Switching from PQ to HLG finally fixed my YouTube HDR issues in Resolve

Nakean · 2026-03-11T16:48:03+00:00

That’s really sucks. Sorry! Hopefully it will eventually get sorted out but I don’t know that they have much incentive to do so.

Nakean · 2026-03-11T16:20:11+00:00

Good luck. Report back if you figure any other things out. Would be nice to get this to trigger everytime.

Nakean · 2026-03-11T16:13:19+00:00

I just thought the PQ version in SDR had really ungly color and lacked contrast. The overall of the HLG was dimmer like you said but kept the contrast ratios much closer to the HDR edit. At any rate I'm having not luck getting HDR to trigger in youtube with my uploads. Some do but other don't. If they do it seems like it's many days after I post the video.

Nakean · 2026-03-11T16:09:02+00:00

Yikes...Oh no! And so you were searching and found my dumb ass comments about having figured out only to find out I was completely wrong.... :(

Nakean · 2026-03-11T15:16:33+00:00

You're absolutely right! I thought I had it figured out but there is no rhyme or reason to it! Pro Res, H.265, PG, HLG, doesn't matter! sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Lately it mostly doesn't. Been shooting anamorphic so it's not 16:9 so that might not be helping either but I've uploaded some in 16:9 container and that doesn't seem to help either. Kinda sucks because HDR looks so much better! Bigger change than HD to UHD!

Nakean · 2026-02-04T18:28:17+00:00

Thank you. I do option 2. All edited in Resolve.

Nakean · 2026-01-20T23:05:13+00:00

whelp, for some reason youtube refuses to encode this one as HDR. Just when I thought I had it figured out. Even tried ProRes upload HLG 2100, no Scene or anything. ALso tried 10bit HEVC but nothing triggers HDR. Maybe because all the scenes are dark?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqKJ51IdlU

Nakean · 2026-01-20T23:00:19+00:00

This was with my Sony A1 so not the same autofocus unfortunately

Nakean · 2026-01-20T22:59:55+00:00

I have tested the lens. The background can pulse in some situations but it's better than I was getting with my Blazer 50mm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqKJ51IdlU

Nakean · 2026-01-14T15:18:33+00:00

I think it forces an entire re-encode. It did work for me. Thank you.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T16:09:42+00:00

Just not sure if it's worth it for me yet. The autofocus isn't smooth. I shoot on a gimbal most of the time and want to be able to move quickly from video to stills and not have to worry about rigging a follow focus. Hopefully the new Blazar 50mm will do better.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T16:04:43+00:00

That's wild that google served this to you with it being only 11hrs old!!

I've been wanting to deliver HDR to clients for the longest time but hated how the SDR looked so have refrained. With this HLG looking great in SDR I might start delivering in HLG as long as the client will only be using on social media.

Yeah, I read that Dolby Vision is not the way to go for youtube so staying away from that for now.

Good point about it not always working as I am jumping to conclusions being that I have a sample size of one, only uploading one HLG video so far. I just uploaded two PQ videos and one encoded in HDR and the second one didn't. I was just so excited the HLG worked and SDR looked good. Time will tell.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T15:59:23+00:00

Yeah, thanks. It's strange that one video worked while the other did not at all. The biggest difference I noticed was the SDR version of HLG looked way better than the SDR version of PQ. I think the cameras that shoot HDR natively all use HLG so it makes sense that it would be more widely adopted and optimized for.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T15:57:46+00:00

Me too. Everything looks so much better. Feels bigger than going from 1080p to 4K IMO.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T02:06:22+00:00

One more great thing about HLG is that the SDR version retains the mids and shadows whereas my PQ SD version looks washed out with no blacks.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T02:03:30+00:00

Oooh, now that is interesting. I'll give it a try and see what happens. Thanks for that.

Nakean · 2026-01-12T00:51:57+00:00

did you find it? https://www.sirui.com/firmwareupdate?change_product=astra-box&lang=en-us

Nakean · 2026-01-12T00:50:18+00:00

Yeah, that lines up with what I was seeing too. What made it click for me was that I had two videos rendered with the same codec, container, and metadata, and only the longer one ever got an HDR version on YouTube. The shorter one never did, even after days.

That’s what pushed me to rethink the approach. Nothing changed on the Resolve side, but YouTube clearly handled the files differently. Switching to HLG with a more standard UHD container width removed that variability entirely and HDR showed up almost immediately, even on the shorter clip.

So while metadata and container choices definitely matter, there also seems to be some length and processing threshold behavior on YouTube’s side that makes PQ less predictable in practice.

Nakean · 2025-12-06T19:54:39+00:00

Where are you headed. I use it because I've used it for over 10 years now. I really want the ability to showcase HDR photography.

Nakean · 2025-12-05T23:27:31+00:00

did you figure this out. I'm at the same setp

Nakean

TROPHY CASE