Standardizing Brightness for Mobile Apps
When a Dolby Vision or HDR asset has been graded at a specified level of brightness, sometimes the levels on a viewer's iPad and iPhone can go beyond the creator's original intent. This can lead to misconceptions or perceived inconsistencies over color, brightness and shadows where none actually exist.
Flow Capture allows you to automatically control the brightness of your iPhone or iPad screen so that playback within our apps is always optimized for the files you’re viewing, whether it’s in Dolby Vision, HDR10, or SDR by using the Standardize Brightness toggle in the Folder Settings.
Keying the brightness level off of a project's reference monitor will give you the best, most accurate results for HDR and SDR review on the iPad or iPhone apps.
Note that standardizing brightness only works within the Flow Capture apps. It is not compatible with viewing HDR assets in Safari on an iPad or iPhone, so you will need to adjust it manually if you're viewing them via Playlink or a during a Realtime session on those platforms.
Adjusting the iPad's System-Level settings.
By default the iPad comes with a number of settings designed to adjust the display to suit different viewing environments such as True Tone and Night Shift. When using iPad devices for Color Review we will need to make sure these are disabled to ensure consistent playback across all devices.
More information is available here: Adjust the brightness and color temperature on your iPhone or iPad
Supported devices can also enable Reference Mode: Use Reference Mode on your iPad Pro
Adjusting the Setting
Once a brightness level has been decided upon for optimized viewing on each device, an Admin on the production can go into the settings of the Folder on Flow Capture where those assets have been uploaded to establish the brightness levels.
Switching the toggle on under iPad Standardize Brightness will allow you to adjust the preset to a previously decided upon level.
Once those are established, any viewer will be able to make use of them within our apps.
On the iPad
You'll find the toggle to Standardize Brightness under Options in the gear icon of the player’s Transport Controls.
On the iPhone
You'll also be able to find this setting within the gear icon in the app's Transport Controls. You may need to scroll down to the Options section to find the setting.
Enabling this on Apple devices helps ensure HDR colors are viewed as intended, without the iOS brightness interfering with the HDR grade.