EBU publishes guide on HDR

European public broadcasters’ organisation the EBU has published a guide on HDR for its members.

The EBU said that its Initial Guide on High Dynamic Range summarises the key concepts and technologies and includes pointers to more detailed information. The guide is expected to be updated frequently, reflecting progress in the standardisation of HDR and insights and experience gathered by broadcasters.

The EBU has also initiated a file exchange to help validate the correctness of the metadata used in HDR files. EBU Members can join the EBU Video Systems Group to participate in the exchange.

In November last year, the DVB steering board approved final revisions and updates to its DVB UHD-1 specification.

The DVB last year agreed the inclusion of the Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) system developed by the BBC and NHK, which is compatible with SDR TV sets and designed with live broadcast in mind, supported alongside the Perceptual Quantizer (PQ-10) system developed by Dolby and favoured by some movie studios and Netflix.

Discussion is still on-going at the DVB over how to include additional elements in the UHD-1 Phase 2 specification, with agreement that there could be a commercial case for the inclusion of ‘dynamic metadata’ for HDR.

HDR is the element of UHD that gives extra ‘sparkle’ to images by increasing the brightness of highlights and detail in the blacks.