In what might be one of the few ways in which AI can be a helpful tool and not completely an artistic and creative replacement (which is what we strongly prefer for our AI models and tools), Beeble has introduced SwitchHDR as a new AI frontier model that aims to reconstruct HDR imagery from conventional SDR video.

The result of this new process is a controlled SDR-to-HDR pipeline that promises to produce scene-linear 16-bit EXR sequences for professional post-production workflows. Let’s take a look at this new AI tool and see if it is something that might actually help filmmakers, colorists, and VFX artists, or if it’s more doom-laden AI replacement technology.

Beeble’s SwitchHDR

Announced as a new “AI frontier model”, SwitchHDR from Beeble appears to be a new and tightly controlled SDR-to-HDR tool that solves the issue that SDR video can only capture a fraction of the dynamic range that is usually present in a real scene.

"Most of the world's video exists in SDR, yet today's productions increasingly expect HDR-quality assets. SwitchHDR bridges that gap by estimating a scene-linear HDR representation from existing footage, giving filmmakers a practical way to integrate SDR footage into modern HDR production pipelines while maintaining creative control." - Hoon Kim, CEO of Beeble.

With this new tool and workflow, once highlights, shadow clips, and details are compressed, they are lost in traditional SDR-to-HDR workflows, which can only redistribute the remaining signal, often introducing banding, noise, and other artifacts.

This new SwitchHDR option, though, claims to be trained on real HDR footage and can reconstruct a plausible HDR representation rather than stretching the existing SDR signal. The end result, of course, is to be able to rebuild all of your lost highlight and shadow detail, suppress shadow noise, and preserve temporal consistency across entire video sequences.

Price and Availability

Designed for professional production and post-production workflows, this new conversion tool will ideally be able to define highlight and shadow regions using luminance masks and have users guide the model with separate text prompts.

HDR reconstruction can then be applied only to selected regions, while the remainder of the image is carried through without AI reconstruction, and output can then be delivered as scene-linear 16-bit EXR sequences in ACES2065-1 (AP0), which promises to enable seamless integration into professional grading, compositing, and VFX pipelines.

If you’re curious to find out more or test it out yourself, SwitchHDR is available via Beeble’s web application, which you can check out here.

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