Judge HDR to SDR on real frames. Then test your own screens.
Judge the SDR conversions of these evaluated HDR10 masters alongside their published colourist grades. Test your own files and target screens, with sharper resizing, tone mapping and encoding settings under your control.
A free test on your own files · or book a meeting
Same frame, conversion and reference.
A silken conversion beside the title’s published colourist SDR grade. Select a scene, drag the divider and press Z for 1:1.
Arrow keys choose a scene. Left and right square brackets move the divider. Z zooms to 1:1.
How these frames were made
Each pair shows a silken conversion of the title’s HDR10 master and its published SDR grade at 1920×1080. These selected examples do not establish quality on other footage or devices. Frames are shown as WebP or AVIF.
Sol Levante (2020) © Netflix, Inc., made with Production I.G — CC BY 4.0, modified (tone-mapped, scaled)Meridian (2016) © Netflix, Inc. — Netflix Open Content, CC BY 4.0, modified (tone-mapped, scaled)Cosmos Laundromat (2016), Blender Studio, dir. Mathieu Auvray — via Netflix Open Content, CC BY 4.0, modifiedSparks (2017) © Netflix, Inc. — Netflix Open Content, CC BY 4.0, modified (tone-mapped, scaled)
Use our tone map, your grade or the source's own trims.
Pick per title. The SDR renditions are encoded, packaged and delivered the same way whichever one you choose.
- 01silken's tone map
The curve, gamut handling and look below, set per request.
- 02Your own SDR grade
Send the colourist's SDR master with the HDR master, and the SDR renditions are encoded from your grade.
- 03Dynamic metadata in the source
silken follows the dynamic metadata already in the source to make the SDR version. The result is an SDR version.
Set the look for each job.
There is no single correct mapping for every shot, so each control is a request field, and a control that cannot apply to a source is rejected rather than silently ignored. Keep the settings you like in your request template and reuse them per title or per channel.
Optional “Highlight detail” mode keeps more texture in bright highlights. It adds 10% to the base price of each tone-mapped output minute, before speed and volume discounts. Off by default; available on Standard and Fast.
tone.highlight_detail- Highlight detail keeps more texture in bright highlights. Optional, off by default; adds 10% of the base rate per tone-mapped output minute before speed and volume discounts. Standard and Fast only. Requires the reference look; incompatible tone overrides and grade references are rejected. PQ/HLG YUV sources only; RGB and unsupported source layouts are refused after inspection.
tone.style- The look. reference (the default) maps light the way colourists grade SDR from HDR: mid-tones independent of the mastering metadata, colorimetric chroma, closest to colourist grades in our tests. natural is the previous standard mapping (with the delivery grade); setting knee or black_point without a style selects it. bright is slightly lighter; vivid is 1.2x chroma; cinematic is darker and muted. Fine-tune with tone.exposure and tone.saturation.
tone.exposure- Exposure offset in stops applied on top of the style. Positive is brighter mid-tones. 0 is off.
tone.saturation- Saturation multiplier applied on top of the style. 1 is off.
tone.method- Tone curve. auto picks the BT.2390 luma-Hermite path, or the authored curve when the source carries one.
tone.gamut- How BT.2020 colour outside BT.709 is handled: hard clip, perceptual compression, or desaturation toward luma.
tone.black_point- Shadow-toe adaptation applied inside the tone curve. 0 disables it.
tone.peak- Where the source peak comes from: the file's own metadata, or measured per frame.
tone.local_contrast- Local-contrast restore strength. 0 is off; a global curve flattens fine detail and this puts it back.
tone.chroma_recovery- Saturation restore for colour dulled by the luma curve. capped bounds it to the gamut hull.
tone.chroma_strength- Strength of that restore. Requires tone.chroma_recovery.
An SDR file that plays as SDR.
- Tagged BT.709. HDR mastering-display and content-light side data is removed, so a player has nothing left to treat as HDR.
- HDR10 and HLG. Both transfer functions are detected per source and go through the same tone curve and controls.
- In the same job. HDR sources produce SDR renditions. Tone mapping is included in the output price on Standard and Fast; Economy accepts SDR only. Keep HDR10 or HLG in HEVC Main10 versions alongside SDR versions in one HLS ladder. HDR versions use the HEVC price, with no extra HDR fee.
Questions
Which HDR sources does silken convert?
HDR10 (PQ) and HLG sources go through the tone curve, with or without static metadata, and the output is tagged BT.709 so players treat it as SDR.
Can I control the tone mapping?
Yes. Tone curve, gamut handling, black point, local contrast and chroma recovery are set per request, and a request with a control that cannot apply is rejected rather than ignored.
How do I judge the result on my own footage?
Run your own clips through the API with the settings you want and compare them with your reference conversion; for a team evaluation, book a pilot on your files.
Send us your hardest files.
Send 10-20 files, your hardest HDR titles included. We agree the results date after engineering confirms capacity. You see, next to your current conversion and your colourist’s grade: picture quality on your own screens, speed, failures and the full cost at your volume. Free within the standard scope.