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What is HDR, anyway?

(www.lux.camera)
790 points _kush | 4 comments | 14 May 25 12:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.629s | source
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gyomu ◴[14 May 25 13:44 UTC] No.43984462[source]▶
As a photographer, I get the appeal of (this new incarnation of) HDR content, but the practical reality is that the photos I see posted in my feeds go from making my display looking normal to having photos searing my retinas, while other content that was uniform white a second prior now looks dull gray.

It's late night here so I was reading this article in dark mode, at a low display brightness - and when I got to the HDR photos I had to turn down my display even more to not strain my eyes, then back up again when I scrolled to the text.

For fullscreen content (games, movies) HDR is alright, but for everyday computing it's a pretty jarring experience as a user.

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sandofsky ◴[14 May 25 13:59 UTC] No.43984641[source]▶
While it isn't touched on in the post, I think the issue with feeds is that platforms like Instagram have no interest in moderating HDR.

For context: YouTube automatically edits the volume of videos that have an average loudness beyond a certain threshold. I think the solution for HDR is similar penalization based on log luminance or some other reasonable metric.

I don't see this happening on Instagram any time soon, because bad HDR likely makes view counts go up.

As for the HDR photos in the post, well, those are a bit strong to show what HDR can do. That's why the Mark III beta includes a much tamer HDR grade.

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tart-lemonade ◴[14 May 25 16:14 UTC] No.43986273[source]▶
> YouTube automatically edits the volume of videos that have an average loudness beyond a certain threshold.

For anyone else who was confused by this, it seems to be a client-side audio compressor feature (not a server-side adjustment) labeled as "Stable Volume". On the web, it's toggleable via the player settings menu.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/14106294

I can't find exactly when it appeared but the earliest capture of the help article was from May 2024, so it is a relatively recent feature: https://web.archive.org/web/20240523021242/https://support.g...

I didn't realize this was a thing until just now, but I'm glad they added it because (now that I think about it) it's been awhile since I felt the need to adjust my system volume when a video was too quiet even at 100% player volume. It's a nice little enhancement.

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1. scraptor ◴[14 May 25 16:25 UTC] No.43986403[source]▶
The client side toggle might be new since 2024 but the volume normalisation has been a thing for a long time.
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2. ddingus ◴[14 May 25 17:26 UTC] No.43987091[source]▶
Yes, and I love it! Finally, the volume knob control was pulled from producers all about gimmicks to push their productions.

There are still gimmicks, but at least they do not include music so badly clipped as to be unlistenable... hint: go get the DVD or Blu-Ray release of whatever it is and you are likely to enjoy a not clipped album.

It is all about maximizing the overall sonic impact the music is capable of. Now when levels are sane, song elements well differentiated and equalized such that no or only a minor range of frequencies are crushed due to many sounds all competing for them, it will sound, full, great and not tiring!

Thanks audio industry. Many ears appreciate what was done.

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3. hbn ◴[14 May 25 19:55 UTC] No.43988548[source]▶
I know they've automatically boosted brightness in dark scenes for a long time too. It's not rare for people to upload a clip from a video game with a very dark scene and it's way brighter after upload than it was when they played or how it looks in the file they uploaded.
4. ddingus ◴[15 May 25 18:43 UTC] No.43998005[source]▶
I expected a moderate amount of heat directed at my comment.

No worries. I've friends in various industries doing production who hate the change.

I like it, of course. Losing the volume knob is a direct result of the many abuses.