Bringing sdr footage into my hdr rec 2020 workspace and export

Francis,

Thanks for stopping in to help! There are so many new "moving parts" ... and things like only a couple codecs are currently usable with the color management controls is pretty easy to forget.

Neil

And it is quite a wall. Having seen the Promised Land on that Flanders in-person, and also some of the attempts to pseudo-sort-of get close in other situations, it really is a vast gulf.

And as much as I understand what it's there, and what it is, well ... ain't no way I can pay for that. From all I've seen, less than 10% of full-time pro colorists have a full-on Grade 1 Reference HDR monitor. Quite a few either rent a monitor for a job or rent a room with a monitor in it.

So ... yea, looking at running say a BlackMagic card/lut-box to perhaps an LG -CX, their new version. After doing a calibration and profiling series with LightSpace, an i1 Display Pro puck and Resolve as the patch-generator, supposedly you can get somewhat sorta close. Kinda. But as it doesn't hold the full contrast in any absolute sense, it doth make actual grading of HDR material ... iffy.

You can get a good "feel" though, and that is apparently the best we can get without trading in a nice Audi for it. Sigh.

Neil

The theoretical amount of colors available simply due to bit depth is not necessarily that useful a number. As the standards set a particular set of volume to the color spaces, and within those, most gear struggles to produce even close to the wider spaces. The more useful number is the actual color volume used from front to back in any workflow.

And that comes from the people desiging the calibration and profiling systems for high-end pro video post color. But that subject is all pretty dense, and is something more for the pro colorists/vfx people to hassle through. And yea, I sit in on a LOT of those discussions.

Plus there's a massive difference between how the high contrast of HDR is handled on Grade 1 HDR Reference Monitors like say the Flanders XM311k and a consumer TV. That rig is simply stated as 1,000,000:1 contrast. Period. Plus, in native operation it exceeds DCI P3 color space, which is what one needs for working with DolbyVision or whatever.

I've not seen any consumer TV that comes even close. They oft have specs that suggest a wide contrast range, but in reality they can't do both the 1,000 nit (if they even can ever hit it in real life!) and a 0.01 nit on the screen at the same time.

Reference monitors must be able to maintain the extreme contrast range period, and the main way currently is "dimming zones" ... areas where the brightness can be dropped or raised depending on the need. It takes a lot of dimming zones to keep the blacks black while there's a "peak white" value close by.

That's the huge failure of the new Apple "HDR" monitor ... it doesn't have nearly the dimming zones needed.

And it's why the full-on pro HDR reference monitors are realistically all over a 'minimum' of $18,000USD. That Flanders is MSRP of $37,500, and yea, I know several people that own them. Ain't gonna be in my room any time soon though. I've met Bram Desmet at NAB. Nice guy, but no way he's going to give me one. And I cannot possibly justify the expense.

I gave a talk in the Flanders/MixingLight booth at NAB last year, sandwiched between Alexis Van Hurkman and the guy from DolbyVision ... with the screen our laptops were sent to being that XM311K. Wow ... that is an amazing screen. Easily the prettiest screen any of my stuff has ever appeared on.

But I've never come close to spending that much on a car. Not going to meet budgeted funds available in my business.

So ... what's a person to do? We try to cadge together something with consumer HDR TVs and monitors. Which doesn't always work particularly well ... hence this entire conversation.

Neil

Thanks, Neil.

I sorta deal with that via edit computer and monitors ( video out of bm card via BNC) and use that as hero.

But I don't use adobe except for simple quick stuff ( have cs6 ). Like I got something from friend in AZ. ( Bill Hunt ) the other day for an intro he did, and got a little whacky re: levels and colors ( saturation mostly).

And I haven't even put the stuff on edit computer yet... I'm just using my junky laptop so far to rough cut the thing and proxy it in resolve.

I'll pick your brains when I get to the edit computer and yap about resolve with you.

Adobe is getting over designed for bigger pie IMO.

I'm confused. Does secret code SDR and HDR mean standard resolution and high def resolution respectively ?

I adobe does everything in rec709 and users monitor is probably sRGB, isn't this a weird thing ? On one hand you got some resolution and IRE standard ( originally interpolated ) and now you got some conversion to bigger dimension and ( potentially ) bigger gamut or else it doesn't make any sense to me.

???

what is SDR and HDR ???? please explain as I love learning stuff.

And why is your source 1 frame per second ???? that sounds weird to me.

It would be very useful if say @Francis-Crossman17221443 could pop in here, as this is so flipping new.

Neil

When I changed the sequence colorspace, the hdr export became overblown and weird, even while using the recommended export settings on the guide you sent.

What were you viewing them in? And on what monitor/device?

Neil

What is that media, btw? What made it, and what is the format/codec?

And my comments about color space setup didn't have to do with grading, but simply getting the media on the same "page" for color space.

Neil

So, you're viewing in SDR via Premiere, but exporting to one of the HDR options? That's pretty tough to do and be sure of anything.

It isn't easy nor cheap to work HDR. With Premiere, currently, you need the AJA or BlackMagic gear connected between you computer and the monitor to get the monitor to see HDR output from Premiere, as the internal monitors are not yet set to show HDR. The gear is listed in the FAQ on working in HDR.

I suppose ... have you read through that FAQ? Well, a couple of them ...

FAQ: Setting up for HDR in Premiere Pro Fall 2020

Discuss: Rec.2100 HLG HDR Workflow

So currently the general recommendation is to get the AJA or BM kit to connect your computer and HDR monitor, and typically set your sequence color management and Lumetri scopes panels to the same color space. That makes exporting vastly easier.

You can try using the Lumetri scopes and sequence both set to Rec2100 in either PQ or HLG ... probably PQ ... as at least, the scopes will show you the tonal range of the image.

Neil

Did you change the color space of the clips in the project panel ... Modify/Interpret Media, and check the color-space options?

What is the timeline color space set to in the Sequence Settings dialog?

Neil