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At last year’s SMPTE conference, James Hillis from 3M described some tests they had done to try to determine how far the 2020 color primaries can move and still be indistinguishable from a true 2020 display. This year, he provides some updates to the work they have continued. The goal is to try to define … Read more
Much of the color standards and color calibration methods and instruments are based upon the “standard observer.” This is supposed to represent the average human’s color perception, as defined in 1931. But there is much evidence to support the notion that this standard observer model was derived from a sample of 17 white anglo males … Read more
It is possible for a variety of spectrally unique (and different) stimuli to produce identical visual responses. Spectrally variant color stimuli that are perceived identically are known as metamers. With display-rendered imagery, the objective is to take advantage of the limitations of the human visual system using a limited subset of emissive primaries (RGB) to … Read more
The concept of better pixels means expanding the frame rates, color gamut, resolution and dynamic range of HD video to something “more.” But the human visual system is very complex and as these features are implemented, one must consider what this is doing to our perception of the images. Sean McCarthy from Arris presented a … Read more
ST 2094 is quite flexible allowing the use of windows to do specific transforms. That means a window may be used to apply a different transform for a bright highlight or dark region of the scene. Metadata sets can also be created for several types of display targets. This allows grades to be optimized for … Read more
One of the big areas of focus at the SMPTE conference was the need to ensure that the wide range of luminance and color carried in HDR signals will map correctly in SDR displays with lower luminance ranges and smaller color volumes. This is called color volume transformation and includes color and luminance mapping. The … Read more
A paper from Panasonic and NHK looked at the effects of LED lighting on the color reproduction of UHD images in a broadcast environment. The table below provides a nice summary of the type and features. One of the conclusions of their study was that UHD camera color reproduction is more accurate than HDTV camera … Read more
Grass Valley’s Sr. product Manager for Cameras, Klaus Weber, recently hosted a webinar on HDR (High Dynamic Range) for live TV production and also gave a paper at the SMPTE conference covering similar ground. These provided a nice overview of the current HDR landscape and pointed to some Grass Valley products that were highlighted at … Read more
Miller Schuck from RealD also gave a presentation on work they have done to understand the real contrast in a theater and how that might impact the design of a HDR projector. Schuck gave a similar talk at Display Summit in June (RealD Says 20,000:1 is Enough Contrast) where he concluded that have a high … Read more
One of the papers delivered at the SMPTE conference focused on what the Chinese government and exhibitors are doing about image quality – both 2D and 3D. There already exists a Chinese standard, GD/J047-2013, called “Technical Requirements and Methods of Measurement for Digital Cinema Stereoscopic Projection.” The talk, delivered by Bo Gong of the Test … Read more
A special symposium on Virtual Reality (VR) was held to open the 2015 SMPTE fall conference here in Hollywood, California. There were a number of good papers, a nice panel and some demos that shows the level of activity and interest in VR. However, despite all the interest in the topic, there are no SMPTE … Read more
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has published a new study group (SG) report on the high-dynamic-range (HDR) imaging ecosystem. 170 top international experts contributed to the report, which summarizes an extensive discussion on the implementation of HDR in professional media workflows and addresses key questions that will arise for industry members … Read more
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