HDR Image Import

[Rolf24570376gbpj]

Hello together

In order to import HDR footage from Iphone into premiere, I need to change the color space to 709. So far so good. The scenes are then no longer overexposed, but they look different. Some are brilliant others looks very flat in color and unbrilliant. Why?  Do I have to ajust them in a different way?

Thanks in advance for helpful answers.

[R Neil Haugen]

You're making major changes to the color space.

HDR formats have both a much bigger "volume" and range of color hues than is available in Rec.709/SDR work. Plus they have a much bigger dynamic range ... the difference between black and white. So the colors/hues and tones have to be remapped to fit within the Rec.709/SDR space as best as possible.

As a lot of colors of say the HLG/Rec2100 color space don't exist in SDR/Rec.709's sRGB color space, the changes will attempt to remap to the closest hue value.

And the app will also try to remap the wider dynamic range without loosing white or black data. But that of course reduces the total contrast 'range' from black to white, and often at first looks a lot less contrasty. So you may need to add some Contrast ... or alternatively, drop Shadows and/or lift Highlights controls a bit to get a better visual contrast.

Thankfully, once you've done this using the Color workspace's Lumetri panel, you can save that as a Preset then simply drag/drop from the Effects bin over similar clips in the project panel and 'fix' them all in one quick action.

And depending on what options you have set in Premiere for auto-tonemapping, and what those do with different clips from different sources, you should expect slightly to notable different views between clip types.

You might choose to turn off the HDR/HLG recording on the iPhone at this time though. Staying in SDR/Rec.709 is far simpler. HDR is still very much the Wild Wild West of video production. Most pro colorists have yet to deliver a single paid job of HDR, most screens out there don't handle it well if at all.

And it's got more competing "standards" between HLG, PQ, HDR-10, HDR-10+, DolbyVision and some others it seems ... than we had way back in the Betacam vs VHS "battle" days.

Neil

[Rolf24570376gbpj]

Hi Neil,

thanks a tousend times for your information.

You are right, takes that are made with the same iphone, are disolayed very differently.

I will check the auto-tonemapping for better results.

My expierence so far is that I can't really get back the high contrast and colorful images with lumetri. It's different.

nfortunately, I can not influence the recordings, because they are sent to me by the customer. But I told them to switch off the hdr. Hopefully they will.

Tahnks again and have a good day

Rolf

[R Neil Haugen]

It's really a mess at times to figure out what clients have done with the media prior to giving it to the editors even with 'full' camera clips. So you have all my sympathy!

Neil