Support

Lumio HDR Studio · Digital Arts ApS

Get in touch

Questions, bug reports and feature requests are all welcome at lumio@digitalarts.dk.

System requirements

macOS 26 Tahoe or later, on Apple silicon. Lumio does not run on Intel Macs.

How much difference will I see?

An HDR video stores how bright each part of the picture should be. The display decides how much of that you actually see.

On a Mac, documents, web pages and the rest of the screen share the same white. HDR video can go brighter than that white, which is why it can stand out from everything else on the screen. How many times brighter than white the display can go is called headroom. Apple calls the range above white EDR, short for Extended Dynamic Range. Other systems do the same job under other names.

Displays differ a lot. A MacBook Pro with an XDR display can go up to sixteen times as bright as white. A MacBook Air or an iMac can go about twice as bright at most, and a typical external HDR display about five times.

White is set by your display brightness, not by anything in Lumio. Turn the brightness up, and white climbs toward the display's limit, leaving less headroom above it. Turn it down, and more headroom opens up. When there is very little headroom, the SDR and HDR views look much alike. Lumio checks your display when it starts, and tells you if it has little or no headroom.

The file Lumio exports is made for HDR displays, like an iPhone or a MacBook Pro. On an SDR display it plays as SDR, so you don't need a separate SDR version. HLG was made for exactly this, one file for both kinds of display, while PQ depends more on the player. See Should I export HLG or PQ? below.

The file is also the same whether you export on a display with plenty of headroom or almost none. Your display only affects what you see while you adjust. So before you call an export finished, look at the result on a display with plenty of headroom.

Common questions

Which files can Lumio open and write?
It reads MP4, MOV and M4V files, in SDR or HDR, and streams over HLS. It writes MP4 or MOV in HEVC, H.264 or ProRes 422 HQ. HEVC and ProRes 422 HQ are 10-bit, H.264 is 8-bit, and ProRes 422 HQ writes to MOV only. Output is PQ or HLG.

Lumio opens the same files as QuickTime Player. If a MOV file won't open in either, it may use a professional codec that macOS doesn't include, such as Avid DNxHR. Apple's free Pro Video Formats package adds a number of these codecs to your Mac, and Lumio can then open files that use them.

Can Lumio play a stream?
Yes. Press Command-L and enter the address of an HLS stream, and Lumio plays it through the conversion as it arrives. On a Mac with Lumio installed, the links below open a stream directly. Your browser asks before it opens Lumio. These streams are run by others, and may change or stop without notice.

Can I convert a stream to a file?
No. A stream is watched through the conversion as it arrives, and nothing is written to disk. It is a way to see material rather than a way to produce a file.

Why is Peak Brightness grayed out?
Because the video you opened is already HDR. Peak brightness is part of the material at that point, and there is no SDR picture to lift. Brightness still works, because it scales the whole picture instead of lifting only the top, and Contrast and Saturation work as usual.

Can I undo a change to a video in my Photos library?
Yes. When Lumio modifies an existing video, Photos keeps the untouched version alongside it, so the change can be reverted at any time.

Should I export HLG or PQ?
HLG and PQ are two ways of storing HDR video. HLG adapts to the display. A video made for a bright HDR display still looks right on a dimmer one, and on an SDR display it plays as SDR. It is also what iPhone records. PQ stores exact brightness levels, and a display that can't reach them has to compress the picture itself, each device a little differently.

HLG is the safer choice for most work. For video on a web page, PQ tends to play more reliably, because browsers handle HLG less consistently. YouTube accepts both. The two come from the same conversion but never match exactly, so check the result in the HDR view before you export.

If a file is headed for a web page, play it in the browsers your audience uses before you settle on a type. If one of them shows the picture flat or dim, export the same conversion as the other type and compare.

Refunds

Lumio is sold through the Mac App Store, so refunds are handled by Apple rather than by us. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.