Your Player Has an HDR Option. How Do You Make Your Own Video HDR?

Key takeaways

• An HDR switch in a player or in Windows changes how your screen shows video; it doesn't turn the file into HDR.
• A real HDR video is a 10-bit file with an HDR transfer curve (PQ or HLG) and wide-gamut BT.2020 color.
• There are three routes to one: record in HDR, grade log or RAW footage to HDR, or convert SDR to HDR.
• SDR-to-HDR conversion expands brightness and color; it can't recover highlights the camera clipped.
• Check the file with ffprobe, and watch it on an HDR screen before you share it.

To make your own video HDR, you need an HDR file, not an HDR setting. Record in HDR on a phone or camera that supports it, grade log footage to an HDR output, or convert an existing SDR video to HDR and export it as 10-bit PQ or HLG.

The HDR options in players and streaming apps look similar but do something else: they let your screen show HDR, or they brighten SDR on the fly for your eyes only. In this guide, you'll learn what each HDR option does, the three routes to an HDR file, how to check one, and what viewers need to see it.

Contents

1. What the HDR option in your player does
2. What makes a video file HDR
3. Which route should you use?
4. Route 1: Record in HDR
5. Route 2: Grade log or RAW footage to HDR
6. Route 3: Convert SDR to HDR
7. How to do it in KwaFlux
8. Check that the file is HDR
9. Common problems
10. FAQ

What the HDR option in your player does

"HDR" appears in three different places, and only one of them is about the file:

So if you turn on RTX Video HDR in the driver and your SDR video looks punchier, that improvement exists only on your PC. NVIDIA describes it as remapping SDR video to HDR10 using AI, in supported browsers and VLC, on an RTX graphics card with an HDR10 display. Anyone you send the video to still gets SDR.

What makes a video file HDR

An HDR video is a file whose brightness is encoded with an HDR transfer curve, PQ or HLG, usually with BT.2020 color primaries and at least 10 bits per channel. SDR video uses the BT.709 curve and a picture designed for a peak of about 100 nits; HDR describes highlights up to 1,000 nits and more, and a wider range of colors.

That means three things have to be right in the file:

• Transfer curve: PQ (used by HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision) or HLG (used in broadcast and by many phones).
• Color primaries: BT.2020.
• Bit depth: 10-bit or more, encoded with H.265 (HEVC), AV1, or VP9 Profile 2. 8-bit H.264 isn't used for HDR delivery.

Just tagging an SDR file as PQ doesn't make it HDR; it only makes players misread it. For the details of PQ, HLG, and metadata, see SDR vs HDR: tone mapping, PQ, and HLG.

Which route should you use?

Route 1: Record in HDR

Many recent phones record HDR directly. On supported iPhone models, the Camera app records Dolby Vision HDR when Settings › Camera › Record Video › HDR Video is on. Many Android phones offer an HDR10+ or HDR video option in the camera's video settings. Mirrorless and cinema cameras often record HLG or a log profile (see Route 2).

Sidenote: HDR recordings look dim or washed out when an app or editor doesn't support HDR, because it shows the HDR signal as if it were SDR. That's a viewing problem, not a recording one. See why a video looks different on each screen.

Route 2: Grade log or RAW footage to HDR

Log and RAW recordings keep a wide range of brightness that you shape in an editor. In DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, or Final Cut Pro, set the project or timeline to an HDR color space (Rec.2100 PQ or HLG), grade on an HDR monitor if you can, and export H.265 10-bit with the HDR tags. This gives the most control, and it takes the most skill and the right monitor.

Route 3: Convert SDR to HDR

Most videos people already have are SDR. Converting them to HDR means expanding the picture: lifting highlights into the HDR range, keeping mid-tones and skin where they belong, and mapping BT.709 color into BT.2020. There are three ways to do that, with very different results:

AI conversion can't recover detail in highlights the camera already clipped to white; it can only brighten them. For measured comparisons of these methods, see SDR to HDR, measured.

How to do it in KwaFlux

KwaFlux converts SDR video to HDR on your own computer:

1. Import the video and open AI Color Grading. Set Grading Mode to SDR to HDR (video only).
2. Choose a Scene: Landscape or Nightscape use preset brightness; choose Custom to set the Brightness slider yourself (higher is brighter).
3. Preview a few seconds on an HDR display, if you have one, and compare with the original.
4. Export. KwaFlux recommends H.265 in MKV; AV1 is the other choice. Under color space, HDR PQ (Rec.2020) is the default, and HDR HLG (Rec.2020) suits HLG playback, such as many TVs and phones; both are 10-bit. SDR (BT.709) is there too, for an SDR copy.

If the clip is also soft or noisy, run Quality Repair with Smart Repair first, then convert the repaired version to HDR, so the extra brightness doesn't make noise more visible.

Check that the file is HDR

Run ffprobe on the exported file:

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=codec_name,pix_fmt,color_transfer,color_primaries,color_space -of default=nw=1 output.mkv

An HDR file reports a 10-bit pixel format (such as yuv420p10le), color_primaries=bt2020, and color_transfer=smpte2084 for PQ or arib-std-b67 for HLG. In our test, an H.265 PQ file showed exactly that, while an ordinary H.264 file showed yuv420p and no HDR transfer. Then watch it on an HDR display: highlights should be brighter than the SDR version, with faces about the same.

Common problems

Final thoughts

The HDR button in your player is about your screen; an HDR video is about the file. Record in HDR when you can, grade log footage when you need control, and convert SDR with AI when the footage already exists. Then check the tags and watch it on an HDR display before you share it.

Turn SDR videos into real HDR files

KwaFlux's AI Color Grading converts SDR video to HDR PQ or HLG, 10-bit, on your own computer. Media files are not uploaded for processing. It runs on Windows 10 (64-bit, version 1809 or later), Windows 11, and macOS 12 or newer on Apple Silicon. Importing files and exploring the app need no account. Signing in with an active paid plan is required only to export, convert, repair a file, or download a file from a link.

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