" Broadcast style but it was a 4K Grass Valley LDK86 Universe. Ever work with a Grass Valley camera - well neither had I and this was not an ENG type camera . The only output was through a heavy 150' fibre optic control cable and though you could get to menus on the camera it was meant to be controlled from a CCU connected to an XCU fibre optic base station ( multicam style.). Even changing an ND filter had to go through a CCU. Yikes - what a learning curve let alone scouring the web just to get up to speed on the basic parameters. Kudos by the way to the series of blogs on HDR by Mystery Box which I found extremely helpful and also to Art Adams' blogs on the Provideo coalition and to our own indefatigable Piotr ( better known as Moldcad) who helped me with some initial counseling. Also especially to Bay Area tech extraordinaire Louis Block who got into the weeds with me and made me look like I knew what I was doing.
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Yeah, the GV cameras are intended for live/remote/truck situations were they are being controlled/painted back "in the truck". I've shot with them before(obviously not that particular model) and you're truly just an operator framing, zooming and focusing. They were ok when you looked at them from that perspective of operating, but I hated the VF's. They were constantly swapping them out/replacing them.
 
legrevedotcom said:
Lets say you have a finished edit and grade which you finished on a hdr suit. Can you then easily make a sdr version as well or is that jsut about adding meta tags so that a sdr monitor / tv fits the values into its own ranges or is it a question of rutine that you simply refit the grade on a second timeline and export that for sdr?
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There is three approaches, you could make a separate version, provide a fallback LUT or rely on automatic tone mapping.

For instance in Resolve for HDR10 you could load your HDR video in a project not color managed, then apply an HDR10 to Rec709 LUT (there are several provided for various maximum nit levels) and do some post adjustment to make it look good. When you are done you can either render it to a new file or generate a LUT.

For instance YouTube allows a fallback LUT that you can attach to your container. If you don't specify one the HDR will be automatically tone-mapped when an SDR client requests the video. Vimeo does not have a fallback LUT capability.

Of course the best is Dolby Vision but there is a large price tag on that one!
 
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