Dolby PQ Demystified was a sell out as industry expert, Dolby-Europe Director and Broadcast Systems Architect Prinyar Boon astounded delegates with his knowledge of HDR at Wednesdays Thames Valley meeting.
Firmly putting historic technical myths and legends to rest, HDR throws away the rule book and Prin methodically dissected the assumptions engineers have been making for fifty years.
Modern video monitors with 19 stops of range now out class SDR systems showing artefacts and requiring SDR to be re-defined. HDR, wide gamut, colour space, display mapping and bit depths have all been revisited with Dolby being one of the industry leaders in the HDR revolution.
Not all the dynamic range has to be used all the time with the look and feel of an image being firmly in the control of the creatives, for both Live as well as Post Produced content, in a way that is compatible with existing working practices
Images with more detail and amazing highlights add vivid wider colours giving producers artistic freedoms and greater control they could only have ever dreamed of. No longer constrained by the 100cd/m2 (nits) reference monitor of the past, peak whites can drive compatible televisions to over 4000nits, giving incredible clarity to the image. The concept of a 100% white reference limit has been abandoned and similar scenes can be represented in many ways depending on the artistic needs of the director.
With Prin describing in detail the new artistic freedoms available, it soon became clear that this HDR technology demands responsible use in the same way that audio does today. The system can be abused as transients of high-contrast are open to unscrupulous use without constraint.
Prin finished perfectly on time and the floor was opened to questions, with some delegates pointing out that we need to resolve the issue of UHD lenses before we are too concerned with the HDR revolution. The debate goes on.
Tony Orme
