Emerging standards are making the best of existing pixels. Understand the principles of HDR, learn how to build workflows to simplify production, and deliver the highest quality HDR pictures possible.
Computer game apps read compressed artificial world descriptions from a disk file. This artificial world is regenerated by the CPU and loaded into the GPU where it is displayed to the gamer. The gamer’s actions are fed back to the GPU which dynamically modifies the artificial world it displays.
The derivation of the famous CIE horseshoe was explained in the previous part in terms of a re-mapping or distortion of rg color space. The derivation is somewhat abstract because the uses of color science go far beyond the applications in broadcasting. However it is equally possible to describe CIE color space from a more television-centered point of view.
We live an era of immensely powerful post-production tools with advanced color-correction and software plug-ins to serve every conceivable function. We can routinely remove guy wires from scenes, change day to night, and add just the right amount of coral or other color to fit any desired mood or impulse. Accordingly, some engineers and DITs grow livid at the thought of placing any camera filter over the lens, arguing the practice is no longer warranted or advisable. Why, they say, bake in a look during image capture that can’t be changed later? Besides, they argue, sometimes quite vociferously, the additional glass surfaces placed in a light path can only lower resolution and contrast, and increase flare, which surely no responsible DOP would ever want to introduce in an irreversible way.
Last time, we talked about the history that created modern digital cinema technology, and particularly the factors which lead to the modern push for ever larger sensors. It’s been going on in some form for twenty years, to the point that we’re now asking for bigger imagers than cinema has ever commonly used, achieving more resolution than cinema commonly achieved, with greater sensitivity than was ever available to directors of photography in the twentieth century. To get that we’re tolerating all kinds of inconveniences in terms of the lenses we must use and the light levels, or sheer accomplishment in focus pulling, that big chips tend to demand.
It’s not controversial to say that film production in London has been booming for a few years, and there’s no real secret as to why: in 2006, Gordon Brown’s government introduced tax incentives that have played at least a part in provoking a doubling of production spend since 2009, and the post-financial crash and post-Brexit-referendum state of the pound has probably helped too. There are all kinds of arguments to be made about whether tax incentives for film production actually represent public funding of private enterprise, and whether they drive a race to the bottom in which various jurisdictions vie with each other to give away the largest amount of potential public money.
HDR is taking the broadcasting world by storm. The combination of a greater dynamic range and wider color gamut is delivering images that truly bring the immersive experience to home viewers. Vibrant colors and detailed specular highlights build a kind of realism into broadcast productions that our predecessors could only have ever dreamed of.
As the world prepares for 2020, broadcasters, video content creators and providers grapple with new formats and distribution models, and what it takes to test and maintain them.
An engineering assessment of broadcast TV T&M needs and solutions in late 2019 suggests the new decade will bring more needs and solutions. A revelation such as this was once news.