Was curious what others have been using for an HDR workflow using the wide gamut color output from LRTimelapse.

I came up with a reasonable workflow using premiere pro, however I have to say it has a long way to go to be perfected. Before I discuss that though I think there are some important ground rules that need to be followed in order to incorporate the necessary HDR 10 bit color:
1) you must create TIFF 16 bit intermediaries. Jpg won’t do it as it’s 8 bit and you’ll lose all the extra tones needed to achieve 10 bit color and avoid banding in the hdr output. Also, I don’t think TIFF 8 bit would suffice either, because again you’re not up to at least 10 bit which is 1billion colors.

This also makes me wonder then whether using the rec 2020 color space is even necessary if you’re not using at least 10 bit intermediaries (which for the LRT workflow means 16 bit TIFFs?) That color space is so large so I wonder does it give you any more colors than rec 709 if you’re only using 8 bit intermediaries?

2) make sure to render using a 10 bit codec, prores 422 minimum.

Next, in order to grade in premiere you need to set your working color space for your project to either hlg or rec 2100 pq. I personally have used pq and that’s the workflow I’m familiar with, but I think it’s similar for hlg which is more of a broadcasting standard used by bbc. From what I’ve learned in an ideal world rec 2100 pq gives best results and quality, but hlg is more backwards compatible with sdr screens:
1) set working space to rec 2100 pq
2) grade luma (brightness) using the lumetri scopes and increase maximum brightness for highlights up to the maximum range of your hdr monitir. This is where it gets tricky as premiere does not currently allow you to see hdr on your computer monitor. I had to buy a separate monitor (currently using the Apple Pro Display XDR) that attaches to your computer.
3) in order to correctly output the hdr image to your display you need to specify the output display by going to preferences/playback. I also tried connecting my tv which seemed to work fine but sometimes it looked different when I connected, not sure why.
4) when you export the project make sure to export to the rec 2100 color space with maximum bit depth on to retain the 10 bit color, and use a prores codec.

I have to say though premier doesn’t seem to provide good support for this process at the moment, and in particular the need to use a separate connected monitor for grading is inconvenient.

Thanks for sharing your workflow! I'm looking forward, what others say, let's collect the experiences with HDR here. I'd especially appreciate to hear if someone already has done this with Davinci Resolve.

This post was last modified: 2022-02-04, 14:09 by identitaet.

Thanks for this Thread, I find this quite interesting and experimenting with HDR for quite some time. Unfortunately, I haven't made it work, yet. YouTube won't recognize the video as HDR. I am using a Mac M1Max with included HDR monitor.

Here is my workflow with LrTimelapse, Lightroom & Resolve:

Step 1 - Exporting
- Editing Sequence in Lightroom
- Exporting as Tiff 16 Bit

Step 2 - Adjusting Davinci Settings
- Go to File > Project Settings > Color Management
- Set Color Science To "DaVinci YRGP Color Managed"
- Set Color Processing Mode to "HDR Rec.2020 Intermediate"
- Check "Use seperate color space and gamma"
- Set Output Color Space to "Rec.2020" and "Rec.2100 HLG"
- Check "HDR Mastering is for 1000 nits"
- Check "Enable HDR10+"

I am attaching a screenshot.

Step 3 - Color Grading in Davinci
- Do Color Gradings & Adjustments
- Make sure all grading notes have "HDR Mode" selected

Step 4 - Exporting
- Set Export Settings to QuickTime
- Code DNxHR, Type DNxHR 444 12-Bit
- Check "Constant Bitrate"
- Set Data Levels to "Full"
- Check "Force sizing to highest quality"
- Check "Force debayer to highest quality"

The result is an .mov file that has the HDR codec build in as you can see on the screenshot. Unfortunately, I am not able to play the video with quicktime. And uploading the video to YouTube does not recognize the HDR.

Please find the screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/dX1qgQv
And the YouTube Upload here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0xaRVfbnxk

Does someone have an idea what's wrong here?

Happy to share an update here: It just takes very, very long for Youtube to recognize the HDR video. Even, after it has been encoded in 4K.

Now it works!

Thanks for sharing your workflow with Davinci Resolve, much appreciated!

Hello all. I'm way behind all of you on this curve as I am new to LRT and have always been useless at color management. In video I have barely worked beyond 8 bit

I generally work with FCPX and want to build a workflow via that route. Perhaps with my FCPX end everybody else's... everything else, we might be able to get some useful info for future FCPX users.

It seems to import, recognise and export HDR no problem. It just doesn't look right and I'm pretty sure user error is involved (as it tends to be in my case...)

I set my Project to Rec2020HLG. It recognises the clip (exported as 444 ProRes) as being REC2020 but it looks much richer and covers the scopes far better if I override that to Rec2020 HLG. Why would that override make it work? Without the override, the info is all there but I need to jam the colour wheels all the way and even then it is not covering the whole range.

Needles to say, I don't have a good enough monitor but that's just part of the adventure

...but if you're just working with frames straight out of Lightroom, where's your >100 IRE (super whites) data coming from? Are you just boosting it? What does it say on your scopes in Resolve?