HDR doesn't support Hardware Encoding?

To answer your post directly:

If you are exporting H.264, then no. You will not have hardware encoding at all for anything other than 8-bit 4:2:0 SDR exports. You must export as HEVC (H.265) in order to have hardware encoding for HDR.

And no software can circumvent this limitatioin. It is imposed by all GPU manufacturers. Adobe and other NLE makers are left holding the bag, in this case.

In order to export HDR video, you have to include the HDR metadata for devices to recognize it as HDR. If you don't, the luminance and color values will be wrong, so the video will look weird.

As for the time to export, just as you mentioned, once you include hdr metadata, it will change to software encoding. That's because hardware HDR encoding hasn't been supported by the hardware, so it is forced to encode using your cpu. I'm not sure if that's still true with the new AV1 encoders, and I have tried searching online, but it seems I won't know until I buy a new video card. I currently have an rx 6800, which is a video card from 2020, so it isn't old, but not until this latest gen did intel, amd, and nvidia support av1 encoding. If hardware av1 does in fact support hdr encoding, that would be enough reason for me to upgrade. Hardware h265 takes 1 min of encoding for every 1 minute of 4k24 video at 160Mbps, while HDR takes me almost an hour for every minute at the same bitrate using a Ryzen 9 5950x at 4.4 GHz.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know everything, and I'm also struggling with getting HDR PQ footage from my Canon R50 to export correctly. It's overexposed, oversaturated, and the colors look different than it does in the preview. If anyone else can help or provide corrections to my comment, please do.

This is an old thread ... would be better to start a new one with information on your OS, computer, and which number.number version of Premiere you are using.

And if you are using an export preset with the HDR format in the preset name, or modifying an SDR preset for HDR use. As modifying SDR presets (that do not have either HLG or PQ in the preset name) is not in my view a wise practice.

As if you miss one of fifty picky little details, it won't properly work for HDR use on most devices.

Which format/codec are you exporting to?

HDR is very 'new'. I am a contributing author at MixingLight, a pro colorist's teaching website. Founder Robbie Carman was the first small shop fully DolbyVision certified on the East Coast ... so I've been around HDR discussions with colorists daily for a couple years.

Most colorists still have not delivered any HDR media yet. They're working it, learning to do it. But the gear is prohibitively expensive for full pro b-cast standards. No acceptable Grade 1 Reference monitors are below about $20,000, so for many of the colorists who have done HDR, they've rented a monitor for the week or two of the project. This is of course folks used to spending $4500-10,000 for an SDR monitor.

Premiere is adding in some HDR capabilities, but ... it's still pretty new. And though the sequences can be set for the wider dynamic range/color space, as can the scopes, the only way to SEE HDR media in Premiere is via the BlackMagic or AJA devices listed in their information on HDR in Premiere ... feeding a fully HDR capable monitor.

Yea, it seems that HDR needs software encoding at this point at least for most format/codec combinations.

Neil

So...I'm guessing Adobe doesn't support Hardware encoding with HDR files? It's my first time deleivey one ever.