Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 17, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) is a relevant topic not only in the VFX field, for example for image-based lighting (you can find a short workshop on this topic in our issue 04 : 16). YouTube has now also jumped on the HDR bandwagon and announced on its official blog that High-Dynamic-Range videos are now supported on the platform.
To Join YouTube with an HDR Video:
In general, YouTube accepts the DNxHR, Apple ProRes, and h.264 codecs in .mov, .mp4, or .mkv containers for its HDR videos. In the support section, YouTube has set up instructions that you can view here. They specify the exact requirements for HDR uploads in terms of resolution, frame rate, colour spaces, file encoding, and HDR metadata. For example, YouTube recognises an H.264-encoded video with a colour depth of 10 bits in a .mov container as an HDR video.
And… What Does It Look Like Now?
Since, at the current state, no consumer device can yet adequately handle HDR playback, and various standards are still wrestling over the term HDR anyway, there is not much HDR content on YouTube yet. A playlist with a total of 4 videos was compiled for the launch of the HDR functions. For all devices that cannot display HDR, YouTube automatically converts the content back to Standard Dynamic Range (SDR).
