HDR Video export implementation in blender. (AV1 and Rec.2020)
The current only way to export HDR renders from Blender is only possible via OpenEXR image sequences. OpenEXR is very capable, but it has one major flaw: You need an expensive 3rd Party Video editor like Davinci Resolve Studio or Premiere Pro, to be able to convert it into a useful video file format. Part of blenders philosophy, is to bring industry leading tools to every artist and I would really aprecciate anyone, that gets to implement the highly efficient AV1 codec and Rec.2020 into blender. And judging by the fact that HDR renders are possible with OpenEXR, I would not expect AV1 (wich is free and open source) to be too difficult to implement. (Left image is AV1 and the right image is h.264)
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The VSE will only work in HDR if the source files are in EXR. Everything else will only be handled as 8 bit.
The ffmpeg lib that comes with Blender is old and needs an update, but it seems like in general BF devs are intimidated with ffmpeg and rather not touch it. So all the good stuff implemented in ffmpeg in recent years like 10+ bit formats and hardware acceleration is not utilized in Blender.
However in early 2021 the color management lib used by Blender get a new release and hopefully that will push stuff like proper handling - and export of 10+ bit formats along.
* @ tintwotin * interesting, thanks for your insight!
"expensive 3rd Party Video editor like Davinci Resolve Studio"
I use free Davinci Resolve all day with 32bits floats exr sequences. Not expensive.
But yeah, if Blender could update it's output formats. And color management...
* @-L0Lock- * Its not about importing HDR content. I want to export HDR content... That is an option that is not present in the free version of Davinci R. (at least not with my version)
Did you try Natron? ( natrongithub.github.io/ )
* @Dima * I did, but it doesnt support HDR as far as I know
* @marcelago231101 * try the current beta. I'm able to use JPEG 2000 with 16 bit colors with this Natron version github.com/NatronGitHub/Natron/releases/tag/v2.3.16-beta1 And it can read exr files. That's all I know.
* @Dima * Thank you, but importing HDR data into Natron was not the issue. Instead, I could not find a way to export HDR Videos. Thats the problem. (But I will try out the new version, maybe they added rec.2020 or AV1 after all :)
* @marcelago231101 * maybe that would be interesting for you?
{attachment blender_2020-11-17_018jpg}
Tuto here
* @-L0Lock- * That sounds amazing! sorry for my late reply. I am not very experienced with these instructions, but I will definetly give it a try! thank you very much! (and i really hope that this will become part of blender master branch