Simplified HDR workflow in DVR

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 major entertainment company, testing HDR for the game industry.

But 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 speed HDR grading process as much as I did...

Feel free to drop me a line if you want more details on my DVR settings. thanks.