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Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

A bit of a let down that the video demoing SDR->HDR conversion is itself only published in SDR. Makes as much sense as demoing a colorization tool in a grayscale video!

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At this point, with any new model I think it makes sense to wait until you can run the model on your own input before making any assumptions based on cherry picked examples.

If they were serious about showing this tech off they should've provided a video file download. Also indicate that it's a HDR file and should only be viewed on a HDR display. Youtube is just making this look bad as people won't see a difference.

YouTube supports HDR video, no need for a separate download.

YouTube tends to post a downscaled SD version first, then they encode and post the higher-res versions when they get around to it. This can take days in some cases. Meanwhile the creator catches the flak...

Creators don't publish videos until the high-res versions are done processing.

You don't need high res for HDR on YouTube (144p HDR is a thing there oddly enough) and the 4k version had already processed when I posted that comment (with no change since in HDR availability). Usually media announcements/large channels pre-upload the video so it's ready when they want it to actually publish to avoid that kind of issue though.

They probably use 144p for automated systems like ML recommendations, moderation and content ID.

4K processing takes just minutes, but HDR processing can take over a month to… never. There is no indication of this at all, no progress bar or eta. Just check manually every few days!

This is why everyone is giving up on HDR, it’s just too painful because the content distributors are all so bad at it, with Netflix being the sole exception.

Sounds more like you should be giving up on YouTube.

HDR video playback in the browser is pretty unreliable unless you're on a Mac.

It's also pretty unreliable on Mac too...

It's more reliable then on linux though, and windows has been doing "auto HDR" for videos for years, so kinda hard to tell when something is HDR or not there.

HDR through YouTube appears to work fine even on my non HDR certified HDR monitor.

In what way? I've been doing it without issue on PC longer than I've even owned a Mac.

Firefox has zero HDR support, as an example.

The product is only for Chromium based browsers on Windows so surely there's no harm in enabling the product video for that combo too, no?

That would be true on Mac also?

Firefox supports HDR video output on Mac since release 100.

What grinds my gears is that HDR output in a lot of software is "Mac only", even though Windows supports HDR video output just fine, and has had support for wide-color and HDR since Vista!

E.g.: DaVinci Resolve has HDR capable only in its Mac version.

Similarly, generating a Dolby Vision file is basically impossible on Windows.

"Just buy a Mac" seems to be the best and most practical guidance I've seen for HDR workflows...

FF on Mac shows HDR on full screen only, how strange.

I am frequently disappointed by such videos.

Ridiculous. Like when James Cameron promoted Avatar HDR with an SDR YouTube video, while YT is perfectly capable of HDR playback.

At least as of a couple of years ago, HDR support on YouTube has been pretty bad[1]. I know they've been working to improve things since, but I kind of don't blame people for walking away from that mess.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwDWQyBF9II

Thanks, will check out LTT's gripes, but I've been watching the following HDR channels forever and they look great:

https://www.youtube.com/@SeoulWalker https://www.youtube.com/@Rambalac https://www.youtube.com/@Relaxing.Scenes.Driving

Can´t recommend Rambalac enough - I have pretty much re-traced his steps multiple times during our Japan trip a couple times & it really helped with orientation. :)

Also some of the walks are really interesting & really gives you the context of various places in Japan. :)

The real issue is it's either HDR or good SDR, but not both at the same time

I'm also glad that Rambalac is back as he quit a few months ago. I've recently also started uploading 4K60 HDR content to YouTube [1] and it takes up to one week more time for them to encode than the SDR version. You can include your own LUT instead of YouTube conversion which seems to help. Here's an article and LUT [2] + a video [3] with valuable info. They allowed me getting DJI Pocket 3 HLG recordings to HDR10.

[1] https://youtu.be/0S8hw8Lrvlk [2] https://www.wesleyknapp.com/blog/hdr [3] https://youtu.be/4izJfgRtkZE

It’s still bad. Even as a totally amateur videographer making short clips of my holidays, YouTube is not good enough.

HDR processing takes months!

The SDR down conversion is “potato quality” even to my non-expert eyes, let alone a Hollywood colourist.

Etc…

Instead of YouTube's HDR->SDR conversion you are free to use your own conversion LUT with mkvmerge. As I posted above, here are some links for info:

- Workflow and a valuable LUT: https://www.wesleyknapp.com/blog/hdr

- Some DaVinci Resolve Settings to use on SDR monitors: https://youtu.be/4izJfgRtkZE (though I upload 4K60 HDR at 37.5Mbit) which is enough for me slow content.

This only allows a single LUT for the entire video. For comparison, Resolve will perform Dolby Vision tone mapping from HDR to SDR on a clip-by-clip basis.

HLG still not good enough?

I guess. There's a lot of details we don't know that would change the calculus on this.

To use a analogous workflow, it could be like saying, "It's pointless to shoot video in 10-bit log if it's going to be displayed on Rec.709 at 8-bits." It completely leaves out available transforms and manipulations in HDR that do have a noticeable impact even when SDR is the target.

Again, we can't know if it's important given the information that's available, but we can't know if it's pointless either.

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