Higher Dynamic Range, Higher Frame Rate, Higher Resolution Research

Together with Professor Dave Bull, Director of the Bristol Vision Institute of the Faculty of Engineering  of University of Bristol and BBC Research and Development, Terry Flaxton guided capture of the worlds first HDR, HFR movie in November 2012 (at 50 frames per second) which was followed by second then a third shoot - the latest being a Pyrotechnical shoot in Bristol in April 2013.


If you click the following link you can see one of the two image tracks that comprise the HDR movie: The Human Condition (here you will see  a standard display version of one visual track). Some of this will appear overexposed, some underexposed - when added to the second track nearly all exposure issues are resolved (though we have subsequently learned new exposure techniques which should resolve remaining questions in the next piece of research performed by University of Bristol). This at least will show the area we've been looking at. A specific demand made upon us was from Experimental Psychology was that they required around 30 minutes of footage to test the level of immersion that the audience was allowed into, in comparison with standard dynamic versions of the same movie. With limited budget this stressed the research process in an interesting way.


For more information on the process of capture see: The Production of Higher Dynamic Range Video Price et al

For a discussion on the context for that production see: The Future of the Moving Image Flaxton

How Hollywood views HDR

Stefan Grandinetti is our affiliate from Stuttgart Media Universtiy
NEWS: Sept 2014 CMIR of UWE and the Bristol Vision Institute at the University of Bristol has held the world's first HDR laboratory in the capture and Display of Higher Dynamic Range Images
PictureLuminance rendered as F Stops














If you look at the diagram to the left it shows that the human eye/brain pathway uses 5 out of a 14 order of magnitude scale, sliding this instantaneous facility up and down the scale to deal with starlight at one end and desert sun at the other. (that 14 order scale is rendered as luminance in the diagram directly above.

All contemporary displays only currently show between 2 – 3 orders of this scale, but we now have a new prototype which displays across 5 orders and the BBC in turn have created a 200 frame per second projection system. By combining variants of frame rate, resolution and dynamic range, we should be able to effectively produce ‘the perfect picture’ by then calibrating these functions to produce a combination that best resonates with our eye/brain pathway - and therefore conscious awareness. The proposition is that if we can manipulate all the factors of the construction of the digital image then conscious immersion may follow.