While both Facebook and Instagram have supported HDR video for some time, Meta recently upgraded this to support Dolby Vision and ambient viewing environment (amve) in the Instagram iOS app, providing an enhanced viewing experience for capable devices.
It’s difficult to highlight an example of this on a non-Dolby-enabled device, but essentially, all HDR videos created on iPhones contain Dolby Vision and amve metadata, which can be used to enhance their presentation, where these display options are enabled.
As explained by Meta:
- Ambient viewing environment (amve) provides the characteristics of the nominal ambient viewing environment for displaying associated video content. This information enables the final device to adjust the rendering of the video if the actual ambient viewing conditions differ from those for which it was encoded.
- Dolby Vision enhances color, brightness, and contrast to better match the video to the capabilities of the display.
According to the Dolby website, Dolby Vision:
“Unlocks the full potential of HDR technology by dynamically optimizing the image quality based on your service, device, and platform to deliver mesmerizing visuals every time.”
So, better looking video, and an upgrade on HDR, though Meta says that it’s had to implement various fixes and processes to enable Dolby Vision in the app.
“In collaboration with Dolby, we’ve solved the perceptible problem of HDR metadata preservation and collaborated with the FFmpeg developers to implement its support and make it readily available for the community to take advantage of.”
If you’re using an iOS device, you may notice the difference, and while a lot of the higher-end scaling changes like this are largely imperceptible to the regular user, those who are looking to display their art in the app will welcome the upgrade, and the enhanced viewing experience.
Meta says that it’s also looking to expand Dolby Vision to other Meta apps and their corresponding operating systems.
