HDR Wish List

fr0sty wrote on 5/29/2018, 5:39 AM

Vegas needs to add HDR support. Resolve has it, as do Premiere and After Effects. Media Encoder supports it also. Here's how I'd like to see that happen:

1. HEVC already supports 10 bit, but in order to support HDR, the proper metadata must be written to the file. In premiere, the profile is set to "high10", the color space to Rec2020, bit depth to 10 bits per pixel. Youtube recognizes this as a HDR video file.

2. Color correction tools all need to support the enhanced color levels. I'd go ahead and get it ready for 12 bit, since that is the next step from HDR10, but we at least need 0-1023 levels on our scopes. Premiere's go from 0-10,000, I'm assuming that refers to nits? Anyway, Vegas' scopes need a good update.

3. Enabling an "export to youtube HDR" option would be nice, which would then give the option to create and load in a LUT for the SDR downconversion, which youtube allows you to do. If you do not supply a lut, they assume the video was mastered on a certain Sony display and use that as a base for translating it to Rec709, but to have that control of uploading our own LUT, and having Vegas make that process of creating and uploading that LUT and HDR video file easy for us, that would be cool. I'd love to be able to type in all of my relevant youtube title, description, and keyword data into Vegas, and in one click, render and post an HDR enabled video complete with companion Rec709 lut. I realize that kind of integration with YOutube may not be possible, but if it isn't, at least have Vegas put both the 10 bit mp4 file (complete with HDR metadata embedded) and the LUT into a folder for upload.

4. Built in test patterns, both color and grayscale, so we can easily test to make sure our external monitors are indeed getting a 10 bit signal and for calibration.

5. Windows 10 now lets me enable HDR on my Geforce 900 series card. I've read that Nvidia has stopped limiting full screen openGL to 8 bit, this is worth looking into to see if there's a way to let those of us who can't afford a Quatro card to see the 10 bit video we're editing. As of now, it's fly blind by the scopes, hope it comes out OK for the time being, and I can't even use Vegas to do that. I'm saving up for a Quatro card, but in the mean time, if there's any way around it, try it! I do know the Geforce cards can do 10 bit, just in limited conditions. Nvidia finally caved on the OGL Full screen thing because of outrage from gamers that wanted HDR.

6. Maybe explore the option to pay for dolby vision licencing? Maybe not... HDR10+ offers many of the same benefits and also is open source, so probably better to look to supporting that instead. This would also require us being able to specify metadata per-scene, in order to take advantage of the additional benefits those formats offer. Since HLG is set to become the HDR broadcast standard, being able to edit and output that mode would also be nice, as an addition to HDR10/10+.

My HDR workflow is currently pretty messy. I'm having to output HEVC (haven't successfully got 10 bits out of ProRes, and didn't have time to try other formats out on this first test) 10 bit from Vegas into premiere, color correct blindly from there (starting with a VLOG to Rec2020 LUT, relying on scopes from there), as Premiere's full screen output isn't working correctly on my 4K OLED, and then preview the output to see if what I tried worked.. I would pay for a new version of Vegas just to be able to do all of this in one program, especially one with as intuitive a workflow as Vegas.

Comments

wwjd wrote on 5/29/2018, 8:40 AM

PLUS 100!!

Wolfgang S. wrote on 5/29/2018, 11:04 AM

You missed HLG what should be implemented 1000times before Dolby Vision. Reason: the licensing costs and hardware requirements.

Agree to most of the rest, Waveform switchable to a nit scale is required. The HDR preview must be supported in a better way, but also the filters like color curves or color wheels must be improved dramatically. Including better tools to adjust the highlights in a more sofisticated way.

Behind that must be the interpretation of metadata in the log footage shoot - to improve the color management system ACES 1.0. And all of that will not add enough value if the playback performance is not improved further (it was improved anyway, but we need a better performance with 10bit UHD 50/60p footage with both the 32bit floating point ACES system or LUTs but also the high end workstations).

But overall the last build of Vegas Pro 15 is the best one we have seen up to now. So a sound base to start.

fr0sty wrote on 5/29/2018, 2:26 PM

From what I hear, HLG doesn't grade very well, which is why I suggested them moving on to HDR10+ instead, though being able to output HLG would be great, since it is probably going to end up becoming the HDR broadcast standard. Added to the wish list.

I couldn't agree more about Vegas being on its most solid footing ever since the purchase right now, Magix is on a roll, which is why I'm looking to the future now instead of looking back at bugs shaking my head... I'm actually excited about Vegas again!

Wolfgang S. wrote on 5/29/2018, 5:46 PM

HLG is not a Grading but a delivery format. The issue is that ACES1 in general but also in Vegas does not support HLG up to now, but I also think that this will be the most interesting delivery format.