HDR10 vs HLG: what's the difference for capture and streaming?

Both HDR10 and HLG extend the brightness and colour range a camera or display can handle beyond standard dynamic range (SDR) — but they take different approaches, and which one matters to you usually comes down to whether your output is being broadcast live or played back on its own.

HDR10 uses static metadata describing the brightness range once, set for the whole piece of content. It needs that metadata to display correctly, which makes it well suited to recorded, on-demand content — streaming platforms, recorded productions — where the full file and its metadata travel together.

HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) was designed by the BBC and NHK specifically for broadcast: it carries no separate metadata at all, and is built to be backward-compatible — an SDR display fed an HLG signal will show a reasonable, if slightly different, image rather than the broken or washed-out result you'd often get feeding HDR10 to an SDR display. That backward compatibility is exactly why HLG is the practical choice for live broadcast, where you don't know in advance what kind of display every viewer has.

Rule of thumb: live broadcast or any situation where the signal might land on an SDR display unexpectedly → HLG. Recorded or on-demand content where the full pipeline supports HDR metadata end to end → HDR10.