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We’re excited to announce that we at the moment are streaming HDR10+ content material on our service for AV1-enabled gadgets, enhancing the viewing expertise for licensed HDR10+ gadgets, which beforehand solely obtained HDR10 content material. The dynamic metadata included in our HDR10+ content material improves the standard and accuracy of the image when seen on these gadgets.
Practically a decade in the past, we made a daring transfer to be a pioneering adopter of Excessive Dynamic Vary (HDR) expertise. HDR permits pictures to have extra particulars, vivid colours, and improved realism. We started producing our reveals and flicks in HDR, encoding them in HDR, and streaming them in HDR for our members. We had been assured that it will tremendously improve our members’ viewing expertise, and unlock new inventive visions — and we had been proper! Within 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 one among 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 assist for HDR10+. This can 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 out there at this time. We beforehand enabled AV1 encoding for SDR content material, and noticed large worth for our members, together with increased 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 will not be far when AV1 would be the most streamed codec at Netflix.
To boost our providing, we have now been including HDR10+ streams to each new releases and current in style HDR titles. AV1-HDR10+ now accounts for 50% of all eligible viewing hours. We are going to proceed increasing our HDR10+ choices with the purpose of offering an HDR10+ expertise for all HDR titles by the tip of this year¹.
Right now, the business acknowledges three prevalent HDR codecs: Dolby Imaginative and prescient, HDR10, and HDR10+. For all three HDR Codecs, 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 pc — on the right way to show the picture.
HDR10 is essentially the most broadly adopted HDR format, supported by all HDR gadgets. HDR10 makes use of static metadata that’s outlined as soon as for your complete content material detailing facets equivalent to the utmost content material gentle stage (MaxCLL), most body common gentle stage (MaxFALL), in addition to traits of the mastering show used for shade grading. This metadata solely permits for a one-size-fits-all tone mapping of the content material for show gadgets. It can not account for dynamic distinction throughout scenes, which most content material comprises.
HDR10+ and Dolby Imaginative and prescient 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 screen grabs of two AV1-encoded frames of the identical content material displayed utilizing HDR10 (high) and HDR10+ (backside).
Pictures of gadgets displaying the identical body with HDR10 metadata (high) and HDR10+ metadata (backside). Discover the preservation of the flashlight element within the HDR10+ seize, and the over-exposure of the area beneath 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+. Additional, the area beneath the flashlight is overexposed within the HDR10 content material, whereas HDR10+ renders that area with larger constancy to the supply. The rationale HDR10+, with its dynamic metadata, shines on this instance is that the scenes previous and following the scene with this body have markedly completely different luminance statistics. The static HDR10 metadata is unable to account for the change within the content material. Whereas 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.
On the time of launch, these necessities should be happy to obtain HDR10+:
1.Member will need to have a Netflix Premium plan subscription
2. Title should be out there in HDR10+ format
3. Member system should assist AV1 & HDR10+. Listed here are some examples of suitable gadgets:
- SmartTVs, cellphones, and tablets that meet Netflix certification for HDR10+
- Supply system (equivalent to set-top packing containers, streaming gadgets, MVPDs, and many others.) that meets Netflix certification for HDR10+, related to an HDR10+ compliant show through HDMI
4. For TV or streaming gadgets, be sure that the HDR toggle is enabled in our Netflix software settings: https://assist.netflix.com/en/node/100220
Further steerage: https://assist.netflix.com/en/node/13444
Extra HDR content material is watched daily on Netflix. Increasing 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 varied Consumer and Associate Engineering groups at Netflix that handle the Netflix expertise throughout completely different system platforms.
Particular acknowledgments: Akshay Garg, Dasha Polyakova, Vivian Li, Ben Toofer, Allan Zhou, Artem Danylenko - The Encoding Applied sciences workforce that’s accountable for producing optimized encodings to allow high-quality experiences for our members. Particular acknowledgments: Adithya Prakash, Vinicius Carvalho
- The Content material Operations & Innovation groups accountable for producing and delivering HDR content material to Netflix, sustaining the intent of inventive imaginative and prescient from manufacturing to streaming. Particular acknowledgements: Michael Keegan
- The Product Uncover workforce that permits seamless UI discovery journey for our members. Particular acknowledgments: Chad McKee Ramya Somaskandan
- The Playback Experimence workforce that delivers the very best expertise to our members. Particular acknowledgments: Nate Santti
Footnotes
- Whereas we have now enabled HDR10+ for distribution i.e., for what our members eat on their gadgets, we proceed to just accept solely Dolby Imaginative and prescient masters on the ingest aspect, i.e., for all content material supply to Netflix as per our supply specification. Along with HDR10+, we proceed to serve HDR10 and DolbyVision. Our encoding pipeline is designed with flexibility and extensibility the place all these HDR codecs could possibly be derived from a single DolbyVision deliverable effectively at scale.
- We acknowledge that it’s exhausting 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 examine for your self!
