HDR - The dream of video and image capturing
The dream of video and image capturing is becoming reality, and that's the pursuit of High Dynamic Range (HDR) what is getting closer to what Human Visual System (HVS) can see. HDR attempts to show much more of the world we see, starting with the larger camera dynamic range available today at source and through the production chain and ultimately for presentation on optimized displays for HDR.

As shown, HDR involves the need to take disparate color spaces and logarithmic representations from various camera manufacturers and move it through the process to final delivery for emerging HDR standards for display. Broadcasters and producers want to take the wide dynamic range available from cameras and preserve as much of it as possible, to offer end viewers increased contrast and luminance ranges, a broader and richer color palette and an immersive viewing experience.
But, what happen with the material that wasn't taken with the color spaces and luminance range of HDR cameras ?. For this cases, AJA has developed the FS-HDR, which is designed to bridge the conversions needed from wide camera color spaces and luminance ranges to HDR standards, and from SDR to HDR to integrate non HDR materials into HDR programming, all in realtime.
Inside the FS-HDR is the Colorfront Engine™, designed by Colorfront’s Academy Award winning CTO Bill Feightner and Academy Award winning lead engineer Tamas Perlaki, that provides realtime wide color gamut, high dynamic range, high frame rate, and high resolution processing.
The AJA FS-HDR support:
HDR Conversions:
HDR to HDR
HDR to SDR
SDR to HDR
Supported formats:
4K/UltraHD YCbCr 4:2:2 10 bit
2K/HD YCbCr 4:2:2 10 bit
Input: Dynamic Range/Color Gamut
SDR BT.709 100 Nits
PQ BT.2020 1000 Nits
PQ P3D65 1000 Nits
Hybrid Log Gamma BT.2100
Sony® S-Gamut3/SLog-3
ARRI® Log C Wide Gamut
Panasonic® V-Log
RED® Log3G10 Wide Gamut
Canon® Log 2
Output: Dynamic Range/Color Gamut
SDR BT.709 100 Nits
PQ BT.2020 1000 Nits
Hybrid Log Gamma BT.2100
Up, Down-Conversions for HDR:
2K/HD Up-conversion to 4K/UltraHD
4K/UltraHD Down-conversion to 2K/HD
WCG = Wide Color Gamut:
BT.2020 to BT.709
BT.709 to BT.2020
RGB Color Corrector controls
Written by Carlos Rojas, Marketing Manager at Cricon International and supported with technical material from www.aja.com