HDR on Youtube - next big thing? Requirements?

[kidzrevil]

@markr041 didn’t know that ! Ill try uploading to youtube

[markr041]

40 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

@markr041 didn’t know that ! Ill try uploading to youtube

Thanks. Be sure it has the correct metadata. With those, YouTube plays the HDR version automatically if it's an HDR-capable set, and plays its own SDR conversion (quiet good) if its not.

Without the metadata, however, only those viewing devices that can be manually set to HDR will be able to watch in HDR. As far as I know, the HDR-capable phones cannot do that and YouTube will not recognize the video as HDR - those devices rely on YouTube to recognize HDR videos.

[Damphousse]

2 hours ago, markr041 said:

This whole forum is about creating video, not watching Hulu, or Neflix or Vudu (or Voodo). Go to some TV forum, wherever that is, to make your case to stick with your outmoded TV. That forum is for watchers and couch potatoes, not creators. There is plenty of whining there about standards and which service providers supply which flavor of HDR. You can also argue about which HDR mode is better!

At no point in this thread did I tell you what to do with your money.  Why on earth are you being so abusive?  This is a hobby for me.  Seriously.  WTF?!  Declining, at this time, to purchase a $1,200 TV for a HOBBY is not considered aberrant behavior or in any way worthy of such a tirade.  You need to step back and get some perspective.

2 hours ago, markr041 said:

So, you are missing out creatively; and the fact you do not have an HDR viewing device means that you are unable to even make an informed decision as to whether shooting in let alone viewing HDR is worth it. So, your SDR TV means you are missing a lot, unless your only purpose is to watch commercial TV. Too bad. 

1)  I shoot BMPCC raw so I don't know what your think I am missing out on "creatively".  I am not going to buy an Alexa.

2)  I do not live in a "shithole country".  Where I live the capitalists are pushing 4k and HDR TVs everywhere.  I do not need to purchase every TV first before I can make an informed decision.  I can just go buy some milk and walk past a wall of your precious HDR TVs.

Me waiting to buy an HDR TV is not a threat to you.

[jonpais]

Facts

1) Our cameras have been shooting HDR for years

2) We compress our files to rec.709 because that has been the HDTV standard since 1990

3) Rec.709 has nothing to do with the ‘film look’

4) Under the best of circumstances, rec.709 is capable of only 6-1/2 stops of dynamic range

5) HDR allows us to see a much wider dynamic range and more color, closer to what the human eye can see

6) OLED televisions offer the best image quality today, superior even to what industry standard reference monitors costing $50,000 were capable of just a few years ago

7) The highest-rated HDR TVs are now selling for little more than the cost of a midrange digital camera 

8) YouTube and Vimeo, recognizing the demand for HDR content, have both rolled out the format on their video sharing platforms

9) Nearly all NLEs now support HDR, including DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro

10) Compared to SDR, the extra storage space and computer processing power required for HDR capture and finishing is negligible

11) A client who sees the HDR grade will not be satisfied with the SDR (Arri)

12) To future-proof your videos today, it is best to shoot in either RAW or Log formats

13) Filmmakers are not the only ones pushing for HDR: gamers are also demanding  more HDR content and displays. It also has uses in the medical field

14) Atomos monitor/reccorders may be used for gauging exposure on set and as grading monitors in the grading suite (this is the sticky part)

15) HDR videos uploaded to YouTube are sharper-looking, have far fewer artifacts and macroblocking and far richer contrast than SDR videos

16) There will be growing pains. When I purchased my 2016 Macbook Pro, few peripherals had USB-C connectors. Now, they are becoming commonplace.

There really is no answer to those who say they prefer watching movies on their 2011 13” Macbook Air at 540p with the audio turned off. If that’s how you view films, fine. As far as early adoption goes, I could also wait for the remaining 53% of the world’s population to get internet access before uploading videos to YouTube. There are also a few who say it’s not ‘true’ HDR yet. The same could be said of the ‘fake’ 4K video shot with my GH5 or any other consumer camera. If I kept waiting for the perfect camera to come out, I’d never shoot a single clip.

[jonpais]

The harpsichord, which appeared in the 14th century, gradually gave way to the piano in the eighteenth century. The piano was revolutionary because of its greater dynamic range, which in turn allowed greater expressiveness and creative possibilities. Technology moves at a much greater pace nowadays. The goal of manufacturers now is not only to emulate film, but to surpass it. Shooting at ISO 50,000 when I was studying photography in the ‘80s was unthinkable. Now it’s a reality. Taking a sharp image handheld with a 300mm telephoto at one second was likewise impossible. We watched interlaced video at 35% of the resolution of HD 720p. 

Fun fact: 1 minute of 35mm film weighs one pound. A 256GB MicroSD card weighing .4 grams can contain 12 hours of 4K video.

[jonpais]

13 hours ago, markr041 said:

Yes, uploaded a bunch of HDR videos to YouTube, both HLG and HDR10. My Samsung S8 phone automatically switches to HDR mode when I play them full screen. Resolve Studio automatically inserts the metadata that YouTube uses to detect HDR videos. I use the "HDR" scopes in Resolve to grade.

Latest HDR HLG test video - snow, which is the brightest white on a sunny day, seems a good use of extended highlights of HDR HLG. Remnants of a previous-night snowstorm, cleaning up, and snow fun - snowmen, forts and sledding.

Just used one lens a 35mm f1.8, so I could get some very shallow DOF shots wide open using a variable ND.

I just finished watching the SDR version on my 5K iMac. Compared to the HDR version on my OLED, the difference is like night and day. 

[Axel]

10 hours ago, Damphousse said:

Inaccurate things have been posted in this thread...

Guilty. So I didn't check if Samsung HDRs support Dolby Vision. I didn't care too much though. Samsung and others try to avoid to pay Dolby for the certificate and developed their own, open-source standard, named "HDR 10+". The background to this is - in layman's terms - that both Dolby and HDR 10+ can dynamically change the contrast and brightness for each scene, even each frame. 

There may come the point when the streaming providers switch from Dolby to HDR 10+, and UHD HDR BD players too. But - look it up! - the hardware would *still* play back the HDR base layer, just without the scene-by-scene metadata, - and the big difference is HDR. You may call that a format war, but it's in no way comparable to, say, HD DVD and Blu-ray.

10 hours ago, Damphousse said:

The whole point of highlighting the HLG comment is there is no HLG content now and no concrete plans for it in the immediate future here in the US.

The german television isn't better in this respect. It sends 1080 50i, SDR, highly compressed, around 50% of all content (the smaller and regional broadcasters) is SD, and this really is the worst case scenario for a 4k TV panel. But the big TV companies let you view all content with library apps, in much better quality. A few TV series are already produced in HLG UHD. 

Because of this situation, I feel (beware: unsubstantiated opinion) that support of HLG is currently more important than Dolby. The oldest HDR panels (the most affordable ones) might not support it. 

"Live TV" is slowly but surely becoming extinct. To air UHD alone needed a completely new and VERY costly infrastructure. But to store high quality content on a streaming server does not. If the purpose of a TV was to adequately showcase what the broadcasters output live ...

10 hours ago, Damphousse said:

That is your opinion.  It certainly isn't a fact.

I sent you a heart, because I agree. Opinion should be respected, acknowledged, weighed. It's fundamentally different from knowledge. We all should confront and challenge "alternative facts" wherever they are published.

I stand corrected, so let me try again. I recall my first DVD. It was John Woos Face/Off. Subjectively, there was a huge improvement in image quality, compared to VHS. I am telling about a personal experience. I also felt that HDR made such a huge difference. That's all.

[Matthew Hartman]

If you have the cash these monitors are calibrated and really, really nice. I have the 2K version.  

https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/video-post-production/pv3200pt/specifications.html

https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/photographer.html

[markr041]

4 hours ago, jonpais said:

I just finished watching the SDR version on my 5K iMac. Compared to the HDR version on my OLED, the difference is like night and day. 

Yes! Even on my Samsung S8, where I can switch between HDR and SDR while watching a video, one sees an enormous difference. Anyone who compares would have the same reaction; it's not like 4K vs HD, which relatively speaking is marginal to many.

[jonpais]

13 minutes ago, markr041 said:

Yes! Even on my Samsung S8, where I can switch between HDR and SDR while watching a video, one sees an enormous difference. Anyone who compares would have the same reaction; it's not like 4K vs HD, which relatively speaking is marginal to many.

Don't underestimate the ability of forum members to find fault where there is none and to overlook faults if it suits them.

[markr041]

7 hours ago, Damphousse said:

At no point in this thread did I tell you what to do with your money.  Why on earth are you being so abusive?  This is a hobby for me.  Seriously.  WTF?!  Declining, at this time, to purchase a $1,200 TV for a HOBBY is not considered aberrant behavior or in any way worthy of such a tirade.  You need to step back and get some perspective.

1)  I shoot BMPCC raw so I don't know what your think I am missing out on "creatively".  I am not going to buy an Alexa.

2)  I do not live in a "shithole country".  Where I live the capitalists are pushing 4k and HDR TVs everywhere.  I do not need to purchase every TV first before I can make an informed decision.  I can just go buy some milk and walk past a wall of your precious HDR TVs.

Me waiting to buy an HDR TV is not a threat to you.

You obviously have never compared HDR and SDR versions of the same video, so remain in ignorant, self-satisfied bliss. Or, if you have, you are in denial so you can justify not making the investments in knowledge and equipment. You can purchase $299 40" excellent HDR tv's (not the best, but still displaying the spectacular difference).

I am sorry you cannot understand that we are trying to help you; it seems that you feel threatened by being told you are basically left behind in the limited constraints of specs set years ago based on the very limited viewing devices of yesterday. It is uncomfortable.

[jonpais]

@Damphousse Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, the first to fix a photographic image and generally regarded as the inventor of photography, was a member of the bourgeoisie; so filmmaking is a capitalist activity and anyone caught watching a movie on an HDR television should be sent to a reeducation camp.

[Axel]

For those who are not willing to buy a new TV or who can't afford it, just one note: 

No one forces anyone to follow any new hype. I certainly don't. Having watched and compared hundreds of Youtube clips, I find few clips on the HDR channel attractive. Most of them are as cheesy and unnecessary as they appeared before, on my old TV. Oversaturated, shrill. My favorite clips are still SDR, and they hold up. SDR Films on Netflix or iTunes look gorgeous. Conventional grading in rec_709 is not just "okay".  There is no easy way right now to monitor HDR grading, and there appear to be more obstacles, more requirements (see thread-title) than I thought before. For now, I stick to SDR for my own stuff. And I watched my own stuff. All I can say is, grade for contrast, and don't be too conservative, too "legal", with saturation. Because this ...

... is not nice. It may look quite decent on an SDR TV. If you see what I mean and if you can imagine how this will look on a display that has better contrast and much better color differentiation, then just avoid this.

 

[markr041]

3 hours ago, Axel said:

For those who are not willing to buy a new TV or who can't afford it, just one note: 

No one forces anyone to follow any new hype. I certainly don't. Having watched and compared hundreds of Youtube clips, I find few clips on the HDR channel attractive. Most of them are as cheesy and unnecessary as they appeared before, on my old TV. Oversaturated, shrill. My favorite clips are still SDR, and they hold up. SDR Films on Netflix or iTunes look gorgeous. Conventional grading in rec_709 is not just "okay".  There is no easy way right now to monitor HDR grading, and there appear to be more obstacles, more requirements (see thread-title) than I thought before. For now, I stick to SDR for my own stuff. And I watched my own stuff. All I can say is, grade for contrast, and don't be too conservative, too "legal", with saturation. 

 

It's your choice. But your logic is questionable - just because there are lousy ("oversaturated, shrill") videos in HDR and really good videos in REC709 that you like does not negate the advantage HDR has over REC709. That is not deniable - SDR has worse color (in multiple dimensions) and lower dynamic range and is not better in any other dimension. And, by the way, there are way, way, way more really lousy REC709 videos than there are bad HDR videos. That is not the reason to create HDR either.

I have seen some absolutely great B&W videos (movies) and some really bad color ones. I am sticking with black and white...

The obstacles to creating HDR video have been reduced a lot. The free Resolve handles HDR easily. You can use a small HDR TV to monitor easily, at least with PC's. The availability of HLG in lots of cameras makes shooting and creating HDR videos quite easy, since one is shooting in the REC2020 color space and therefore no LUT is required. It is true if you do not have RAW (with enhanced color space), or log profiles or HLG, then you need to get new equipment. But most people here do not need to make any new monetary investment. Just need to learn new things.

It is funny how people try to rationalize not investing in new , better technologies.

[Matthew Hartman]

8 hours ago, jonpais said:

Don't underestimate the ability of forum members to find fault where there is none and to overlook faults if it suits them.

Human nature wouldn't you say?

I think some of you need to remember change does not come easy for everyone. In fact, we are part of an industry that is considerably hostile to and is currently going through a lot of growing pains, especially at the upper echelons of the business chain. It's uphill all the way, but berating people into change is never a good idea. It just gives them more reason to remain hostile and indoctrinated. 

At the end of the day, no one interested in image performance is going to reject more dynamic range. But everyone comes into that differently. 

[hmcindie]

1 hour ago, markr041 said:

It's your choice. But your logic is questionable - just because there are lousy ("oversaturated, shrill") videos in HDR and really good videos in REC709 that you like does not negate the advantage HDR has over REC709...

It is funny how people try to rationalize not investing in new , better technologies...

I've had a Pioneer Kuro plasma for about 7 years. Rec709 through that thing looks brilliant, especially films. At has dynamic range to spare (not as bright as LCD's but who cares about brightness? Blacks is where it's at)

What would an HDR television bring that does anything better? I have a phone that does HDR, whoopty doo. I'm not changing my Kuro until OLED reaches a good point.

[Matthew Hartman]

5 minutes ago, hmcindie said:

I've had a Pioneer Kuro plasma for about 7 years. Rec709 through that thing looks brilliant, especially films. At has dynamic range to spare (not as bright as LCD's but who cares about brightness? Blacks is where it's at)

What would an HDR television bring that does anything better? I have a phone that does HDR, whoopty doo. I'm not changing my Kuro until OLED reaches a good point.

In a world where image quality is an endless pursuit to match the human eye, I would say it's another stepping stone on that path. 

[markr041]

1 hour ago, hmcindie said:

I've had a Pioneer Kuro plasma for about 7 years. Rec709 through that thing looks brilliant, especially films. At has dynamic range to spare (not as bright as LCD's but who cares about brightness? Blacks is where it's at)

What would an HDR television bring that does anything better? I have a phone that does HDR, whoopty doo. I'm not changing my Kuro until OLED reaches a good point.

I have a plasma TV of about that vintage (also Pioneer) and I agree there is something special about the picture, so I know exactly how you feel. I have not gotten rid of it, given that most everything we see is good *old* REC709 and FullHD.

But, are you seriously asking  "What would an HDR television bring that does anything better?" You really do not know?

My $299 Samsung 40" TV (used as a monitor) is capable of showing 10 stops of dynamic range to your 6 (that's REC709) and shows more colors and color gradations than your plasma TV, when HDR videos are displayed (it is also highly accurate in color representation, surprisingly). 

Your plasma TV has a great picture, but its DR and color gamut are truncated by a lot compared to the current HDR offerings. You may have DR "to spare", but you will never see that extra range. Ever. You simply cannot play HDR videos. So, there is plenty that an HDR television brings you that is better, quite visibly better.

It's fine to say you don't care about better DR or color representation or that you do not expect that there will be enough content for you that can take advantage of HDR to sacrifice the better REC709 representation of the plasma. But to try to imply that HDR TV's have nothing to offer over what you have is ludicrous. I know people who love tube amplifiers; no matter what evidence is brought to them about how distorted they sound, they just don't care. They like what they hear, no matter how inaccurate. There is no arguing with that. But they do not deny the facts.

And I guess you too will not be creating HDR videos, despite their enlarging the creative space substantially.

[Axel]

11 hours ago, markr041 said:

It's your choice. But your logic is questionable - (...)

I have seen some absolutely great B&W videos (movies) and some really bad color ones. I am sticking with black and white...

Remember, I was the one who started this thread over a year ago, when no one here even mentioned HDR. You can hardly accuse me of underestimating the relevance. It's you who, as I see it, gets carried away now and makes questionable comparisons. But why not discuss this in earnest?

HDR is about image quality (whereas UHD is not), and there is no arguing that it can provide much better IQ than SDR. Even, as jonpais said, with less compression artifacts on Youtube. Can we agree upon that?

7 hours ago, markr041 said:

And I guess you too will not be creating HDR videos, despite their enlarging the creative space substantially.

Color, compared to B&W, enlarged the creative space substantially. But how can HDR? Serious question. 

With 3D (some 8, 9 years ago), some said it was more immersive and that it, too, expanded the artistic palette. It was also compared with color as opposed to B&W. Back then, one critic made a good remark. All well-composed images know and always knew about the third dimension. The famous Lumière clip from *1895* showed a train entering a station. The audience was terrified. They reacted as if this train could roll over them:

3D never added one word to the language of film. Immersion? Yes. But not because the images looked more real or more natural, but because they looked more fake. It was the gimmick that sold it. As we all witness now, the hype is essentially over. For now.

Again: can higher dynamic range actually change the expression or the content? 

On 21.2.2018 at 6:05 AM, jonpais said:

The harpsichord, which appeared in the 14th century, gradually gave way to the piano in the eighteenth century. The piano was revolutionary because of its greater dynamic range, which in turn allowed greater expressiveness and creative possibilities.

Something rings true here. Bachs very famous Goldberg Variations had been composed for harpsichord, but became most famous on piano (Glenn Gould). Hear the comparison on Youtube. Greater dynamic range? No problem, transports/transcends just fine. But the other way around? Would Beethoven have even thought of this, if there had been only harpsichords?

I test-watched one of my all time favorites on the new TV: 2001. Very disappointing. No question, it does look better, insofar as the space is black and the lights do appear brighter (in contrast, that is, they peak at 100 nits nonetheless). Kubrick clearly had shot this film "with HDR in mind" (google images, you'll see it in every instance). They should remaster it.

Quote

The obstacles to creating HDR video have been reduced a lot. The free Resolve handles HDR easily. You can use a small HDR TV to monitor easily, at least with PC's.

Which connection? What BM card?

 

[jonpais]

The second half of Alexis van Hurkman’s article explores the creative possibilities of HDR.

http://vanhurkman.com/wordpress/?p=3548