Frequently Asked Questions

Full Color Range

FCR™️ means “all the colors humans can see.” FCR is an end-to-end color system starting with the RAW data captured by a camera imager, created electronically (e.g., animations, visual effects), or scanned (e.g., film).

The system allows for color processing and transport of all available colors to displays using existing formats and standards. (FCR is the only current system we know of that can do this.)

Each display then transforms the data to take maximum advantage of its own display characteristics: color gamut, dynamic range, white point, number of primaries, and xy positions of primaries.

Thus, the system can coexist with legacy RGB displays, in addition to enabling a variety of future multi-primary displays.

What are the benefits of FCR?

• FCR enables consumers to see near-full spectrum color. FCR delivers a significantly enhanced viewer experience: increased attention, greater sense of presence, intensified engagement, more complete suspension of disbelief, and the ability to really feel the emotional message. There is an “awe” factor.

• FCR provides expanded creative color choices to content producers. When using a display with four or more primaries, FCR can show colors not reproducible in any RGB system.

• FCR leverages existing technology and standards, with only minimal changes needed to any workflow. FCR operates at the same data rates as RGB systems, and it simplifies the future upgrade path to multi-primary displays.

Why is the FCR System superior to Rec.2020?

Rec.2020 provides a greater volume and chromaticity area than both Rec.709 and P3. However, significant colors are outside the Rec.2020 gamut. Furthermore, due to the narrow bandwidth of the Rec.2020 primaries (close to the spectral locus curve of the CIE chromaticity diagram) it is difficult to achieve these primaries in practical real-world displays.

Lasers, narrow-band LEDs, and quantum dots have been tried. The main problem is that these narrow-band light sources exacerbate metameric error, that is, different people viewing the same thing but perceiving different colors.

FCR multi-primary displays use primaries that are wider than those required for Rec.2020, but still narrow enough to achieve a high color saturation. The additional primaries fill in the gaps that would otherwise be left by narrowing the bandwidth of the RGB primaries. When comparing the area of CIE chromaticity coverage, adding just a fourth primary (4P) over Rec.2020’s three primaries includes up to 75% of the full CIE color spectrum, whereas Rec.2020 P3 includes only 67%.

Adding a fifth or sixth primary expands the color spectrum even more over Rec.2020.

What changes to current methods and standards are required to implement the FCR System?

(1) Add Yxy and XYZ as options in standard workflow and transport streams. There is no bandwidth increase over RGB, and FCR supports 8-bit, 10 bit, and 12-bit (preferred).

(2) Displays must be able to accept a 3-component signal or stream consisting of Yxy or XYZ data and transcode it to the display color gamut. This may be achieved in the display’s internal processor or through an external conversion device (LUT box) prior to the display input.

With this transcode capability, FCR is backward compatible with all RGB displays

The FCR System uses Yxy. What is Yxy?

Limiting the available colors to a particular RGB display space (e.g., Rec.709, Rec.2020, P3) excludes some colors that are not only visible to humans but are also well within the capture ability of modern digital cameras. The xy coordinates from the CIE 1931 color model (a model of human color vision, often called the “standard observer”), can be used to define all human visible colors. In the CIE 1931 color model, the full three-dimensional color space is represented as a triplet, XYZ,1 and this is used in digital cinema for distribution. The FCR System uses an alternative representation of the same CIE 1931 color space,

Yxy, that is an extension of XYZ—color scientists call this a “projection” from XYZ. Y in Yxy represents only luminance, and
the xy coordinates represent each specific color. Yxy has compatibility and data rate advantages over XYZ, in terms of its use over the wide range ofb current workflows and transport standards. Yxy is also compatible with HDR, and is compatible with both PQ and HLG formats.

How does FCR enable multi-primary displays?

With the FCR System, display manufacturers are not constrained by a specific display standard. They can implement as many primaries with whatever positions they need for their requirements and target markets. Beyond the consumer entertainment space, multi-primary displays can be optimized for medical, agricultural, surveillance, and other specialized markets.

In conjunction with Baylor University, 6P Color, Inc. is evaluating several display technologies that can be adapted to use four, five, six and more color primaries. Because the Yxy signal transport system can support displays with any number of primaries and with the full color spectrum, we see a future with a great variety of displays reproducing colors that viewers have never seen before.

This gives creatives a much wider palette, which allows them to enhance and focus the viewers perception of the images. Notably, FCR and Yxy work with existing color grading tools and workflows, expanding color choices and making full use of extended color already available from existing digital cameras.

Multi-Primary Color

Why Multi-Primary?

Displays employing four or more color primaries (multi-primary) are necessary to expand color gamut beyond that of the largest possible RGB triangle. There is an industry trend toward extending color gamut, however, attempts to do this in RGB have encountered significant problems.

Multi-primary can significantly reduce or eliminate these problems. It also provides a promising upgrade path for both display manufacturers and their retail outlets.

Many believe the competition for better images will inevitably lead to multi-primary displays. To generate the greatest audience impact with FCR, multi-primary displays are highly desirable

Advantages Even Beyond Color

Seeing more colors with the FCR™ system is an awe inspiring experience, but the benefits of the FCR™ system don’t stop there.

From increased brightness to power savings to color consistency across different displays, the FCR™ system will transform how we see digital imagery in new and vivid ways.

Do you actually get more colors with multi-primaries compared to RGB systems such as Rec.709, DCI P3, and Rec.2020?

Yes, the additional color primary channels convey colors not reproducible in an RGB system. Not only are there colors beyond the RGB gamut triangle, but there are more gradations of colors, many of which are “colors between the colors” residing inside the RGB gamut. To put this into perspective, here is the effect of adding primaries and how this adds to more gradations of color in an 8-bit, 10-bit or 12-bit color system:

• RGB 8 bit = (28) 3 = 16.8 million colors vs RGBC 8 bit = (28) 4 =4.3 BILLION COLORS

• RGB 10 bit = (210) 3 = 1.1 billion colors vs RGBC 10 bit = (210) 4 =1.1 TRILLION COLORS

• RGB 12 bit = (212) 3= 68.7 trillion colors vs RGBC 12bit = (212) 4 =281.5 TRILLION COLORS

• RGBCMY 12 bit = (212) 6 =4.7 SEXTILLION COLORS!
Modern color systems have 16-bit
specifications that make these numbers
even more dramatic

Do we need to shoot all new material for multi primary displays?

No.

FCR uses all the color information captured by digital cinema cameras and preserves this information throughout post-production and transport to displays.

Productions that used color film for acquisition can rescan the negative—the original negative contains a wider gamut of color than could ever be carried forward to film prints.

New productions can be shot with wider color gamut in mind—thus, taking full advantage of the expanded palette from the start.

How can colorist deal with multi-primary?

The same way they work with RGB now. Many colorists already use extended color spaces, such as XYZ or ACES or a camera RAW format. Colorists can continue to work as they do now, and then output the result as Yxy, or they can work in Yxy directly. Transcoding to/from Yxy is simple and fast.

Has anyone ever made a multi-primary display?

Yes, multi-primary displays are not a new idea. Many have been built and demonstrated over the past 30 years. The summary accomplishment of these experiments has been to verify that multi-primary displays can show more and better color. The main reason these projects went no further than demonstrations is that the displays required an entirely new system of image acquisition, manipulation, and transport to deliver content to the display. In other words, the displays were not compatible with existing industry methods, standards, and equipment. The assumption was that multi-primary displays would require an overhaul of methods and infrastructure. The FCR system demonstrates that this assumption is false.

Sharp Corporation took a dramatically different approach to multi-primary displays and succeeded in mass production and distribution of Quattron™ displays with four primaries (RGB+Yellow), but ultimately, this attempt failed. The input to Quattro displays was standard Rec.709 RGB. There was no additional data for yellow, and the RGB input signal contained no color information outside of the RGB triangle. To take advantage of the yellow primary, Sharp processed the image to accentuate yellow and push it out of the RGB gamut. Creating more intense yellows like this was marginally successful, but in the end, more intense yellows by themselves were not enough to impress consumers.

Until now, the common assumption has been that the success of multi-primary displays would necessarily involve: A) new cameras and workflow for capturing more colors and/or (B) the need to make fake colors. In contrast, the FCR system provides methods and technology that maintain current acquisition methods to collect all of the image color information, to format it into data paths in common use today, and to extract the correct image color data for an accurate representation of the content maximized to the limits of any display.