The capability to encode and decode Wide Color Gamut (WCG) and High Dynamic Range (HDR) video content using HEVC Main 10 profile has been added to ITU-T H.265 | ISO/IEC 23008-2. This capability allows the signaling of transfer functions and associated information as part of SEI messages and VUI for HDR content and signaling of BT.2020 color information in VUI for WCG content. All Main 10 Profile based receivers will be able to decode the video but may not be able to do appropriate processing required to make video presentable on a non-HDR or non-WCG display. Therefore, in many applications (such as broadcast) that use the MPEG-2 TS it will be beneficial to signal presence of WCG and HDR video content as well as additional information at a program level. This enables HDR and WCG capable receivers to process the information in video ES and render the decoded content correctly. Receivers that do not have the capability to process WCG and HDR can either ignore the content or do their best effort to render the content on non-WCG and non-HDR display devices. This amendment specifies MPEG-2 TS ‘signaling’ to indicate presence of WCG and HDR video in the HEVC elementary stream.
This amendment does not specify a new stream_type when HDR content is present in the HEVC elementary stream as video can be decoded by conventional HEVC decoders that conform to the 10-bit profile. Key signaling that is proposed is an extension to the HEVC video descriptor to indicate that the video component includes WCG and/or HDR video. The amendment uses two of the ‘reserved’ bits in the descriptor to create an indicator to signal SDR, SDR+WCG or HDR+WCG video, or “no indication”.