My challenge was taking good old GH4 8-bit footage into higher bit HDR ranges without quality loss. Vegas algorithms handled it just fine. This short film doesn't benefit from the extended HDR range, but it was just an experiment to learn HDR. The plot revolves around audio, which is not mixed yet, so it is not online for viewing. Any blown out parts are just my inexperienced camera work, and not the result of porting to HDR. And I am still working on color.
zero posterization that I was told was impossible to get around.
It isn't going to add posterization, it's just not going to remove the banding that is inherent to 8bit, so you're not gaining anything as far as color depth/gamut goes. It's just 8 bit video mapped over 10 bit values.
I mix 8 bit video with my 10 bit video all the time, since my cams can't do 10 bit slomo (they can't do slomo in 4k either, so I have 1080p AI upscaled mixed with 4k). It works, but the difference is visible when you see the scenes side by side.
it looks great in HDR, and that's the important thing. not noticing any banding, but I guess it depends on content and processing. I appreciated your HDR knowledge frosty.
I saw mention of AI algorithms being investigated to fill in the holes in the Swiss Cheese. They're not source-accurate, just enhancements, but would give a pleasing visual effect.
I don't care about the science to get there, as long as the desired result is achieved. And it is.
I've made suggestions about using AI to enhance HDR to the VEGAS team, both filling in the holes and expanding the gamut. It's on the pile of to do's somewhere I'm sure. I imagine they are going to put a big focus on AI moving forward, the possibilities are endless... resolution and framerate scaling, color gamut and depth upscaling, auto masking, scene detection (recreating the edits made to source material using the finished product as a guide, helpful if you lose your project file and want to make changes to an old project), and the cool thing is, the more data they feed into the AI, the better it gets at what it does, so it'll just improve with time. They're already doing some impressive stuff with it.
Intelligence: set target, step back, aim, shoot, hit...declare Victory.
Artificial intelligence: shoot (doesn't matter where!), look for where you've hit (could take years), find place of impact and draw target around the hit...proclaim yourself victorious.
😆