HDR & WCG For Broadcast: Part 1 - The Fundamentals Of Brightness & Color

Welcome to Part 1 of ‘HDR & WCG For Broadcast’ - a major 10 article exploration of the science and practical applications of all aspects of High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut for broadcast production. Part 1 is a trio of articles which lay out the fundamental principles of brightness & color and the implications of increasing dynamic range and color gamut in broadcast production workflows.

About HDR & WCG For Broadcast

The original 2019 Broadcast Bridge ‘HDR’ series has been one of our most enduringly popular editorial collections - it's been read by over 50,000 people. This new series takes this essential topic area and revitalizes it with a complete re-write by the original series author Phil Rhodes.

In the last five years HDR has become a consumer expectation and the range of devices consumers use to access content has proliferated enormously. Most broadcasters and streamers around the world now deliver both SDR and HDR versions of much of their content giving the consumer the ultimate choice of received format. This brings with it a significant set of challenges for broadcasters, especially with live production. How to capture, produce and deliver SDR and HDR simultaneously.

This new series re-visits all the key principles of colorimetry, and the various technical formats and standards involved in acquisition, production and delivery. It then examines the various methodologies and workflows employed by the broadcast community to achieve seamless simultaneous production & delivery.

HDR & WCG For Broadcast will publish in three parts. Details of all three parts can be found HERE.


About Part 1 – The Fundamentals of Brightness & Color

Part 1 is a free PDF download which contains three original articles:

Article 1 : HDR Picture Fundamentals: Brightness
How humans perceive light and how this relates to the technology we use to capture and display images.

Article 2 : HDR Picture Fundamentals: Color
How humans perceive color and the various compromises involved in representing color, using the historical iterations of display technology.

Article 3 : Expanding Acquisition Capabilities With HDR & WCG
HDR & WCG do present new requirements for vision engineers, but the fundamental principles described here remain familiar and easily manageable.

Part of a series supported by

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