Venice in Cape Town. HDR Video excerpt.

Just over a week ago I was in Cape Town with a few hours to spare before my flight home and access to a Sony Venice. So what could I do other than go out and shoot. Here is some of the footage with a quick grade applied – in HDR.

The workflow:  I shoot X-OCN ST at 25p and 50p on the Venice camera. 25p was requested by Visual Impact South Africa, the owners of this camera as this is the most common frame rate used in productions they are involved with. The material was backed up to a small portable USB3 raid unit so I could bring it home. Then it was graded using DaVinci Resolve and it’s ACES colour managed workflow with the output set to Rec2100 ST2084. I used a Shogun Inferno and both an LCD HDR Sony Bravia TV and an OLED HDR Philips TV to get a feel for how the images would look on both LCD and OLED technologies.

The file was exported as a UHD ProRes file so that the file direct from Resolve could be uploaded to YouTube. Because I used a colour managed workflow Resolve adds the correct HDR flags to the clip when you render the timeline out. As a result YouTube knows the file is HDR and if you view with a computer or SDR TV YouTube applies it’s default HDR10 to Rec709 LUT and you see the video in SDR. Watch with a direct connection to YouTube with an HDR TV (for example using a browser or YouTube player built in to the TV) and you will get the HDR version. This is probably the simplest way to reliably get HDR clips to play properly on YouTube (which currently does not accept HEVC files).

So here’s the clip.

IMPORTANT: The clip is HDR10, designed to be watched directly on an HDR TV using the TV’s built in web browser or YouTube player application.

Those  watching on a normal computer, SDR TV or any other non HDR device  will see the HDR clip with YouTube’s SDR/Rec709 LUT applied, so it isn’t exactly optimum for SDR. The YouTube HDR to SDR LUT causes some slightly odd colours in some of the clips. If you can, watch the clip directly on YouTube with an HDR TV.

460x150_xdcam_150dpi Venice  in Cape Town. HDR Video excerpt.

3 thoughts on “Venice in Cape Town. HDR Video excerpt.”

  1. Very impressive camera and lens.

    Plus: Alister, beautiful cinematography! While waiting for a flight? Rub it in, will ya’?

  2. Very nice! (Seen in HDR10), Colors, exposures, frame rates, grade. Well done! First Venice video I’ve seen in HDR.

  3. Alister, Super footage, as always. especially when viewed in HDR. When you spoke in London earlier this year you felt that software hadn’t caught up with HDR output yet. Is Resolve/Youtube still the easiest way to distribute HDR video (even if to a private channel) or have you now found a way to download HDR10/HLG files with metadata to a memory stick for example ?

Leave a Reply to STEWART NEWELL Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.