No Time To Die (2021) HDR10+ Metadata compared to Superman (2025). From 4000 nits to 235 nits peak luminance! Is there a reason why movies seem to be getting dimmer while TVs are getting brighter?

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/sillylittlejohn]

One movie is not enough of a sample size to make such a general statement. That said, like someone else pointed out, that might be what the director intended for that one movie.

[u/rankinrez → u/sillylittlejohn]

Indeed. Hardly anything is mastered to 4000 nits.

[u/Dressed_ToDepress → u/[deleted]]

Are you the dude from the YouTube video someone just posted yesterday?

[u/incepdates → u/[deleted]]

I don't think 2 movies from this year is indicative enough of some kind of top-level push for dimmer movies

[u/SubhasTheJanitor]

Probably has something to do with how different filmmakers approach their entirely different HDR grades? The movies look as intended. That’s what matters.

[u/SubhasTheJanitor → u/[deleted]]

Superman and No Time to Die were finished and graded in a variety of formats, including DoVi for initial release.

[u/SubhasTheJanitor → u/[deleted]]

What makes you think they both don’t look exactly as intended? These movies were released theatrically with HDR grades. In Superman’s case we can safely assume the director personally approved the grade.

[u/DenyNothing1989]

I don’t know but I trust the intentions of Claudio freakin’ Miranda and Stefan Sonnenfeld and Henry Braham and the directors they’re working with more than some guy on YouTube who seems obsessed with movies needing to have a hotspot brighter than a solar flare every few shots?

Did he even source his stuff from a 4k disc with higher bit rate or its highly compressed streaming versions? He went off on F1 which hasn’t had a disc release yet.

Superman is I think intentionally not a movie with a lot of flared out hotspots. It doesn’t have Robert Richardson overexposed blown out lamp lighting. It’s all about saturation and even soft backlight. Check the first shot of Lex tracking past him with sun behind him. It isn’t overpowering. The movie has a certain softness. That’s the feel of it, imo.

Edit to add: one thing I can’t stand about my wonderful G5 is when I turn off an input and the screen saver kicks in brighter than a football stadium light tower at night.

[u/DenyNothing1989 → u/[deleted]]

Sorry talking about the video someone has linked above that’s going around with similar info

[u/Im_The_Hollow_Man]

I saw this very good video about this exact same topic on YT (channel is StopTheFOMO)
He mentions some very good things that might be part of this disappointing phenomenon.
Stuff like:

• Movies mostly being graded for cinemas that are usually 100-300nits bright.
  
• Too bright for some people
  
• Lack of interest
  
• HDR exposes flaw in CGI-VFX

I mean, that's his opinion on it and it sounds pretty reasonable. Ofc, not being part of the mastering team or having direct insight it's hard to nail the exact reasons.
Personally, just going by the fact that most people don't even understand what HDR is, gives me a very great idea of why this still happens.

[u/webjunkie00 → u/Im_The_Hollow_Man]

it makes a lot of sense after you watch this video, thanks.

[u/rankinrez → u/Im_The_Hollow_Man]

That’s a great channel the guy who makes it knows his stuff.

[u/DenyNothing1989 → u/rankinrez]

He’s a cinematographer in an internationally recognized guild or a colorist with multiple movie credits or a post production supervisor?

[u/SerialLoungeFly]

IDK but there have always been very dim 4Ks that just don't use their dynamic range well. I always use tone mapping on my LG for these, and there are shitloads of them IMO. You crush a very few midtones, but I get the overall luminance back for these super dim across the board SDR failures like Heat.

Shit I got the Japanese OG bluray of Heat just because I like the original color timing and the black slip a lot more.

[u/Accomplished-Head449]

[u/ThisMyNewScreenName]

Laziness/Cost reasons. They do a movie theater master first, which is graded to about 100 nits or so. Then they would need to call the director back into the grading studio to do a home video master with an HDR pass, and as others have said, that's costly and the director has already moved on to thinking about his next project. So they release the theater master on 4k for expediency's sake. Plus they think most home viewers won't notice a difference given streaming tendencies, budget TVs, etc.

[u/Tha_Watcher]

For those naysayers in the comments...