ORION-CONVERT Pipeline

ORION-CONVERT brings the power of Cromorama color science to real time hardware based conversion. This same color science is responsible for the Emmy nominated and IBC 2021 Special Award winning NBCU LUT based HDR-SDR broadcast workflows, as well as UEFA Euro 2020, Tokyo 2020 Olympics, FIFA 2021 Arab Cup, Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and the FIFA 2022 Qatar World Cup amongst others.  

ORION-CONVERT offers the necessary tools for broadcasters to create and deliver the HDR and SDR content consumers expect from a single master HDR workflow by providing critical controls required to set up the right conversion for your production. By being able to set the HDR and SDR reference anchor points in an HDR to SDR conversion, you can target an SDR program output that suits your market's SDR display needs. You can target 200 nits SDR resulting in a much more representative image for the camera shader and a more vibrant HDR image for the viewer at home or target a perceptual match at 100 nits SDR. Also, in an HDR to SDR conversion, the unique 2 stage knee offers a pre-conversion compression in HDR only and a post-conversion compression in SDR only providing very effective roll off management control. The new Gamma Compensation feature applies the optional OOTF (as described in section 5.1 of ITU-R BT.2408-5) to compensate for the subjective change in appearance between SDR and HDR ensuring compatibility between different color conversion philosophies.

This is a licensable upgrade and includes:

- Conversions utilizing floating point math for higher precision results
- SDR, HLG, and PQ transforms
- Scene-light and Display-light modes
- 2-stage Knee adjustment for pre and post conversion compression or expansion
- Compression amount control in HDR to SDR conversions
- Expansion amount control in SDR to HDR conversions
- Configurable SDR and HDR reference anchor points
- HDR Peak Nit sets the system gamma for display light conversions
- Gamma Compensation setting to compensate for the subjective change in appearance between SDR and HDR
- Easy to configure pixel perfect round tripping
- Clamping options
- Full bypass node for 12G-SDI and HDMI
- Support for ITU BT.2408, Operational Practices in HDR Television Production

This toolset enables HDR workflows to be set up and easily replicated utilizing ColorBox preset import and export capabilities.