Hello and welcome to our first ever high dynamic range technical review.
I am Mr. HDR and in this video we're going to take a look at the Star Trek Beyond 4K
Blu-Ray.
More specifically, we'll try to figure out if it's really too dim or dark, like the critic
and user reviews have mentioned.
But before we start, I'll take a few seconds to explain a couple of things.
Older HD TVs with Standard Dynamic Range have a typical brightness of about 100 nits, also
known as candela per square meter.
What this means is that if you take a square meter and you place 100 burning candles in
it, you get the approximate brightness of a standard TV.
But newer 4K HDR TVs can support much higher brightness in both HDR and SDR modes.
So for instance a TV that can do 1000 nits would have a brightness of up to 1000 candles
in the same square meter space.
The second thing I need to explain is this waveform graph that we will be using.
It plots the brightness of each pixel in an image, from left to right.
Also note that the Y axis (which is the vertical axis on the left side) shows the brightness
in nits.
For example in this image if we take each vertical column of pixels from left to right
and plot a brightness graph we'll get something like the diagram below.
Notice there are distinct bumps on the left side of the graph and in the middle, which
correspond to the brighter parts of the image.
Those of you who are mathematically inclined will also notice that the scale is logarithmic,
not linear.
This means brightness values that are close to the top of the chart are actually not as
bright as you would think.
Alright, so let's start with the same fly-by of the Enterprise.
If you play this a few times you'll see that the maximum brightness we get in this scene
is only about 600 nits, even if the scene is supposed to feature a very bright light.
Still, 600 nits is pretty bright.
However, in this second fly-by the brightness actually goes up to 850 nits, while the darker
parts of the image remain well below 10 nits.
Next, let's take a look at a few scenes that take place on the Enterprise.
You'll notice that there are more bright highlights because of the lights on the bridge and in
the storage room, but the brightness again does not go above 600 nits.
In these scenes with Kirk and McCoy we can see why people think this movie is dark.
Here the brightness stays well below a hundred nits.
But if you look at the way they light the set you'll see this is actually the intent
of the director and not a problem with the color grading.
But there are also brighter scenes.
When the Enterprise enters the Yorktown the overall brightness of the image is much higher,
although the highlights are capped at about 500 nits.
My guess is that they are trying to stay within the maximum frame average light level, which
limits the average brightness of the entire frame.
If you want to learn more about this limitation go check out the links in the description
of this video.
Now let's take a look again at a few darker scenes.
When Spock gets the bad news you can again see that some of the shots sit at around 10
nits, with only the highlights approaching or going a bit over a hundred nits.
Again, this is probably the intent of the cinematographer or director, due to the lightning
they employed in the scene.
However, this is maybe a good time to also mention another factor.
As you can see in one of the articles I linked to in the description, the industry masters
these 4K disks to be viewed in very dark environments.
The desired luminance level in the room while you are watching these 4K movies is only 5
nits, which is very dark.
People think HDR movies are supposed to be bright, but that's a common misconception.
While it's true that the highlights of HDR videos can go much higher that in SDR video,
the typical brightness should actually be the same.
Most of the content should be below a hundred nits in both SDR and HDR video, with the HDR
video going above a hundred only for highlights such as bright lights, explosions like the
ones you're seeing here, and the glare of the sun.
That being said, we have seen that the artistic choice of the team working on this movie was
to shoot scenes where the average brightness is lower than what we are used to, at least
when compared with the other two Nu-Trek movies.
We checked the light levels on the other two 4K disks and the majority of the scenes are
indeed mastered below a hundred nits.
However, the average light level in darker scenes is a bit higher in the other two movies
than what we are seeing in this third movie.
I hope you've enjoyed our first HDR analysis.
Please let us know in the comments if you'd like us to work on more such reviews.
Also please check out the articles we linked to in the description, as they help answer
a lot of questions about HDR in general.