HDR is high dynamic range and the high dynamic range in the context of video is
quite different to the HDR that you may see on your phone. Pull the phone out, go
to take a photo it seems to default to HDR, you can turn it on turn it off.
HDR on a photographic sense is essentially bracketing photos for the
dark, for light ends and then blending the two together to optimise dark and
light portions of an image. HDR and video on the other hand is talking about
the dynamic range, which could also be described I guess as contrast ratio from
the darkest portion to the loudest portion in any given scene. There was
some work done by an amazing man actually Netherlands based by the name
of Barton, that resulted in the Barton model. The range that the human eye could
actually see was far in excess of what were being delivered in video systems
and the contrast ratio that the human eye can perceive in any given
scene, is about ten thousand to one. Which from a photographic sense works out to
around about fourteen stops. The dynamic range that our eyes can see in absolute
terms without just one scene to the next, is actually more like a billion to one -
it's huge, about 30 stops. Standard dynamic range was never actually a term
of course, standard dynamic range is something a little bit like a sequel to
a movie, we never never put a one behind the title of a movie we need to call it
that after two comes out. So standard dynamic range STR - we really coined that
phrase once HDR came out because it just gave us that relative reference back to
what was. And it's only talking about somewhere in the order of five or six
stops, rather than fourteen so it's very limited, very restricted. HDR is about
giving us what the human is capable of seeing in a scene
reference point and it must be from capture, the content itself - it needs to
go right through the workflow in HDR and be displayed on an ACR capable device.
So be it a projector or LED TV whatever the case may be.
The player in fact the source, whatever the content is, be it streaming content
UHD blu-ray there's there's a bunch of different sources that will actually need to
be HDR compatible. In fact the right flavor of HDR 2, there's a quite a few
different versions out there that are competing with or in fact doing
different things. So the end goal is actually very much the same. The starting
point for HDR and the model that some develops to deliver what the human
vision is capable of. They're all about doing the same thing with HDR, HDR 10 +,
HLG, Dolby vision there's a bunch of different ones. They actually can coexist
but the market will determine what happens. But we do need compatibility of
content and all devices in the chain to support HDR. HDR is about delivering us
what if technology allowed, we would and should have had all along and
it's about trying to reproduce whatever it is that we're pointing a camera at
and representing that in a display accurately.