Interview: Andrew Dunne, BBC Studios

As Technology Manager for the recently integrated BBC Worldwide and BBC Studios, Andrew Dunne spoke before his IBC session about his love of Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG), the method developed by the BBC and NHK for delivering high dynamic range but made it clear that customer demand comes first.

“My point of view is slightly different to the BBC service culture. Anything we deliver into the BBC will be an HLG master but for Blu-ray UHD we have to use either HDR10 or Dolby Vision, which has cost implications because it is slightly more expensive to create,” says Dunne. “Generally, for discs we do not see there is a requirement to deploy Dolby Vision yet, but people like the VOD platforms may well require that we provide Dolby Vision because it is their HDR format of choice. Currently Netflix requires Dolby Vision metadata.

“We have to figure out a best way of delivering all these different variants,” he adds. “We may have a customer that does not want wide colour gamut or HDR, so we need to complement the HDR master we have with Rec. 709 standard dynamic range and normal colour gamut.”

The big IBC questions for Dunne were: what is required of production, how can storage work, and how should conversions be made from the highest, best quality master. And is HLG the truly good format, but people have forgotten it?

“I would tend to agree, but what is very interesting about HLG as opposed to all the PQ-based options is that they are..