Dolby Vision

Dolby Vision is an HDR system built on dynamic metadata. Where HDR10 ships one static MaxCLL/MaxFALL for the whole program, Dolby Vision analyzes and stores metadata per shot, so each scene maps optimally to whatever display is playing it — a dark scene and a blazing exterior get different mapping instructions. The HDR master itself doesn’t change; the metadata rides alongside it in an XML sidecar, and the playback device does the mapping. That’s why the SDR output is called a derived master — no second render, just the HDR file plus metadata mapped live. The metadata has an automatic base (L1 analysis) and manual per-target trims (L2), applied by the CMU. It’s the premium-streaming HDR standard.

First used in: 3.7 · Dolby Vision & derived deliverables