Roger Quero, Liwei Guo, Jeff Watts, Joseph McCormick, Agata Opalach, Anush Moorthy
We are excited to announce that we are actually streaming HDR10+ content material on our service for AV1-enabled gadgets, enhancing the viewing expertise for licensed HDR10+ gadgets, which beforehand solely acquired HDR10 content material. The dynamic metadata included in our HDR10+ content material improves the standard and accuracy of the image when considered on these gadgets.
Nearly a decade in the past, we made a daring transfer to be a pioneering adopter of High Dynamic Range (HDR) expertise. HDR allows pictures to have extra particulars, vivid colours, and improved realism. We started producing our reveals and films in HDR, encoding them in HDR, and streaming them in HDR for our members. We have been assured that it might tremendously improve our members’ viewing expertise, and unlock new inventive visions — and we have been proper! In the final 5 years, HDR streaming has elevated by greater than 300%, whereas the variety of HDR-configured gadgets watching Netflix has greater than doubled. Since launching HDR with season considered one of Marco Polo, Netflix now has over 11,000 hours of HDR titles for members to immerse themselves in.
We proceed to boost member pleasure whereas sustaining inventive imaginative and prescient by including help for HDR10+. This will additional increase Netflix’s rising HDR ecosystem, protect inventive intent on much more gadgets, and supply a extra immersive viewing expertise.
We enabled HDR10+ on Netflix utilizing the AV1 video codec that was standardized by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) in 2018. AV1 is without doubt one of the most effective codecs obtainable at present. We beforehand enabled AV1 encoding for SDR content material, and noticed large worth for our members, together with larger and extra constant visible high quality, decrease play delay and elevated streaming on the highest decision. AV1-SDR is already the second most streamed codec at Netflix, behind H.264/AVC, which has been round for over 20 years! With the addition of HDR10+ streams to AV1, we anticipate the day isn’t far when AV1 would be the most streamed codec at Netflix.
To improve our providing, we now have been including HDR10+ streams to each new releases and current fashionable HDR titles. AV1-HDR10+ now accounts for 50% of all eligible viewing hours. We will proceed increasing our HDR10+ choices with the purpose of offering an HDR10+ expertise for all HDR titles by the tip of this year¹.
Today, the trade acknowledges three prevalent HDR codecs: Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR10+. For all three HDR Formats, metadata is embedded within the content material, serving as directions to information the playback system — whether or not it’s a TV, cellular system, or laptop — on how you can show the picture.
HDR10 is probably the most broadly adopted HDR format, supported by all HDR gadgets. HDR10 makes use of static metadata that’s outlined as soon as for the whole content material detailing points corresponding to the utmost content material mild degree (MaxCLL), most body common mild degree (MaxFALL), in addition to traits of the mastering show used for colour grading. This metadata solely permits for a one-size-fits-all tone mapping of the content material for show gadgets. It can’t account for dynamic distinction throughout scenes, which most content material comprises.
HDR10+ and Dolby Vision enhance on this with dynamic metadata that gives content material picture statistics on a per-frame foundation, enabling optimized tone mapping changes for every scene. This achieves larger perceptual constancy to the unique, preserving inventive intent.
The determine beneath reveals display grabs of two AV1-encoded frames of the identical content material displayed utilizing HDR10 (high) and HDR10+ (backside).
Photographs of gadgets displaying the identical body with HDR10 metadata (high) and HDR10+ metadata (backside). Notice the preservation of the flashlight element within the HDR10+ seize, and the over-exposure of the area underneath the flashlight within the HDR10 one².
As seen within the flashlight on the desk, the spotlight particulars are clipped within the HDR10 content material, however are recovered in HDR10+. Further, the area underneath the flashlight is overexposed within the HDR10 content material, whereas HDR10+ renders that area with larger constancy to the supply. The cause HDR10+, with its dynamic metadata, shines on this instance is that the scenes previous and following the scene with this body have markedly totally different luminance statistics. The static HDR10 metadata is unable to account for the change within the content material. While it is a easy instance, the dynamic metadata in HDR10+ demonstrates such worth throughout any set of scenes. This consistency permits our members to remain immersed within the content material, and higher preserves inventive intent.
At the time of launch, these necessities have to be glad to obtain HDR10+:
1.Member will need to have a Netflix Premium plan subscription
2. Title have to be obtainable in HDR10+ format
3. Member system should help AV1 & HDR10+. Here are some examples of appropriate gadgets:
- SmartTVs, cellphones, and tablets that meet Netflix certification for HDR10+
- Source system (corresponding to set-top packing containers, streaming gadgets, MVPDs, and so on.) that meets Netflix certification for HDR10+, linked to an HDR10+ compliant show by way of HDMI
4. For TV or streaming gadgets, make sure that the HDR toggle is enabled in our Netflix software settings: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/100220
Additional steering: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444
More HDR content material is watched daily on Netflix. Expanding the Netflix HDR ecosystem to incorporate HDR10+ will increase the accessibility of HDR content material with dynamic metadata to extra members, improves the viewing expertise, and preserves the inventive intent of our content material creators. The dedication to innovation and high quality underscores our dedication to delivering an immersive and genuine viewing expertise for all our members.
Launching HDR10+ was a collaborative effort involving a number of groups at Netflix, and we’re grateful to everybody who contributed to creating this concept a actuality. We wish to prolong our due to the next groups for his or her essential roles on this launch:
- The numerous Client and Partner Engineering groups at Netflix that handle the Netflix expertise throughout totally different system platforms.
Special acknowledgments: Akshay Garg, Dasha Polyakova, Vivian Li, Ben Toofer, Allan Zhou, Artem Danylenko - The Encoding Technologies crew that’s answerable for producing optimized encodings to allow high-quality experiences for our members. Special acknowledgments: Adithya Prakash, Vinicius Carvalho
- The Content Operations & Innovation groups answerable for producing and delivering HDR content material to Netflix, sustaining the intent of inventive imaginative and prescient from manufacturing to streaming. Special acknowledgements: Michael Keegan
Footnotes
- While we now have enabled HDR10+ for distribution i.e., for what our members eat on their gadgets, we proceed to simply accept solely Dolby Vision masters on the ingest facet, i.e., for all content material supply to Netflix as per our supply specification. In addition to HDR10+, we proceed to serve HDR10 and DolbyVision. Our encoding pipeline is designed with flexibility and extensibility the place all these HDR codecs might be derived from a single DolbyVision deliverable effectively at scale.
- We acknowledge that it’s onerous to convey visible enhancements in HDR video utilizing nonetheless pictures transformed to SDR. We encourage the reader to stream Netflix content material in HDR10+ and verify for your self!