Bringing HDR video to Reels
Article Summary
Meta just solved a problem most users never notice: making HDR video look great on billions of devices with wildly different capabilities.
Meta's engineering team shipped HDR video support for Reels on Facebook and Instagram. The challenge wasn't just enabling HDR uploads, it was ensuring millions of daily HDR videos look good whether you're on the latest iPhone or a budget Android.
Key Takeaways
- Millions of HDR videos now uploaded daily to Reels platform
- Built custom Android shaders to handle fragmented HLG and PQ format support
- Server-side processing doubles compute costs but generates both HDR and SDR versions
- Solved UI legibility by rendering overlays in HDR with brightness multipliers
- Meta Scalable Video Processor manages the increased computational load at scale
Critical Insight
Meta now processes millions of daily HDR uploads while maintaining quality across devices that support different standards or only SDR.
