With producers paying closer attention to the improved quality of high dynamic range images, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has published a SMPTE study group report on the HDR imaging ecosystem that covers a number of important issues, including workflows and the creation of standards for HDR.
The organization says that about 170 top international experts worked on the report.
The report is being released at a time when there is growing interest in HDR, which greatly improves image quality by offering much more vibrant colors and truer blacks.
Those visual improvements are so striking that a number of experts have argued they will have greater impact on viewers than improvements of resolution from HD to UHD or 4K.
But consumer electronics manufacturers have taken a number of different approaches to HDR and there has been a great deal of interest in the creation of standards for HDR imaging.
"HDR is a rapidly emerging and much-debated technology with the capacity to make a greater impact on viewer experience than can higher-resolution formats," said Alan Lambshead, vice president of standards for SMPTE in a statement. "Recognizing the remarkable potential of HDR and the media industry's growing interest in this technology, SMPTE created an HDR ecosystem study group and — within just 12 months — delivered a valuable consensus report on implementation of HDR and the creation of efficient HDR workflows."
The SMPTE SG report on “the HDR ecosystem provides consensus guidance on HDR terms and definitions and presents detailed and useful information on HDR technologies that, up to this point, has not been readily available to the media industry,” the organization noted.
The report also outlines the various HDR technologies, examines live and non-live HDR workflows, and describes the role of HDR metadata.
Very importantly it also recommends industry harmonization regarding HDR and deals with issues relating to the updating current standards to include HDR.
The report is available for download at https://www.smpte.org/standards/reports.
