Runway Ruby Launches for Max and Enterprise: SDR Footage to 16-Bit HDR EXR, ProRes, and HEVC

Runway Ruby is not a video generator, and that is precisely why it matters. Announced on Runway's X account on August 21, 2026, Ruby is Runway's first model built for the finishing end of a video pipeline: it takes any clip up to 30 seconds long — footage you uploaded or output you generated inside Runway — and converts standard-dynamic-range video into professional HDR deliverables. The formats are the story: 16-bit EXR sequences, 10- and 12-bit ProRes, and 10- and 12-bit HEVC, all in the BT.2020 color space with your choice of PQ or HLG transfer function. It is available now to Max and Enterprise subscribers in the Runway app. Everything in this piece is Runway's own announcement — the model is a day old, with no independent tests or hands-on reviews published yet.

The one-sentence version

Runway Ruby is an automated HDR colorist. You give it an SDR clip of up to 30 seconds, and it returns the same footage re-graded for high-dynamic-range viewing, packaged the way a post-production house actually needs it: an open EXR sequence for compositing, a ProRes master for the edit, or an HEVC file for delivery. SDR-to-HDR conversion is not new — every modern color suite does some version of it — but doing it from a model, on footage that was itself generated minutes earlier in the same product, is. It closes the loop between "a model made this clip" and "this clip is ready for a 2026 HDR screen."

What the formats actually mean

The announcement reads like a spec sheet, and each item is worth unpacking because it tells you who Ruby is for.

• 16-bit EXR sequences — OpenEXR is the open image format the VFX and compositing industry has used for decades; a sequence (one EXR per frame) is what Nuke, After Effects, and Flame expect from a render. Sixteen-bit here means high bit depth per channel, which matters for HDR because it gives a grader headroom before banding appears.

• 10- and 12-bit ProRes — ProRes is Apple's post-production codec family. Ten-bit is the standard for professional HDR editorial (P3 or BT.2020); 12-bit ProRes 4444 is the archival-grade master used when a deliverable will be re-graded later.

• 10- and 12-bit HEVC — HEVC (H.265) is the delivery codec. Ten-bit HEVC is what streaming HDR10 content is actually distributed in; 12-bit is the headroom spec used for premium HDR mastering.

• BT.2020 color — the wide-gamut color space defined for UHD. It is far wider than the Rec.709 space standard SDR video lives in, which is what lets HDR content carry the more saturated colors of the real world.

• PQ or HLG — the two HDR transfer functions, the curves that map digital values to screen luminance. PQ (SMPTE ST 2084) is what HDR10 and most streaming use; HLG is the broadcast-friendly curve designed to degrade gracefully on SDR sets. Ruby offering both is a signal that Runway is aiming at streaming and broadcast pipelines alike.

That is the whole value proposition: not "a prettier video," but "a deliverable in the exact container a professional pipeline asks for."

Who this is for, and what it costs

Ruby is gated to the top of Runway's consumer lineup and its enterprise tier. Max is Runway's $95-a-month plan ($76 a month billed annually) and includes 9,500 credits a month, on-demand generation, rollover of unused credits, and full access to all Runway models; Enterprise is the negotiated tier above it. Runway's announcement does not state a separate per-second credit rate for Ruby, so treat the subscription itself as the entry price for now. In exchange, Max also carries the pipeline that feeds Ruby: Gen-4.5 for generation and Aleph for editing, which means the same credit envelope can take a clip from "type a prompt" to "EXR sequence on disk."

Runway's site, captured August 22, 2026 — the top of the homepage where Ruby now sits behind the Max and Enterprise paywall, with a limited-time unlimited-Hailuo-3.0 promotion running in the banner above the fold.

What Ruby is not

It is not a text-to-video model, not an image-to-video model, and not a competitor to the generation models you may already use. It does not add frames, extend clips, or invent new footage. Its input is an existing SDR video, its output is the same video in an HDR container, and its 30-second ceiling matches the short-form reality of AI video today — every generation model you can call produces clips shorter than that, so nothing you generate needs to be cut down before Ruby can touch it.

Where this fits a real pipeline

The workflow the announcement implies is: generate in Runway (or upload footage), hand the clip to Ruby, and download a ProRes or EXR master. For a team doing this at volume, the models doing the thinking around the video — the prompt that described the shot, the shot list, the captions, the VO script — are where a routing layer earns its keep. OrcaRouter runs one API across 200+ models with provider list prices passed through at 0% markup, so the text-model calls around your video pipeline all share a key, fail over automatically, and repoint the day a vendor cuts a price. The video models themselves — Runway Ruby included — are reached through Runway's app for now; Ruby has no announced developer API. If a provider lists it later, the same pass-through math applies, but do not plan a production integration around an API that does not exist yet.

What is still unverified

Everything beyond the format list is unconfirmed. No independent test has graded Ruby's output against a reference HDR grade — a 16-bit container is not the same as a good grade, and SDR-to-HDR conversion can flatter footage, blow out highlights, or invent noise depending on how aggressively the curve is pushed. No per-use credit cost for Ruby is published. No API, no batch tooling, no Resolve or Nuke plugin is announced. Runway has said nothing about whether Enterprise gets bulk pricing. And Max's "unlimited" positioning means within the credit envelope: Ruby's actual burn rate per second determines how far 9,500 credits goes, and that number is not public.

Why it matters

The quiet significance of Runway Ruby is not the model itself but the direction it signals: Runway is moving up the production stack from "make a clip" to "finish a clip." Generation models today produce SDR MP4s, and every professional outlet that uses them has to rebuild the HDR look in post. Ruby is the first serious attempt to make HDR mastering a one-click step in the same product that generated the footage. Whether the grade holds up to a real colorist's scrutiny is the open question — and it will be answered by the first independent tests, not by the format list.

The text-to-video leaderboard above is where Ruby's raw material comes from: every one of those generation models tops out at SDR MP4, which is exactly the gap Ruby is built to close. For creators who already live in Runway's ecosystem, this closes the biggest remaining gap between AI video and broadcast delivery.