HDR video enhancement, processing and coding

Advances in digital camera technology have led to the development of image sensors that are capable of capturing High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. Although this has enabled the capture of greater depths of colour and illumination, there remain problems with regards to transmitting and displaying the HDR image data. Current consumer level displays are designed to only show images with a depth of 8-bits per pixel per channel. Typical HDR images can be 10-bits per pixel per channel and upwards, leading to the first problem, how to display HDR images on Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) displays. This is linked to a further problem, that of transmitting the HDR data to the SDR devices, due to the fact that most state-of-the-art image and video coding standards deal with only SDR data. Further, as with most technologies of this kind, current HDR displays are extremely expensive. Furthermore, media broadcast organisations have invested significant sums of money into their current architecture and are unwilling to completely change their systems at further cost. [Continues.]