HDR
HDR mode lets your visuals go brighter than white. With it on, values above 1.0 survive through the whole render pipeline. The editor preview shows them as real HDR brightness on an XDR display, and you can record them to an HDR (HLG) video file that plays back as HDR in QuickTime, Photos and on iPhone.
Turning HDR on
Section titled “Turning HDR on”Open the Output panel (yellow display icon) in the right browser sidebar and switch on HDR (16-bit float) in the Render section. The setting is saved with the project.
With HDR on, every track, the master track and the master mix render in 16-bit float instead of 8-bit. That uses more GPU memory and bandwidth, so heavy projects at 4K may run slower. Switch it off if you don’t need it.
You can’t change HDR mode while a recording is running.
What HDR affects
Section titled “What HDR affects”| Output | With HDR on |
|---|---|
| Editor preview | Shows HDR brightness on displays that support it (MacBook Pro Liquid Retina XDR, Pro Display XDR and other EDR-capable screens) |
| Recording | Can record HDR (HLG) video, see below |
| Output window, Syphon, NDI, laser | Unchanged. They show the same image as before, with everything above white clipped to white |
| Screenshots, chain thumbnails | Unchanged (SDR) |
Projectors and LED walls are SDR, so your live output looks exactly the same with HDR on or off.
How bright is bright?
Section titled “How bright is bright?”In HDR mode, 1.0 is normal white, and anything above it is brighter than white. A value of about 2 is as bright as HDR gets. Above that, highlights roll off smoothly instead of clipping, so pushing further makes little difference.
Ways to get above 1.0:
- Add blend mode: stacking bright layers with Add adds their values together.
- Feedback loops with a gain above 1.
- Tonemap exposure, or any effect that brightens (brightness, gain, glow).
- HDR × on color parameters. In HDR mode, every shader color parameter gets an extra HDR × slider under Hue, Sat and Val that multiplies the color from 1× to 4×. That lets a generator output, say, 2× orange directly. The slider is ignored when HDR is off, and it can’t be mapped yet.
Effects and blend modes that clip to white
Section titled “Effects and blend modes that clip to white”Most effects pass values above 1.0 through. These clip to the 0–1 range:
- LUT: a LUT is only defined for 0–1 input.
- Tonemap: it compresses highlights into 0–1 on purpose. Put it last in the chain if you want an SDR look.
- Datamosh, Quality Crusher, JPEG Crush, Byte Bender: they run the image through real 8-bit codecs or 8-bit pixel bytes.
- Pixel Sort, Image Tracer, and the Fluid Solver input.
These replace the image with their own output, which never goes above 1.0: Type Repeater, Wave Sim, Chladni, Line Oscillator, and 3D, point cloud and splat scenes.
Blend modes: Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, Hard Mix, Color Burn, Color Dodge, Divide, Exclusion, Color, Luminosity and Saturation clip both layers to 0–1 where they blend. Add, Screen, Lighten, Max, Multiply, Darken, Difference, Subtract, Linear Burn, Mix and all transitions are HDR-safe.
Shaders that use multiple passes can also clip at an intermediate pass, unless that pass is marked as float.
The HDR preview
Section titled “The HDR preview”When HDR is on, the main editor preview switches to an HDR-capable view. Content between 0 and 1 looks exactly as it did before. Brighter values light up above the rest of the interface on an XDR display. Hover previews, Explore and Studio previews, and the output window stay SDR.
How much brighter depends on your display:
- Screen brightness matters. EDR headroom shrinks as you turn the screen brightness up. At full brightness a MacBook Pro has little headroom left, so HDR highlights look close to white. Around half brightness gives the most room.
- Low Power Mode and battery can limit HDR brightness.
- Non-HDR displays show the clipped SDR image.
None of this affects what gets recorded. The recording always uses the full HDR range.
Recording HDR video
Section titled “Recording HDR video”- Turn on HDR (16-bit float) in the Output panel.
- Open the Recording panel and pick HEVC, ProRes or ProRes HQ. H.264 can’t record HDR.
- Switch on HDR (HLG) under the codec.
The file is 10-bit HDR in the HLG format (Rec.2020). It uses the same brightness ceiling and highlight rolloff as the preview, so what you see on an XDR screen is what you get. HEVC HDR files are about 25% larger than SDR at the same quality setting.
The HDR (HLG) button is disabled while recording, when HDR mode is off, or when H.264 is selected. Hover over it to see why.
HDR on Instagram
Section titled “HDR on Instagram”Instagram shows HDR most reliably for HEVC HLG video uploaded from the iPhone app. Uploads from a browser, or files that get re-encoded on the way, often end up SDR.
- Record with HEVC and HDR (HLG).
- AirDrop the file to your iPhone. It shows an HDR badge in Photos.
- Post it from the Instagram app.
Platforms change how they handle HDR over time, so test with one post before relying on it.
HDR in editing apps
Section titled “HDR in editing apps”ProRes with HDR (HLG) gives you a 10-bit HDR editing master. Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve read it as Rec.2020 HLG. Set your timeline to an HDR (HLG) color space to keep the highlights.