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Glossary · concept

What is HDR (high dynamic range)?

HDR (high dynamic range) is a video signaling standard that carries a wider range of brightness and color than standard SDR video. HDR content shows brighter highlights, deeper shadows, and a wider color gamut on compatible displays. YouTube supports HDR10 and HLG; the file is usually larger and only renders correctly on HDR-capable screens.

Also called:hdr10 · hlg · high dynamic range

HDR is not "brighter than normal" — it's "wider range than normal". Standard video tops out at 100 nits of peak brightness; HDR can encode information up to 1000 or 10000 nits. A scene with both deep shadows and a sunlit sky no longer has to compress one or the other to fit; both can carry full detail.

YouTube uses HDR10 and HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma). Both are baked into the video stream itself — there is no "turn on HDR" button. If your display and player support HDR, the metadata is read and tone-mapped correctly. If not, the video looks washed out or dark because the SDR display interprets HDR brightness values wrongly.

When you download an HDR YouTube video and play it on an SDR monitor without tone mapping, the result is usually flat and desaturated. To "convert HDR to SDR" properly, you need a real tone-mapping pipeline (ffmpeg with zscale and tonemap filters); naive conversion just clips highlights.

Common questions

Does my browser play HDR YouTube videos?
Chrome, Edge, and Safari can decode HDR streams, but actual HDR rendering also needs an HDR display and the OS configured for HDR output. Without those, the browser falls back to a tone-mapped SDR view that may look dim.
How do I tell if a YouTube video is HDR?
In the YouTube quality menu, HDR options are labeled "1080p HDR", "4K HDR", etc. If you don't see "HDR" in the label, the video is SDR.

Related terms

Codec

A codec is the algorithm that encodes (compresses) and decodes raw audio or video into a smaller stream.

Resolution

Resolution is the pixel count of a video frame, expressed as width × height.

Bitrate

Bitrate is the amount of data a video or audio stream carries per second, measured in bits per second (bps) or kilobits (kbps) and megabits (Mbps).

AV1

AV1 is a royalty-free, open-source video codec from the Alliance for Open Media.

VidPickr is a free, browser-based YouTube downloader. Every term in this glossary either describes how YouTube delivers video or why your downloads behave the way they do. Try the downloader →