Forza 7: Our First HDR Comparison Video (Patreon)

Hey everyone, Rich here. Whenever we upload a 4K video to YouTube, there's always an embarrassingly long wait as Google's servers slowly work through the various encodes. 99 per cent of the time, we choose to hang on for the 2160p60 video to complete processing before we punt the video live.

That extended lag is exactly what I'm dealing with right now, but as the video in question has far more value to our Patreon supporters, I thought I'd activate the download now while YT churns through the higher resolution encodes.

OK, so we've sorted of figured out HDR video production workflow using Adobe Premiere Pro - a tool that does not support HDR, but one that we're comfortable using. We've run a couple of HDR videos in the past, but it's always been straight capture with minimal editing, compositing etc. Anything we add to an HDR video - logos, frame-rate graphs, text etc - all needs to be remapped from SDR to HDR, which really does complicate matters! This is the first HDR head-to-head we've done and while John's working on something rather more ambitious for GT Sport we hope to put live tomorrow, I thought I'd run the proof of concept today.

It's the Dubai stage from Forza 7, with fresh 4K HDR capture from Xbox One S and PC, stacked up against our X captures that hail from E3. Aside from some colour changes and tunnel lighting, not much as actually changed across the months. Time of day and cloud cover changes are interesting here, so each version looks unique. Turn 10 is looking to add some degree of dynamism to the game, making each time you race a little different.

Any way, this looks pretty great on my LG B6, and I'd recommend downloading it checking it out. Here's the link: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/2017-10-11-forza-motorsport-7-xbox-one-x-pc-xbox-one-s-hdr-head-to-head