High dynamic range subjective testing

Abstract

This paper describes of a set of subjective tests that the authors have carried out to assess the end user perception of video encoded with high dynamic range technology when viewed in a typical home environment. Viewers scored individual single clips of content, presented in High Definition (HD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD), in Standard Dynamic Range (SDR), and in High Dynamic Range (HDR) using both the Perceptual Quantiser (PQ) and Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) transfer characteristics, and presented in SDR as the backwards compatible rendering of the HLG representation. The quality of HD SDR was improved by approximately equal amounts by either increasing the dynamic range or increasing the resolution to UHD. A further smaller increase in quality was observed in the Mean Opinion Scores of the viewers by increasing both the dynamic range and the resolution, but this was not quite statistically significant.