As one of the few ways AI can be a useful tool, and not a completely artistic and creative substitute (which is what we strongly prefer for our AI models and tools), Beeble introduced SwitchHDR as a new AI frontier model aimed at reconstructing HDR images from traditional SDR video.
This new process results in 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 actually has the potential to help filmmakers, colorists, and VFX artists, or if it’s a more dangerous AI replacement technology.
Beeble’s SwitchHDR
Announced as a new “AI Frontier Model,” Beeble’s SwitchHDR appears to be a new, tightly controlled SDR-to-HDR tool that solves the problem that SDR video can only capture a fraction of the dynamic range typically present in real-world scenes.
“While most of the world’s video exists in SDR, today’s productions have increased expectations for HDR-quality assets. SwitchHDR bridges that gap by extrapolating scene-linear HDR representations from existing footage, giving filmmakers a practical way to integrate SDR footage into modern HDR production pipelines while maintaining creative control.” – Hoon Kim, Beeble CEO.
This new tool and workflow compresses highlights, shadow clips, and details that are lost in traditional SDR to HDR workflows. This workflow can only redistribute the remaining signal and often introduces banding, noise, and other artifacts.
However, this new SwitchHDR option is trained on real HDR footage and claims to be able to reconstruct a reasonable HDR representation rather than stretching an existing SDR signal. The end result, of course, is the ability to reconstruct all lost highlight and shadow details, suppress shadow noise, and maintain temporal consistency across video sequences.
Price and availability
Designed for professional production and post-production workflows, this new conversion tool ideally uses intensity masks to define highlight and shadow areas, allowing users to guide the model with individual text prompts.
HDR reconstruction is applied only to the selected region, the rest of the image is performed without AI reconstruction, and the output is delivered as an ACES2065-1 (AP0) scene-linear 16-bit EXR sequence, allowing seamless integration into professional grading, compositing, and VFX pipelines.
If you want to learn more or try it out for yourself, SwitchHDR is available through Beeble’s web application. You can check it here.
