HDR vs SDR – Why High Dynamic Range Changes Filmmaking

0:00 Welcome back to the Create Podcast, and this is the difference between HDR and SDR. And it's not just brightness or contrast, it's a lot more. I'm JumpCutKing, and today we're going to break the myth between HDR and SDR and some pre-assumptions that I had that you might share.

1:01 JumpCutKing, or go to jumpcutking.com for all of the socials. Now, back to what HDR and SDR is. So SDR is standard definition, and back when cameras were black and white, color grading was literally just contrast. Here's white, here's black, and we're growing the difference. When you add color, then you had all this ability to have all this extra information. That only were various standards talked about, and eventually standard definition became known as REC 709, a specific standard that's kind of universally accepted. At least in the United States, REC 709, and probably mostly international. And that's the amount of colors you experience.

2:03 when you used to take a photoshoot of a JPEG, and it was a limited amount of colors, and you can take another photoshoot, when cameras evolved, to take a raw photo, and that raw photo allowed you to have more sensor information and more accurate colors. And also open the door to have a different color space.

3:07 But HDR lets you have 1,000, 3,000, and even 10,000 nits if you're using PQ. And that lets an image be theoretically brighter. But technically, what you'd see as white would actually be, standard text white would actually be 1,000 nits. And all this extra range is for speculars or detailed sunrises. And it's all to give you more of dynamic range in your footage.

4:11 It's high dynamic range. It's the ability to take an SDR image and polish a little bit more with more color information. So you have deeper, richer blacks, richer shadows, richer mid-tones, richer brights, and of course, brighter images all in all.

5:13 maybe bring up the blacks, just a little bit, crush them, and just do a little bit. And I wanted the full experience, and I wanted to think, okay, maybe HDR. And then I dove into this human pit vortex of what HDR is.

6:13 that allows skin tone to stay skin tone and to have your individual colored highlights while you're still keeping skin tone. Allow your very bright, bright images to be altered and shifted. But technically, that's not a feature of HDR. That's a feature of either roll footage or log footage being polished into a color profile or color space. You still have all that color information and you're shifting to color space.

7:15 And for HDR, I thought if you use Dolby Vision, or you use HDR10, or you use a specific HDR standard, you can override all that and still deliver a consistent image. But the reality is, you can still change the brightness settings and contrast settings on your TV and it'll still affect your HDR image. Not as much because HDR has much more color space, but it'll still affect and won't deliver the exact same grade that I had designed and created for you. So now I have to master my grades so that they look consistent across multiple devices and that they look good, which is where Rec.709 comes in.

8:18 they actually do color grading for Netflix television series. So they do professional grading for Netflix and other companies that they couldn't tell me about. It's a whole secret secret. They say that they don't even do HDR grading. They do Rec.709 and they pass it to a color correction house, which will then conform the Rec.709 concepts into HDR so that it's a standard.

9:21 which is why some people can't tell the difference between HDR and HDR until you turn off the lights. I'd love, by the way, all of my lights are Godox. They're not a sponsor, but I can control it all from my phone and it's phenomenal experience for me. I strongly encourage you.

10:21 And then you can, I use Rec.709, a little bit more than Rec.709 is my standard, to HDR to SDR color grade. And then all of my information that's on top of that is HDR. And then I use a 75% peak roll, which is not what you think it is. It's not up to 1000 nits. It's to a different component, but it allows things to appear bright. They're supposed to appear bright without it blinding you, like the Batman did when he turned on his, when his motorcycle revved up in front of the screen and took up 30, 45% of the screen and my eyes went like, "I need sunglasses." That's the difference between HDR and SDR.

11:22 And you start by polishing your Rec.709, using a lot to take your logged footage, if you will, converting it so that it can be translated to normal colors. And then you grade it so that it fits in normal scopes. Your blacks are black, your whites are white, and you do the adjustments as you need to. You correct it, and then you can enhance it with midtones and such. You know, use the log wheels and the HDR wheels that they give you, and you can enhance it and fluff it up a little bit with HDR, and it's an enhancement to your story. It's not a requirement.

12:23 I don't think you need a license to the studio to see how that grading works. I know there are some nodes or some color grades that are off limits to you until you buy a studio, but you're going to be able to enhance your images with experimentation.

13:24 But from a commercial standpoint, you're still probably okay working in Rec. 709. And if you want to go HDR, you can. Instagram and YouTube and TikTok all support HDR and a variant thereof. I don't know if TikTok supports PQ or not. As you know, Instagram and YouTube support HLG. So go ahead and edit an HLG. HLG is like Rec. 709 in that it uses the base and you kind of have additional up to a thousand nits. I believe it is something along those lines.

14:25 I believe that HDR is like 4K. I believe everything should modify to use 4K because of the amount of rich details it gives you versus HD and versus, of course, SD. And there are still a lot of people that deliver HD. In fact, most broadcast shows are still HD and they'll deliver to you, you know, Disney Plus, Hulu, Netflix. They all deliver you HD 1080p. And some shows, like they're more premium shows, if you will, the shows that they produced or they hired someone to produce and do the all HDR experience, you might get 4K and you might get HDR and you might get Dolby Vision. Great. And for consistency, that's cool, but it's still largely out of the consumer's grasp, if you will.

15:26 There are some concepts and some best ways to do it. Some people use a 3% gray to know where your gray should be and where your midtone should be, and they use a 75% rule like I do. And, you know, depending on your peak brightness levels and those kinds of things. And it's a little bit more work than grading in 709, but you're still okay if you're grading in 709.

16:29 And great, small enhancement. Doesn't require me to do much grading, but that's the difference between SDR and HDR. It's more than brightness. It's more color depth because you can have deeper, rich or black. It's kind of more contrast, but you also kind of quadruple the line of colors, but they all fit in the REC 09 space as you saw in that chart earlier. So that's the difference between standard definition and HDR.

17:30 in DaVinci is top notch, a limit. I was used to Avid. I was used to using Adobe Premiere. Not as rich in color correction space as you can get in DaVinci Resolve, at least not in the way it is. And I do use one of these wonderful, I don't know what these are called, but TourBoxes. Yeah, it's a lot cheaper than a $1,000 color correction wheel. Although I really want one of them.

18:30 I see all those crystal clear colors and I hear they'll be Atmos and I get pulled into the story. And to me, it's not a distraction. It's an enhancement to the story. So HDR is great. It's an enhancement. I strongly encourage everyone to support it and everyone to get used to using it because it's everywhere already. But do you need it? That is a good question.