Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra: talk about things you didn’t know about HDR 10
Video is one of the best ways to record and present light and dark in the real world, and since the dawn of motion picture technology in 1872, people have been captivated by the lifelike, man-made moving image in front of them. Today’s smartphone cameras, screens, and platforms have evolved so rapidly that they are replacing traditional digital cameras and displays in many scenarios.
However, due to bandwidth and performance limitations, the majority of video files recorded on mobile phones today are often SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) video. It has limited light and dark detail, color, and saturation, which can lead to significant distortions such as chromatic aberration, luminance discontinuity, and low contrast.
Besides, when video creators increase the brightness of the video, there is also a saturation reduction problem, making the video image less colorful.
HDR 10 video, with its higher color depth, wider color gamut, and higher dynamic range, gives video creators more creative space to capture and display high-fidelity, highly immersive images, enabling viewers to experience immersive visual effects.
The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra phone supports 10bit HDR 10 video capabilities from video capture, ISP processing, encoding, and decoding to display, full-link, and end-to-end, all using a luxury configuration scheme that exceeds the HDR 10 standard in the selection of camera, screen, and processor.
What is HDR 10? A prerequisite for high dynamic range and color accuracy.
Let’s start with SDR: The SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) screen supported by ordinary smartphone video recording has only 16.77 million colors compared to the colors in reality, which tends to be infinite.
Continuous color changes, color deviation, color discontinuity (Banding) problems, the loss of a sense of depth; secondly, the brightness range of the SDR standard is only 0.005cd/m2 ~ 100cd/m2, which leads to two problems, one is the loss of highlight details and dark area details, and the other is the small difference between the maximum brightness and minimum brightness that can be expressed, low contrast, the picture is grayish. It presents a gray “haze feeling”.
The appearance of HDR 10 video is to break through the bottleneck of the SDR system from the shooting end to the display end of the color is not true, low dynamic range.
HDR 10 video has 10bit color depth, BT.2020 wide color gamut, SMPTE ST 2084 image transmission function and 0.005cd/m2 ~ 1000cd/m2 brightness range. Also, HDR10 video content contains static metadata not found in the SDR video, which records the maximum and minimum brightness of the video.
The display of the Mi 10 Ultra can determine the dynamic range of the entire video through the static data and select the most appropriate absolute brightness range to give the user the most realistic display.
What does the 10bit color depth bring to the table?
Displays unbroken, natural gradient: 10bit color depth means that each color channel has 210 gray levels, and the three RGB channels total 210x210x210, which means a total of 1.07 billion colors, while the 8bit color depth is only 16.77 million colors, which is a huge difference. 10bit HDR video has 64 times more color accuracy than 8bit SDR video, which can render more subtle and smooth shading and color variation.
When the brightness is increased, HDR10 video does not suffer from the lack of saturation of SDR video, so even in scenes with large light-to-light ratios that vary drastically, there is no color disruption, resulting in a rich, vibrant image. At the same time, the HDR10 standard has a brightness range 10 times that of the SDR standard, so HDR10 video has darker dark areas and brighter light areas in the picture, giving a transparent visual effect while still retaining detail in both dark and light areas.
What does the BT.2020 Wide Color Gamut bring to the table?
Richer colors and more vivid display: If you look at the colors in the real world as a collection, the different color gamuts are different subsets of this larger collection. The larger the subset covers, the more colors it contains, and the more it reflects the ever-changing color situations in the real scene.
The HDR 10 video recorded on the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra BT.2020 wide color gamut. The BT.709 color gamut of SDR videos recorded on regular phones only covers 35.9% of the BT.2020 color gamut. Combined with the 10-bit color depth of HDR10, the volume of the stereo color space is greatly increased compared to the SDR video, and the volume of the stereo color space represents the number of colors contained.
Recording Side: Imaging Blackout Straight Out 10bit 4K/8K HDR10 video
The reason why it was awarded the number one overall DXOMARK video score is that the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra main camera is customized this time with a top-of-the-line super-large-bottom 48-megapixel image sensor with a sensor size of 1/1.32 inch, a single-pixel size of 1.2μm, and a 4-in-1 fusion of 2.4um megapixels to output up to 12bit color depth of raw data.
It can also reproduce more dark and bright details in a scene with hardware dual ISO Fusion Super Dynamic technology to output 4K and 8K HDR10 Ultra HD video with superior picture quality. The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra delivers consistent and high-quality video in complex shooting environments such as low light, backlighting, and large light ratios.
Platform side: Snapdragon 865 opens up 10bit capture-to-display channel
The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra is powered by a Snapdragon 865 processor, and its new Computer Vision Video Signal Processor (CV-ISP) Spectra 480 has high speed and high precision image processing capabilities of 10bit or more. Its codec enables high-efficiency HEVC/H.265 codecs for 10bit video, outputting 4K 30fps, 4K 60fps and 8K 24fps video.
Display: HDR10+ certified native 10bit professional primary color screen
The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra features a 6.67-inch 120Hz dual-curved OLED professional primary color screen with 5,000,000:1 ultra-high contrast ratio, and supports MEMC motion compensation technology, which can effectively reduce the dragging of text and other content during sliding. Peak brightness is up to 1120 nits, supports DCI-P3 color gamut and native 10bit color depth display, and has passed HDR10+ certification.
Native 10bit is different from the 8+2bit software program mobile phone screen, 8+2bit is in 8bit screen through the pixel dithering technology (FRC) rapid color change to simulate the 10bit display effect, the effect can be very close to 10bit, but it is only close, and can not do the same, or can see the difference in the step transition. The native 10bit screen of the Mi 10 Supreme Edition can achieve a super-rich color display of 1.07 billion colors without FRC technology.
From shooting to display, the full HDR10 experience
Until today, most mobile phones on the market do not have a complete HDR 10 link, the main reason is that most mobile phones do not support HDR 10 video recording function. The HDR10 video playback/display function has been supported by several flagship phones and TVs, and the inability to record HDR10 video means that users need to download or purchase HDR10 sources to put the HDR10 video playback function of their phones or TVs to use.
Thanks to the 2.4μm 4-in-1 fusion of large pixels and hardware dual ISO Fusion technology of the Mi 10 Ultra custom main camera, it can output high-dynamic video data of 12bit/4K/30fps, 10bit/4K/60fps, 10bit/8K/24fps, fully utilizing and leveraging the 10bit properties of HDR10 video; while Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra has equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, its ISP, codec supports more than 10bit high precision high-speed data processing, coupled with true 10bit professional original color screen, since then, Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra phone is the first shooting, processing, display full link end-to-end coverage of HDR10 Xiaomi phone.
The HDR10 video shot by Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra is brighter in the light part and darker in the dark part, with rich, clear, transparent and bright images, especially when shooting large light ratio, large backlight, and large color block scenes, there will not be color disconnection problem of SDR video. Enjoy immersively and moving picture quality when you playback the HDR10 video you shot on the Mi 10 Ultra or a TV that supports HDR10.
Source: Xiaomi
