Recommendations for Verifying HDR Subjective Testing Workflows

TL;DR

This paper provides recommendations for verifying HDR testing workflows, assessing HDR conversion techniques, and evaluating display technologies to ensure high-quality HDR content production.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive set of guidelines for HDR conformance testing and evaluates current HDR conversion methods and display technologies.

Findings

HDR conversion techniques vary in effectiveness

OLED and LCD displays show different performance characteristics

Recommended testing procedures improve HDR workflow validation

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in the demand and availability of High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays and content. To ensure the production of high-quality materials, human evaluation is required. However, ascertaining whether the full playback pipeline is indeed HDR-compliant can be challenging. In this paper, we present a set of recommendations for conformance testing to validate various aspects of the testing workflow, including playback, displays, brightness, colours, and viewing environment. We assessed the effectiveness of HDR conversion techniques used in current standards development (3GPP) for making source materials. Additionally, we evaluate HDR display technologies, including OLED and LCD, using both consumer television and a reference monitor.