Does any Android brand handle HDR video the convenient way Apple does? /u/Useuless Android

I love the idea of HDR video, but the reality is messy. It’s not convenient to share or upload with websites. And HDR on a display that doesn’t support HDR or has very poor capabilities (like Vesa HDR400), is just so bad that SDR should be used instead. So then you have to transcode your HDR video into a new file. Such a pain.

Today I read about iOS handles HDR video. It seems they eat their cake and have it too, by recording SDR video with two different HDR layers on top.

If the display does not support HDR, then the video plays as SDR (may be color weirdness if the display doesn’t support bt.2020 and only ses rec.709). If the display supports Dolby Vision profile 8.4, then it plays as Dolby Vision HDR. And finally, if the display does not support profile 8.4, but does support HDR, then it uses the HLG for HDR. HLG is not dynamic metadata, but it’s better than nothing and considering it’s been out since 2018, it’s fairly well supported. So it seems that leaving the HDR video option on in iOS doesn’t come with drawbacks compatibility wise.

Here is the text I found about it:

But the iPhone 12 shoots video in a newer version of Dolby Vision called Profile 8.4 that’s built on a standard called HLG, or hybrid log-gamma. HLG works differently than PQ systems; it was developed by broadcasters like the BBC and NHK to be backwards compatible with SDR displays so they would only have to broadcast one video stream.

All this means that an iPhone 12 HDR video is a 10-bit HLG file with additional Dolby Vision metadata on top, and it will happily play back as SDR on SDR displays, HLG on HLG displays, and Dolby Vision on Dolby Vision displays that support Profile 8.4. And iOS 14 is smart enough to know when the apps and devices you’re sharing video to don’t support this new format, and it’ll make sure you send something that works. It is all very clever, even though, in practice, what it means is you’re mostly sharing SDR video.

And this was 5 YEARS AGO.

Is anybody on the Android world deciding to do HDR like this?

I love the idea of HDR video, but the reality is messy. It’s not convenient to share or upload with websites. And HDR on a display that doesn’t support HDR or has very poor capabilities (like Vesa HDR400), is just so bad that SDR should be used instead. So then you have to transcode your HDR video into a new file. Such a pain.

Today I read about iOS handles HDR video. It seems they eat their cake and have it too, by recording SDR video with two different HDR layers on top.

If the display does not support HDR, then the video plays as SDR (may be color weirdness if the display doesn’t support bt.2020 and only ses rec.709). If the display supports Dolby Vision profile 8.4, then it plays as Dolby Vision HDR. And finally, if the display does not support profile 8.4, but does support HDR, then it uses the HLG for HDR. HLG is not dynamic metadata, but it’s better than nothing and considering it’s been out since 2018, it’s fairly well supported. So it seems that leaving the HDR video option on in iOS doesn’t come with drawbacks compatibility wise.

Here is the text I found about it:

But the iPhone 12 shoots video in a newer version of Dolby Vision called Profile 8.4 that’s built on a standard called HLG, or hybrid log-gamma. HLG works differently than PQ systems; it was developed by broadcasters like the BBC and NHK to be backwards compatible with SDR displays so they would only have to broadcast one video stream.

All this means that an iPhone 12 HDR video is a 10-bit HLG file with additional Dolby Vision metadata on top, and it will happily play back as SDR on SDR displays, HLG on HLG displays, and Dolby Vision on Dolby Vision displays that support Profile 8.4. And iOS 14 is smart enough to know when the apps and devices you’re sharing video to don’t support this new format, and it’ll make sure you send something that works. It is all very clever, even though, in practice, what it means is you’re mostly sharing SDR video.

And this was 5 YEARS AGO.

Is anybody on the Android world deciding to do HDR like this?