Revolutionizing HDR on Instagram for iOS with Dolby Vision: A Comprehensive Guide
Unleashing the Power of HDR on Instagram
Are you tired of dim, dull videos on Instagram? Well, get ready to be amazed! We’re diving into how we’ve enhanced HDR on Instagram for iOS with Dolby Vision, ensuring your videos pop with vibrant colors and stunning clarity. But here’s where it gets controversial…
The HDR Conundrum
Instagram and Facebook iOS apps have supported high dynamic range (HDR) video since 2022. However, our initial rollout didn’t support Dolby Vision or ambient viewing environment (amve) metadata. This meant that the HDR videos you create on your iPhone might not look as good as they could.
The Metadata Mystery
Every iPhone-produced HDR video encoding includes two crucial pieces of metadata: amve and Dolby Vision. amve provides the characteristics of the nominal ambient viewing environment, allowing the device to adjust the video for different lighting conditions. Dolby Vision enhances color, brightness, and contrast, ensuring the video matches the display’s capabilities.
The Technical Journey
Let’s explore how we added support for amve and enabled Dolby Vision. We noticed that amve metadata was static across all frames, allowing us to hardcode it into our player pipeline. However, Dolby Vision posed a greater challenge.
Dolby Vision: A Complex Journey
The existing specification for Dolby Vision metadata was for carriage within an HEVC bitstream, which we don’t deliver. We needed to find a codec that supported Dolby Vision metadata. Fortunately, Dolby created Profile 10 for AV1, but our tools didn’t support it. We collaborated with FFmpeg developers to implement support for Dolby Vision Profile 8 and Profile 10, enabling us to transcode HEVC with Profile 8.4 into AV1 with Profile 10.4.
The A/B Testing
To ensure our implementation was effective, we conducted A/B testing. We produced additional versions of videos with and without Dolby Vision metadata, delivering them to a randomly distributed test population. We found that videos with Dolby Vision metadata were watched less due to longer load times, which we attributed to the added metadata overhead.
The Solution: Compressed Metadata
We addressed the issue by implementing a compressed metadata format, reducing the overhead by a factor of four. This allowed us to enable Dolby Vision metadata across Instagram for iOS, making it our first app to take advantage of it. As of June 2025, all AV1 encodings derived from iPhone-produced HDR include Dolby Vision metadata.
The Future of Dolby Vision
We’re excited to expand Dolby Vision to other Meta apps and operating systems. While it’s not widely supported in the web ecosystem, we’re working on extending support to Facebook Reels.
The Collaboration
We’d like to thank Haixia Shi, the team at Dolby, and Niklas Haas from FFmpeg for their invaluable support. This is just the beginning, and we’re eager to explore more ways to enhance the video viewing experience on Instagram and beyond.
So, the next time you see an HDR video on Instagram, remember the journey it took to get there. And if you haven’t tried it yet, head over to Instagram on your iPhone and experience the magic of Dolby Vision for yourself!
Are you ready to unlock the full potential of HDR on Instagram? Share your thoughts in the comments below!