**Update: Please note that further software advancements have been made since this blog was published. For more information, see BlackMagicDesign on HDR grading. Thank you. Originally published in 2018
It's amazing how my job always brings me something new and fascinating to learn... The most exciting project I worked on recently that illustrates this is actually a project for a large entertainment company, testing HDR film geared towards for the game industry.
In a nutshell, it has brought me face-to-face with HDR footage at its best and I can officially say... I am totally fascinated.
Nothing has been more rewarding and beautiful to work with... it's like painting with light and shadows, a real treat!
The catch at this stage is to find a workflow that works for you... so I thought I could share the one I worked out in order to work from my home setup...
1. I emulated a beautiful HDR grading environment with my Dreamcolour monitor (set to Rec 2020), thanks to Mystery Box* ( I do recommend starting with the OLED Sony BVM -X300 if you can to set the benchmarks and work down from there). 2. I imported the Raw HDR footage into DaVinci Resolve, set my colour space to Rec 2020, and scoped to HDR St 2084 (although I worked in HLG to avoid any Dolby Vision Royalty issues down the line)
3. Set up to 1000nits* 4. I worked with R3d files so I also set my raw tab to clip and used a custom HDR preset, you can also use existing HDR LUTs (if really pushed for time) or create a bezier curve to emulate the HDR gamma curve. *with MaxFall in mind I kept my highlights and shadows in check.
And that was it... I hope this helps and that you enjoy your HDR grading process as much as I did...
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any feedback or want to chat over DVR settings. thanks.
