Hyperion (SDR to HDR)

Unlock HDR depth from SDR footage

Model Overview

Hyperion converts standard dynamic range video into high dynamic range by expanding luminance range, bit depth, and contrast. It redistributes tonal values across highlights, midtones, and shadows to better utilize HDR display capabilities while preserving image detail and balance.

The model supports HDR transfer function selection, allowing users to choose PQ for mastering and cinematic HDR delivery, or HLG for broadcast and display-referred workflows. This flexibility enables SDR footage to be adapted for a wide range of modern HDR pipelines.

Key Capabilities

• Expand SDR footage into HDR with increased bit depth and contrast

• Improve highlight, midtone, and shadow separation beyond SDR limits

• Choose PQ or HLG output to match professional HDR delivery workflows

Pricing

Duration	720p	1080p	4K
1s	1	1	1
5s	1	1	3
10s	1	2	6
1m	4	8	31
5m	17	38	151
10m	34	76	302

The above credit costs are all estimates calculated at 30fps. For more accurate pricing, we recommend checking out our Credit Calculator.

Getting Started

Endpoint

• https://api.topazlabs.com/video

  • model — "hyp-1"

API Parameters

• transfer_function — "pq" or "hlg"; default "hlg"

• adjust_exposure — decimal between 0 and 1, default 0.5

• boost_saturation — decimal between 0 and 1, default 0.5

• highlight_threshold — decimal between 0.45 and 0.85, default 0.65

Examples

This model's enhancements will only be visible with an HDR screen.

Click to view

Click to view

Click to view

More on SDR to HDR

Dynamic Range

Dynamic Range is the contrast between the brightest highlights and darkest shadows of a video.

Standard Dynamic Range (SDR)

• Holds a scope of 6-10 stops for video.

• Generally 8-bits per channel with a total of 24 bits per pixel.

• The brightest luminance value can range around 100 up to 400 nits (candela per square meter) depending on the display.

• Has a total contrast ratio of around 1,200:1.

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

• Holds a scope of 12-17.6 stops for video. Though most cameras can produce up to 15 stops.

• Generally 10-bits per channel (but can have 32 bits floating point per channel) with a total max of 96 bits per pixel.

• The brightest luminance value is around 10,000 nits (candela per square meter), but will only display up to 1,000 nits on most HDR monitors.

• The maximum contrast ratio of around 20,000:1 on LCD displays and 1,080,000:1 on an OLED display.

Compared to SDR, HDR holds more range in the middle gray values, shadows and pushes the brightest and darkest values further apart. The limitation, really comes down to the viewing capability with our displays.

As noted above, in order to see HDR you will need to have a display that is capable of displaying these values. Luckily the most recent cell phones, TVs, desktop monitors and some handheld gaming displays can display HDR. Though, not all HDR displays are made the same. This is something you will need to do research on your own devices to know what’s the maximum values you can actually view.

If you view an HDR video on a non-HDR display, you may see clamped/flattened values. In the example above, the highlight values appear 'clipped' because they are out of range of the display.

Image above has been photographed off of an HDR Display

Viewing the same clipped HDR image from an HDR monitor you are easily able to see a wider dynamic range, most notable in the clouds.

The Codecs

Compatible Codecs

• Hyperion supports 8-bit, 10-bit, 12-bit, and 16-bit codecs.

Things to Consider

SDR to HDR is a very adaptive tool and works on most types of footage. However you need to keep in mind that at the end of the day this is creating a faux HDR out of an SDR video, so there are a few things to consider.

• SDR to HDR does not operate well with interlaced footage. If you do have interlaced footage, it’s recommended that you deinterlace first before applying this tool.

• Using enhancements with Hyperion is always going to be a good combo as fewer compression and artifacts will generally give better results.

• Though you technically can apply the SDR to HDR tool to small-low quality footage that you are upscaling, subtle approaches with Hyperion may be the best for these types of sources. The more image data and resolution, the better starting point you have when applying this tool.

• Moving shots with inconsistent lighting may not be as ideal, since the tool is adapting to each frame. There may be visual surging and blooming due to this. Quick shots are actually less of an issue as this is somewhat expected.

• Video with very muddy and dark imagery may not work so well. There could be too little of a range to build upon.

• Video that is too bright and blown out, may also have a similar issue, as there could be too little range to build upon.