Create the Impossible: True HDR from Compressed YouTube Sources
The SDR to HDR Challenge: Why Everyone Says It’s Impossible For decades, video professionals have operated under a fundamental assumption: once video data is compressed and converted to Standard Dynamic Range (SDR), the lost information is gone forever. The video industry has long maintained that creating genuine High Dynamic Range (HDR) from heavily compressed sources like YouTube videos is technically impossible. Understanding Dynamic Range Dynamic range refers to the ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of an image. Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) video, which has been the standard since television’s inception, typically peaks at around 100 nits of brightness and uses the Rec. 709 color space designed for CRT displays. In contrast, High Dynamic Range (HDR) can represent brightness from 0.0001 to 10,000 nits, using expanded color spaces like Rec. 2020 and advanced transfer functions like PQ (Perceptual Quantizer – SMPTE ST 2084). When video is compressed for streaming…