OK. I’ll give a shot at explaining this in a way that’s balancing informative, accurate, accessible, and pithy. (I expect to fail at least one.)
First, break it into parts. “HDR on 8K ProRes 4444 video” These describe a list of different file attributes for video. Each one is basically someone saying move all the sliders up.
HDR - High Dynamic Range. I think this one is the best understood already given the use of the term in consumer TVs, and iPhones, etc. For our use the important part is that the file contains information about a wider range of light level for each pixel, therefore more data per pixel, and therefore the file will be larger, and the computer will have more to handle as it works on the file.
8K - maybe better understood than HDR because people are familiar with 4K, but maybe less familiar because nobody is buying 8K displays or content. Anyway, this is describing the number of pixels per frame of video and the larger resolution means therefore the file will be larger, and the computer will have more to handle as it works on the file. (4 times larger than 4K)
4444 - This is the one that’s going to be the most wonk-y. You often see this expressed as something that looks more like 4:4:4:4 . If you want to dive in further you could start here and here, but for this post I’ll just say that visual information in a video file can be measured — and therefore described for re-creation — in a few ways and this is saying that each of those ways is being measured in the most data-capturing way (Each number represents one of those ways as a ratio on a scale of 1-4). “4444” is another way of saying there is no sub-sampling. Because each attribute is measured at the highest rate, the file will be larger, and the computer will have more to handle as it works on the file.
ProRes - as the files are getting larger (I assume you saw a trend above), you start to hit problems with storing, transmitting, and otherwise dealing with the files. Enter compression. Most are familiar with “.mp4/m4v” “.mkv”, or relatedly, “.mp3” ProRes is a “standard” for video compression/bundling that is primarily engineered to benefit video editors or others that work with video files before they are distributed. However, nothing comes for free. The trade of of smaller files is that the processor now needs to do the work of de/compressing as you work on the file and so ProRes files stress the processor more (and the storage less).
Now for the other part, “grade color” Somewhat like developing film, the data files that come out of cameras are not very useful until you do work on them. The data is recorded in the most “pure” form they can be, but that’s not normally a video that is very accurate to the human perception, and not aesthetically pleasing. (It will often look washed out or hazy). Part of this is because the file has more information than the devices that show them can portray. Color grading will often narrow the range of information to just what is useful, or boosts certain attributes like contrast, or adjusts the “temperature” of the image to match the mood desired. There are a lot of reasons and goals for color grading, but for more and more video it is not-optional to do it for at least SOME level. Presets make this easy on the person, but does not reduce how much work the computer needs to do.
Grading is particularly important for evaluating system performance, because it typically needs to touch every pixel of every frame (or if not, the frame needs to be pre-analyzed to determine which pixels could be left alone, which also is computationally intensive) and so the more data in the file, the more “work” is involved. The gold standard is “Real Time” which means the computer can apply the grading at least as fast as you can perceive it as the file plays back, frame by frame.
Hopefully this helped, or at least helped more than it hurt.
