HDR Discussion Thread

[TheSweetieMan]

Originally Posted by Vincent Teoh

Netflix shows - The Irishman and Marriage Story pop to mind - whose Dolby Vision presentation offers little to no increase in dynamic range over the SDR version. Because studios are doing crude SDR-to-Dolby Vision conversions to fulfill Netflix's deliverable requirements.

Again, just because there's a Dolby Vision logo present, doesn't mean that the show has been graded in DV.

This sill wouldn't explain why these shows and films still feature Dolby's proprietary subsampling ICtCp, though.

Unless that can be converted as well, then these films and shows are still being graded within Dolby and HDR10 and then being converted to SDR.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by TheSweetieMan

This sill wouldn't explain why these shows and films still feature Dolby's proprietary subsampling ICtCp, though.

Unless that can be converted as well, then these films and shows are still being graded within Dolby and HDR10 and then being converted to SDR.

That's just the encoding method used to subsample the chroma and turn it into a consumer deliverable to squirt down the OTT pipe, the source material itself is uncompressed video files like TIFF or OpenEXR or whatever. You could encode anything you want in ICtCp, doesn't make it Dobly by dint of that.

[TheSweetieMan]

Doesn’t Dolby exclusively have the ‘rights’ for lack of a better word, of ICtCp, though?

[Scottishguy]

We have very few examples of Scorseses work in HDR to draw on. Goodfellas is a film that's mostly an in the room type affair. And most of those rooms are very dark.

Casino though is very much one of the best examples of HDR. Not least because the photography has high dynamic range in mind.

I'm curious to see what Taxi Drive and I hope Raging Bull look like in HDR. They could etheir way

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by TheSweetieMan

Doesn’t Dolby exclusively have the ‘rights’ for lack of a better word, of ICtCp, though?

It's literally their invention, yes. But what I'm saying is that something being encoded in ITP means little as to the provenance of it being 'real Dobly' or not because the ITP is only factored in at the final encoding stage, it has nothing to do with the physical mastering. I see what you're getting at because it means that Dobly tools must have carried it out, but it's not actually being done *by* them, it's just people who've paid their license and who are using the tools, i.e. they could encode whatever they want with it as I said.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

We have very few examples of Scorseses work in HDR to draw on. Goodfellas is a film that's mostly an in the room type affair. And most of those rooms are very dark.

Casino though is very much one of the best examples of HDR. Not least because the photography has high dynamic range in mind.

I'm curious to see what Taxi Drive and I hope Raging Bull look like in HDR. They could etheir way

Some people still thought it was rather dark though, those wonderful Robbie Richardson toplights aside. I can appreciate why, as MaxFALL on the disc is 300 nits so it doesn't get incredibly bright for average brightness levels. Still 4.5x higher than Goodfeathers' MaxFALL of 67 nits admittedly!

[TheSweetieMan]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's literally their invention, yes. But what I'm saying is that something being encoded in ITP means little as to the provenance of it being 'real Dobly' or not because the ITP is only factored in at the final encoding stage, it has nothing to do with the physical mastering. I see what you're getting at because it means that Dobly tools must have carried it out, but it's not actually being done *by* them, it's just people who've paid their license and who are using the tools, i.e. they could encode whatever they want with it as I said.

Hmm.

But what about the fact that Dolby has stated that only Netflix is using ICtCp for their 4K content, though?

[Geoff D]

I did not know that, but as Netflix have kinda made a thing about their exclusivity of content then it wouldn't surprise me if they paid the extra coin to have ITP be part of their armoury too as it's a proprietary colour space. And when it comes to HDR then they do not accept anything other than DV, they won't accept HDR10 or HLG, so even if people are having to 'fake' it ('When Vincent met Geoffy' is the feel-good comedy smash of the year!) then they still have to provide an 'official' DV deliverable.

Point being that the actual DV source material itself *must* be delivered in RGB 4:4:4 in uncompressed TIFF format to Netflix directly, they're creating the compressed ITP deliverables on their own. These things are all just containers.

[TheSweetieMan]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I did not know that, but as Netflix have kinda made a thing about their exclusivity of content then it wouldn't surprise me if they paid the extra coin to have ITP be part of their armoury too as it's a proprietary colour space. And when it comes to HDR then they do not accept anything other than DV, they won't accept HDR10 or HLG, so even if people are having to 'fake' it ('When Vincent met Geoffy' is the feel-good comedy smash of the year!) then they still have to deliver an 'official' DV deliverable.

Point being that the actual DV source material itself *must* be delivered in RGB 4:4:4 in uncompressed TIFF format to Netflix directly, they're creating the compressed ITP deliverables on their own.

Yeah. It seems like a lot of moving parts. But I just thought I'd bring that up since in 2017, Dolby did state that only Netflix were using ICtCp for their subsampling--and that only panels with DV built in were capable of processing it.

Either way, even if I get when Vincent and Boris are trying to do, I don't see what good it does to call something "fake HDR". A good portion of DOPs just outright don't like the medium. You and me have already had this conversation when it came to Roger Deakins. Yet, even with Deakins' disdain for HDR, he's still mandated by these studios to provide a pass for the format for its UHD home release; So he purposely grades them to be almost identical to their SDR grades.

If there were a way filmmakers could just do SDR deliverables at higher resolutions with higher volumes of color, that could work. And that would be fine.

But I think instead of calling something 'fake', a better summarization would be to call it subdued.

No matter how well-meaning Boris and Vincent are with these breakdowns, I don't think they understand the unintended consequence of calling these grades 'fake', as we already have enough morons running around not buying certain discs because they aren't 'native 4K'.

If a disc or stream has tight compression/encoding, and adheres to the creative intent, I am happy.

[Mierzwiak]

So the consensus is that as long as there's High Peak Brightness, Baby! it's real HDR, but if it's just few hundred nits grade it must've been converted from SDR.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

So the consensus is that as long as there's High Peak Brightness, Baby! it's real HDR, but if it's just few hundred nits grade it must've been converted from SDR.

I can see what Boris is saying - lest this man of HDR faith be seen as a total luddite - particularly in regards to how their analysis shows that the specular brightness of the Mando in any given scene is at the exact same level as SDR once it's been adjusted downwards to match, ergo the HDR version is just a quick run through ST.2084 and not an actual scene by scene regrade.

But even so: the perceptual effect of the Mando in HDR on my personal TV and viewing environment is of a marked increase in specular brightness, highlight detail and colour volume (the latter would surely take a massive hit on the SDR if it were darkened to match the HDR in terms of highlight retention? Just a thought) with only a slight reduction in APL vs the superficially brighter but altogether washed-out look of the SDR. (To anyone who doesn't know: my HDR photos are much darker in the shadows because of the exposure, NOT that they actually appear that dark vs the SDR version.)

You know what I haven't done though? I haven't tried applying HDR10 or DV or HLG to the SDR stream and see what happens

[Mierzwiak]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

You know what I haven't done though? I haven't tried applying HDR10 or DV or HLG to the SDR stream and see what happens

[Vincent Teoh]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

So the consensus is that as long as there's High Peak Brightness, Baby! it's real HDR, but if it's just few hundred nits grade it must've been converted from SDR.

You're just trying to confound the issue by putting words in my mouth: when/ where did I say that with such absolute certainty? I was only referring to the specific show you asked about. If there's a high peak brightness of 2000 nits, then logically there's high dynamic range (difference between highest and lowest value). If the HDR version of a show only offers a peak brightness of 300 nits, AND generally looks flat, dim and underwhelming, we investigate further. If the waveform analysis looks very similar to the SDR version, AND I managed to simulate the HDR version by just adjusting the tone-curve in under 2 seconds on the SDR version, then it's very likely that an automated process has been used to convert either HDR to SDR, or SDR to HDR. We suspect the latter with The Mandalorian because of the paradoxical difference in APL between the SDR and HDR versions, which has thus far been conveniently ignored in the counter-arguments put forth by our detractors.

Anyway, I think my contribution to this thread has run its course... all of us have our own opinions, and no amount of words - polite or indignant - is going to change each other's minds. I will be focusing my efforts on doing more scientific comparisons to spread the word about pointless, ineffective, subdued, underwhelming HDR grades... whatever you want to call it.

[Geoff D]

One other thought has occured: what if Mando was first graded in DV HDR and the SDR downconversion is just an automated offshoot from that? That could account for the relative levels being so similar once equalised, leaving aside the more muted usage of HDR in general. The colourist on Mindhunter mentioned that the DV HDR is the key deliverable and that he just doesn't have time to do a detailed trim pass, but as Fincher doesn't go bonzo bananas with HDR (giving his colourist a ceiling of 600 nits) then it figures that the SDR trim pass wouldn't need a massive amount of intervention anyway. So what came first, the fake HDR chicken or the automated SDR egg?

edit

holy shit, I see that Vincent has actually mentioned the same thing being a possibility while I was writing this missive. Obviously he's leaning more towards it being an SDR to HDR conversion but it could just as well have gone the other way if the source material just isn't very HDR-y to begin with. Alas, even if the HDR is the primary grade and the SDR is the automated version - FAR more likely with a modern show like the Mando than, say, existing masters like the Star Wars movies which may well be SDR to HDR autoconverts - then if people don't like the HDR we're right back to questions of taste and/or technical shortcomings with such subdued HDR material and not everyone is going to agree; "eye of the beholder" and all that.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Vincent Teoh

You're just trying to confound the issue by putting words in my mouth: when/ where did I say that with such absolute certainty? I was only referring to the specific show you asked about. If there's a high peak brightness of 2000 nits, then logically there's high dynamic range (difference between highest and lowest value). If the HDR version of a show only offers a peak brightness of 300 nits, AND generally looks flat, dim and underwhelming, we investigate further. If the waveform analysis looks very similar to the SDR version, AND I managed to simulate the HDR version by just adjusting the tone-curve in under 2 seconds on the SDR version, then it's very likely that an automated process has been used to convert either HDR to SDR, or SDR to HDR. We suspect the latter with The Mandalorian because of the paradoxical difference in APL between the SDR and HDR versions, which has thus far been conveniently ignored in the counter-arguments put forth by our detractors.

Anyway, I think my contribution to this thread has run its course... all of us have our own opinions, and no amount of words - polite or indignant - is going to change each other's minds. I will be focusing my efforts on doing more scientific comparisons to spread the word about pointless, ineffective, subdued, underwhelming HDR grades... whatever you want to call it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x23r...ature=youtu.be

Take care Vincent. Cheers for dropping by.

[Staying Salty]

‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 8 4K Blu-ray Review: So THIS Is What It’s Supposed To Look Like

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarc.../#5f413a192562

Game Of Thrones’ penchant for extremely dark and smoky locations has always made it a major challenge for the world’s various broadcast and streaming platforms. Season 8, though, caused the biggest picture quality controversy yet. Especially the epic Episode 3, which sent social media into meltdown as viewers across all distribution platforms complained of major picture quality problems such as compression noise, banding noise, and sequences so dark that they literally couldn’t see what was going on at all.

I covered various aspects of this controversy in a series of articles at the time (which you can find links to at the bottom of this one). And in the last of these I concluded that likely the only way you might get to see this cinematic show looking the way it was intended to be seen would be to buy the 4K Blu-ray when it came out. And it turns out I was right. Provided, anyway, that you have a TV that’s up to the job…

[Scottishguy]

[

[Show spoiler]QUOTE=Staying Salty;17153687]‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 8 4K Blu-ray Review: So THIS Is What It’s Supposed To Look Like

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarc.../#5f413a192562[/QUOTE]

Makes you wonder if we are entering an age where there is a huge gulf in quality. Those who can't afford a premium TV, forced to live in visual poverty.

How long? A good 6 year's possibly, middle of next decade. Till micro LED or something helps to fill out the bottom.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Vincent Teoh

Anyway, I think my contribution to this thread has run its course... all of us have our own opinions,...

The last sentence of this post – https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...i#post17153085
is not opinion

Originally Posted by Vincent Teoh

I will be focusing my efforts on doing more scientific comparisons

best to then verify with subjective evaluations, e.g. https://phenix.int-evry.fr/jct/doc_e...t.php?id=10401
“The subjective results can be used to evaluate performance of objective quality metrics.”

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Scottishguy

Edinburgh

fond memories of the people and the Hearts supporters

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Staying Salty

‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 8 4K Blu-ray Review: So THIS Is What It’s Supposed To Look Like

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarc.../#5f413a192562
"I concluded that likely the only way you might get to see this cinematic show looking the way it was intended to be seen would be to buy the 4K Blu-ray when it came out."

Well, not to nitpick, but not thee only way - https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...e#post16576628
(no pun intended with the search word given the past discussion on the last page)