5 ms·

HDR content to not-full-brightness-capable display autoconversion was a terrible idea. Take the color grading away from someone with an eye for aesthetics and

by CarVac 5y ago

HDR content to not-full-brightness-capable display autoconversion was a terrible idea. Take the color grading away from someone with an eye for aesthetics and give it to a dumb algorithm.

gruez 5y ago
agreed. I have a SDR monitor and given the choice between a 4K HDR release and a 1080p SDR release, I'll always go for the 1080p release. The colors in the HDR always look off compared to the SDR. I tried a bunch of fixes (eg. different media players, tweaking tonemapping settings, etc.), but it never works. Does anyone know whether it's still an issue on HDR400 (ie. "fake HDR") monitors ?
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  I do the same. UHD Blu-Rays with HDR look terrible on my non-HDR 4K TV. The colours come out terribly 'flat', and no amount of tweaking the display settings is able to set it right. I'm careful to go with ordinary Blu-Rays instead. Ideally of course I'd rather a non-HDR UHD Blu-Ray but these are increasingly rare. You'd think the disc players would be smart enough to do a good job mapping HDR to SDR, but here we are.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >You'd think the disc players would be smart enough to do a good job mapping HDR to SDR, but here we are. I suspect the reason is that SDR and HDR have separate color grading/correction applied, so it's basically impossible to automatically convert HDR to SDR. Or in other words, "automatic" conversion from HDR to SDR inevitably looks bad, so production studios manually redo the color correction for SDR.
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      > "automatic" conversion from HDR to SDR inevitably looks bad, so production studios manually redo the color correction for SDR Perhaps that's it. What happens if you point a camera at an HDR TV and view the image/video on an SDR TV? Would the colours look flat?
      - gruez 5y ago
        Probably a combination of washed out colors, blown out highlights, and weird color grading. Keep in mind that cameras basically have their own tonemapping algorithms (see: https://lux.camera/understanding-proraw/ https://lux.camera/understanding-proraw/) that presumably isn't magic, so you'd have the same problems that HDR -> SDR tonemapping has. Also if you search around there are also HDR -> SDR releases that purports to use some sort per-scene analysis to do better HDR -> SDR conversions. Based on the screenshots they definitely look better, but they're still different than the real SDR release.
        MaxBarraclough 5y ago
        On the plus side, I've found that HDR-enabled UHD streaming services cope fine with 4K/SDR. I imagine they send an entirely different (SDR) stream in that case.
        CarVac 5y ago
        Apparently not the HBO Max stream in the post that started all of this, which has ugly clipped highlights from an HDR stream served to an SDR display.
        gruez 5y ago
        Yeah, if you search around there aren't any 4K SDR releases for matrix 4. For a release this popular and this late after release, I'm guessing the reason is because it doesn't exist. The same applies to another HBO max exclusive, Dune. However, there are streaming services that have 4K SDR content (eg. Foundation from Apple TV), but it definitely seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
deergomoo 5y ago
The entire home cinema market is a colossal fuck up right now. For a start you’ve got multiple mutually incompatible HDR standards. Even if your TV supports everything, a step in your setup might not. e.g. my LG C1 supports Dolby Vision but my UHD Blu-Ray player (Xbox Series X) can only output DV from games and apps, not Blu-Rays. And that’s not considering that the TV, while incredible, doesn’t actually get anywhere near bright enough to display the full range of HDR. Audio isn’t much better: my receiver supports every audio codec under the sun but the TV can’t passthrough DTS for some reason so I have to have the Xbox decode it and just send plain stereo instead. The receiver can’t pass 4K 120Hz back to the TV so connecting the Xbox to that is a non-starter. Now the HDMI folks are following the insane lead of the USB guys and have decided that there is no longer a HDMI 2.0, and instead all HDMI 2.1 features are now just optional. So working out what your TV supports and may support in the future involves trawling spec sheets or even looking at the raw bandwidth of the HDMI ports. On top of that, TVs still ship with bananas default settings that make everything ultra-blue and motion interpolated so unless you have the knowledge and inclination everything just looks like crap anyway. At least Filmmaker mode is gaining some traction as a one-click way to get a decent picture. It’s a shame that the vast majority of people will never see the full potential of their AV systems.
- CarVac 5y ago
  I'm just not even bothering with surround. I have a 2.1 setup with a mixer so I can have my computer, TV, and turntable all outputting sound simultaneously in theory. In practice it's just so I never have to switch sound inputs.

by CarVac 5y ago

HDR content to not-full-brightness-capable display autoconversion was a terrible idea. Take the color grading away from someone with an eye for aesthetics and give it to a dumb algorithm.

gruez 5y ago

agreed. I have a SDR monitor and given the choice between a 4K HDR release and a 1080p SDR release, I'll always go for the 1080p release. The colors in the HDR always look off compared to the SDR. I tried a bunch of fixes (eg. different media players, tweaking tonemapping settings, etc.), but it never works. Does anyone know whether it's still an issue on HDR400 (ie. "fake HDR") monitors ?

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
I do the same. UHD Blu-Rays with HDR look terrible on my non-HDR 4K TV. The colours come out terribly 'flat', and no amount of tweaking the display settings is able to set it right. I'm careful to go with ordinary Blu-Rays instead. Ideally of course I'd rather a non-HDR UHD Blu-Ray but these are increasingly rare. You'd think the disc players would be smart enough to do a good job mapping HDR to SDR, but here we are.
- gruez 5y ago
  >You'd think the disc players would be smart enough to do a good job mapping HDR to SDR, but here we are. I suspect the reason is that SDR and HDR have separate color grading/correction applied, so it's basically impossible to automatically convert HDR to SDR. Or in other words, "automatic" conversion from HDR to SDR inevitably looks bad, so production studios manually redo the color correction for SDR.
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    > "automatic" conversion from HDR to SDR inevitably looks bad, so production studios manually redo the color correction for SDR Perhaps that's it. What happens if you point a camera at an HDR TV and view the image/video on an SDR TV? Would the colours look flat?
    - gruez 5y ago
      Probably a combination of washed out colors, blown out highlights, and weird color grading. Keep in mind that cameras basically have their own tonemapping algorithms (see: https://lux.camera/understanding-proraw/ https://lux.camera/understanding-proraw/) that presumably isn't magic, so you'd have the same problems that HDR -> SDR tonemapping has. Also if you search around there are also HDR -> SDR releases that purports to use some sort per-scene analysis to do better HDR -> SDR conversions. Based on the screenshots they definitely look better, but they're still different than the real SDR release.
      - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
        On the plus side, I've found that HDR-enabled UHD streaming services cope fine with 4K/SDR. I imagine they send an entirely different (SDR) stream in that case.
        CarVac 5y ago
        Apparently not the HBO Max stream in the post that started all of this, which has ugly clipped highlights from an HDR stream served to an SDR display.
        gruez 5y ago
        Yeah, if you search around there aren't any 4K SDR releases for matrix 4. For a release this popular and this late after release, I'm guessing the reason is because it doesn't exist. The same applies to another HBO max exclusive, Dune. However, there are streaming services that have 4K SDR content (eg. Foundation from Apple TV), but it definitely seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

deergomoo 5y ago

The entire home cinema market is a colossal fuck up right now. For a start you’ve got multiple mutually incompatible HDR standards. Even if your TV supports everything, a step in your setup might not. e.g. my LG C1 supports Dolby Vision but my UHD Blu-Ray player (Xbox Series X) can only output DV from games and apps, not Blu-Rays. And that’s not considering that the TV, while incredible, doesn’t actually get anywhere near bright enough to display the full range of HDR. Audio isn’t much better: my receiver supports every audio codec under the sun but the TV can’t passthrough DTS for some reason so I have to have the Xbox decode it and just send plain stereo instead. The receiver can’t pass 4K 120Hz back to the TV so connecting the Xbox to that is a non-starter. Now the HDMI folks are following the insane lead of the USB guys and have decided that there is no longer a HDMI 2.0, and instead all HDMI 2.1 features are now just optional. So working out what your TV supports and may support in the future involves trawling spec sheets or even looking at the raw bandwidth of the HDMI ports. On top of that, TVs still ship with bananas default settings that make everything ultra-blue and motion interpolated so unless you have the knowledge and inclination everything just looks like crap anyway. At least Filmmaker mode is gaining some traction as a one-click way to get a decent picture. It’s a shame that the vast majority of people will never see the full potential of their AV systems.

CarVac 5y ago
I'm just not even bothering with surround. I have a 2.1 setup with a mixer so I can have my computer, TV, and turntable all outputting sound simultaneously in theory. In practice it's just so I never have to switch sound inputs.