The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers today announced the publication of the SMPTE study group report on the high-dynamic-range imaging ecosystem. The work of 170 top international experts, the SMPTE report summarizes an extensive discussion on the implementation of HDR in professional media workflows and addresses key questions that will arise for industry members as they move forward in taking advantage of HDR technology. The report also offers recommendations for further HDR standardization efforts by SMPTE and other organizations.
"HDR is a rapidly emerging and much-debated technology with the capacity to make a greater impact on viewer experience than can higher-resolution formats," said Alan Lambshead, vice president of standards for SMPTE. "Recognizing the remarkable potential of HDR and the media industry's growing interest in this technology, SMPTE created an HDR ecosystem study group and — within just 12 months — delivered a valuable consensus report on implementation of HDR and the creation of efficient HDR workflows."
The SMPTE report on the HDR ecosystem provides consensus guidance on HDR terms and definitions and presents detailed and useful information on HDR technologies that, up to this point, has not been readily available to the media industry. The report acknowledges that although HDR technologies, both proprietary and standardized, are available today and already can be implemented for non-real-time workflows, challenges remain in live or real-time applications. It further recognizes that implementation of HDR will be complex and affect many systems in a professional media workflow. The report catalogs HDR technologies, examines issues in both live and non-live HDR workflows, and describes the role of HDR metadata. Finally, it recommends industry harmonization regarding HDR technologies and parameters, stressing the importance of standardizing new technologies related to HDR and of updating current standards to enable HDR.
"Interest in HDR has begun to explode, and this report on the HDR ecosystem has been eagerly anticipated by engineers and technologists across the media industry," said Thomas Bause Mason, SMPTE Technical Committee 10E SG on HDR Ecosystem chair. "We are confident that this timely SMPTE publication will answer many of the questions that emerge as HDR is discussed and implemented."
SMPTE is actively working on the recommendations contained in the report and encourages industry participants to join the effort by contacting [email protected].
The report is available for download at https://www.smpte.org/standards/reports.