Server Version#: Version 1.16.3.1402
Player Version#: Version 1.2.0.875-b7362913
I can see that Windows HDR is on top priority list
How can I check during video playback if HDR or tonemapping is used? I believe that HDR is used but my eyes are not that great and easily confused …
I too read that they are working on HDR - SDR tone mapping but don’t have it rolled out yet in the betas. My understanding is that it does direct play and that you’re getting HDR. I see a dark, lower quality picture on my SDR computer than I see when playing a 1080p.
EDIT: everything I know is wrong 
What is interesting is when using Direct Play and HDR enabled in Windows - which, by the way requires you to manually adjust scaling in the app for HDR to remain enabled when the Plex app is full screen (see here: https://www.timekills.org/2019/09/fix-plex-scaling-and-hdr-issues-with-new-windows-plex-player-app/ for details and the solution) the colors appear washed out. Sort of like when an HDR video is transcoded.
If you tune HDR off in Windows, your TV/monitor will no longer indicate HDR being played, but the colors display the HDR view in the Plex app.
This is counter to how it should work - but it does.
For me from what I can see HDR pass-though works very well in my Windows 10 with HDR enabled and Radeon VII connected to Samsung UHD TV YMMV [1] - when I alt-tab Plex app there is short blink but no problems otherwise.
I think when you see colors washed out for HDR videos it means that HDR is not enabled for that video and it is played as if it were SDR with no HDR-to-SDR tone mapping?
[1] Windows Version - Windows 10 (64 bit)
System Memory - 32 GB
CPU Type - Intel® Core™ i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon VII
Core Clock - 1802 MHz
A few random insights regarding HDR that I’ve discovered and may be helpful to others (in no particular order, but I try to answer to OP’s specific questions in the early parts)-
Plex does not yet support HDR passthrough on any Windows app (which is why you see if listed as a high priority on that very recent list). Having HDR active in Windows 10 does not necessarily mean that a video is passing through the original HDR metadata to your TV/monitor. There seem to be only a small number of client devices that have HDR passthrough support, and most of them have other problems that end up requiring transcoding instead of direct-play.
There is not really a great way to see detailed playback info regarding HDR and colorspace inside of Plex. Pressing ‘i’ inside of a fullscreen video will show you more detailed info in the old plex app, but still nothing helpful about HDR. The best way you can tell is to compare it with something you know is using HDR passthrough. With a good setup, the difference will be obvious. I use Potplayer with madVR on an LG C9 OLED and to alt-tab between them–the difference is pretty obvious. So currently, I have to switch out of Plex if I want to watch anything that has HDR. Hopefully that will not always be the case.
Direct-play (or lack of transcoding) also does not mean that HDR is being passed through. It is the default behavior of Windows Plex apps to tone map HDR to SDR. I suspect this is because HDR passthrough has not yet been incorporated into mpv player (the underlying playback engine that Plex uses). You can tweak the way Plex/mpv handles the tone-mapping, by creating an mpv.conf file, but in most cases it is best to leave it at the default settings.
Tone-mapping is occurring on all consumer-grade HDR equipment. Current televisions can’t support the range of brightness set by regular HDR content, let alone Dolby Vision. So whether through a TV/Blu-ray player or other device, many HDR scenes are either being tone-mapped (preferable) or clipped. The difference is that the tone-mapping algorithms in a TV are optimized for HDR in way that can push the screen to it’s limits and maximize the impact of HDR. The tone-mapping being utilized by Plex is optimized for a general SDR screen with a much lower brightness level, so the range of brightness is effectively flattened. This looks good enough, as it’s effectively how we’ve been watching this content for decades. Especially for those with SDR screens, it’s extremely helpful and Plex was one of the first players to even make this possible to watch HDR content and have it not be washed out. .
Even with true HDR passthrough support, if you are using a TV/monitor that does HDR poorly, it is a worse experience than using SDR with tone-mapping. This is especially true when you are talking about HDR PC monitors–even those that have VESA HDR 1000 certifications do not compare to high-quality TV’s. There are many HDR10 and even DolbyVision TV’s around that deserve no such label. With a pseudo-HDR screen, you may not be able to tell the difference between HDR and SDR, and it may even look worse if there is substantial backlight glow around bright objects.
If you cannot see that info inside of Plex, what commands do you use to see that info outside of Plex?
I am using Windows 10 with HDR enabled connected to TV (2018 Samsung UHD 1000 nit) and compared Alita Battle Angle UHD playback with Bluray UHD player Sony UBP-X800M2 -in order of quality for me:
60%) PotPlayer (build date Jul 21 2019) with MadVR (v 0.92.17) with different options tried gives 50-70% of what I see with Sony Bluray HD player - contrast not great, blacks not black enough, white lights not bright etc
95%) Latest PMP ( Version 3.104.2) and New Windows 10 Plex App ( Version 1.2.0.875-b7362913) both looks to me as using full HDR10 (?!) and looks pretty good (not sure if it is pass through or how does it do but works great) and looks great about 95% of Sony player to me - that is why I asked how to check if HDR is used and what is nit max, colorspace, other details etc (I can see TV is reporting HDR UHD).
100%) Sony does great job - Alita looks amazing
I also played Alia Bluray regular version and in PMP/Plex App it looks good too but colors are not deep etc.
PMP absolutely does not passthrough HDR10 metadata to the OS and then in turn passthrough to a HDR capable display. PMP will tonemap HDR10 content to SDR. Windows 10 will send that out as a HDR10 signal to the display hence AVR/displays reporting a HDR signal.
Again, there is no support for HDR10 passthrough from any version of PMP on any OS platform.
I thought the same. However, to post it my impressions I started PMP and it was updated. I checked again and both in web client mode (Version 3.104.2) and in TV mode (2.41.0.1010) looks not washed out but very much HDR for Alita and other HDR UHD content. Actually quality wise looks identical to me after I did playback with new Windows New Plex app - it seems that the app switches something in Windows 10 (I can see in Windows 10 settings “Play HDR games and app” and “Use WCG Apps” is “Yes” but “Stream HDR” is “No” and TV reports UHD HDR). If I reset HDR to be “On” in Windows settings (all options are “Yes” after i) then indeed PMP playback looks washed out.
That is why I have my original question here - I would like some better way to see if HDR is enabled in playback and what are its parameters …
I am telling you it does not because I worked hand in hand in QA testing PMP with the former lead developer of mpv. It may look like it but it is not true passthrough.
2019-09-04 23:13:37 [ DEBUG ] PlayerComponent.cpp @ 594 - cplayer: mpv 53a7eec (C) 2000-2017 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects
2019-09-04 23:13:37 [ DEBUG ] PlayerComponent.cpp @ 594 - cplayer: built on Wed Aug 30 05:21:43 PDT 2017
The playback engine is over 2 years old and does not support HDR passthrough. It will tonemap for you.
I have checked also playback using Plex TV app (Plex for Samsung 4.1.1 Tizen 4.0) for the same Alita it looks identical (or very very close as my eyes can see …) to playback in Windows 10 and using Sony UHD Bluray player.
Visual comparison is subjective and if it looks better to you–than it looks better to you. Placebo effect. That does not change the fact that mpv has not been updated with any new commits by the FOSS mpv project developers. For the third time, until the mpv project team develops this into the code, PMP which is just a front end for the mpv player, will tone map HDR to SDR and output that to the OS. What the OS does with it is up to each individual OS. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Yes that is why I am asking how to verify HDR beyond visual diff.
Anything in particular I should check in logs (I have the same “cplayer: built on” in PMP logs not Plex app logs) - they are pretty large and verbose
From PMP log (PlexMediaPlayer.log)
2019-09-05 03:03:21 [ INFO ] Log.cpp @ 115 - Starting Plex Media Player version: 2.41.0.1010-286e05db build date: 2019-09-04
2019-09-05 03:03:21 [ INFO ] Log.cpp @ 116 - Running on: Windows 10 (10.0) [10.0.17763] arch x86_64
2019-09-05 03:03:21 [ INFO ] Log.cpp @ 117 - Qt Version: 5.9.5 [x86_64-little_endian-llp64]
...
2019-09-05 03:03:21 [ INFO ] DisplayManager.cpp @ 40 - "DisplayManager : Current Display Mode on Display #0 is 3840 x 2160 x 32bpp @60Hz"
...
2019-09-05 03:03:22 [ DEBUG ] PlayerComponent.cpp @ 594 - cplayer: mpv 53a7eec (C) 2000-2017 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects
2019-09-05 03:03:22 [ DEBUG ] PlayerComponent.cpp @ 594 - cplayer: built on Wed Aug 30 05:21:43 PDT 2017
and from Plex app (Plex.log)
2019-09-05T03:09:18.063 [ INFO ] Starting Plex version: 1.2.0.875-b7362913
2019-09-05T03:09:18.063 [ INFO ] Running on: Windows 10 (10.0) [10.0.17763] x86_64
2019-09-05T03:09:18.063 [ INFO ] Happy Plexing!
...
2019-09-05T03:09:31.584 [ INFO ] display-tags: Title: Alita: Battle Angel
2019-09-05T03:09:31.733 [ INFO ] vd: Using hardware decoding (dxva2-copy).
2019-09-05T03:09:31.733 [ INFO ] cplayer: VO: [libmpv] 3840x2160 p010
What is it that you want to verify? The tonemapping?
You can see the mpv logs directly if you create or edit the mpv.conf to include these lines:
msg-level=all=trace
log-file="C:\Users\benja\Desktop\plex_log.txt"
This will show more statistics about the display color, but I still don’t think you’ll find anything about tone-mapping specifically. This works with the old PMP, but I’m not sure with the new Plex app where the mpv.conf file is supposed to go.
Unfortunately a TV reporting HDR content is near meaningless in this situation with Windows. In the same way, if you are connected with a 3840x2160 resolution, it will still report 4K resolution if you watch 1080p or 480p content with Plex. However, you can be sure that if it’s not reporting HDR, then it’s not displaying HDR.
I really don’t understand what could be happening in your setup that Plex on Windows looks nearly identical to your Sony Blu-ray player, or that madVR looks so poor. If madVR looks washed out, desaturated and lifeless…then it isn’t setup properly. HDR tends to have a darker overall shade than SDR, but it shouldn’t look desaturated. Are you able to open the madVR settings when a video is playing and make sure that HDR is set on your display to passthrough HDR to display and also checked to send HDR metadata to the display? Does changing that option to “tone map HDR using pixel shaders” make a difference?
I wouldn’t expect HDR content on Plex to look washed-out (desaturated), even though it’s not passing through the HDR metedata. With the HDR to SDR tone-mapping, the colors should still look “normal”, not too different from a regular Blu-ray. The color and luminosity is flattened, but not grossly inaccurate. When you say that turning HDR “on” in Windows 10 settings causes PMP to look washed out, does it look similar to how it does in Potplayer with madVR? Sometimes HDR gets messed up for me if something gets triggered wrong when an app goes fullscreen and triggers HDR when it’s already turned on it Windows–then everything gets oversaturated but that’s the opposite effect.
Alita 4K is not the most extreme example of HDR and if you aren’t setup to near instantaneously swap your display between Plex and your Sony UBP-X800M2 on the same frame, I could see it being hard to tell the difference, especially if as you say, your eyes aren’t super great or tuned to look for it. I just don’t see any way that you can be getting true HDR from playback in Plex.
I do not have mpv.conf - where I should create it?
I read they use different playback engine?
For what it is worth TV reports “3840x2160 / 60p HDMI UHD Color
HDR UHD”
I tried all those options. “tone map HDR using pixel shaders” with clipping to 1000 “target peak nits” makes video darker - does not look HDR at all
With HDR Off in Windows 10 Settings PMP video (I keep using Alita as reference for me) is dark even darker than PotPlayer. After switching HDR On it is washed out and lighter. Both does not look like what I see when I play regular Bluray version of Alita.
I play only full screen but just switching to windowed mode (F11) made no difference.
What would you recommend? Alita is top rated recent UHD video and does look great to me (if not amazing). I also tested with Vudu app built into TV - it reports HDR (and Atmos) and does look the same as Sony UBP-X800M2 (all including PC connected to the same TV)
I did this swapping between source inputs in TV (PC, Sony) and TV apps (Plex, Vudu) - closing eyeys to keep image and compare. In past PC version (PMP) was clearly lower in quality and I am happy to see new Plex app is doing great job on par with Sony, Vudu TV app and Plex TV app.
[quote] I could see it being hard to tell the difference, especially if as you say, your eyes aren’t super great or tuned to look for it. I just don’t see any way that you can be getting true HDR from playback in Plex.
[/quote]
Yes that is why I asked original question here - Plex app does look great today to me but I would like to verify in objective way …
Could I ask you if the monitor I just bought is truly hdr? You’ve made me a little worried that I’ve bought an inferior product.
This is the monitor I bought…
One of the monitors I had was the Acer equivalent of your ASUS monitor that uses the same panel. I wasn’t satisfied with it, but “inferior” may not be the term I would use. It is likely the best rendition of HDR currently available on a consumer-grade monitor. That is likely to change when mini-LED hits the market…but with the MSRP on the ASUS ProArt PA32UCX at about $4,000, it will be out of reach for most people for awhile. For some reason monitors just haven’t caught up to TV’s yet with HDR, so you’re still paying the early adopter tax on hardware that isn’t yet perfected. Conversely, prices and performance have improved quite a bit on the television side of things over the past few years.
So the ASUS/Acer monitors are pretty much the best you can get for now if you are dead set on HDR in a smaller size (in comparison to a TV) and also concerned about a fast refresh rate. It’s not the best HDR experience and it’s not the fastest gaming monitor…but it offers a middle ground that gives some of the benefits of each. To that end, it’s accomplishing something that you won’t find on other monitors but my own impression is that it’s not yet worth the price premium. It’s certainly not a bad monitor and it does a lot of things very well…so if price is not a huge factor and you aren’t willing to wait a couple of years for things to improve, it’s about as good as you’re going to get for now. But that’s always the game with new tech. In this case, it’s just a bit frustrating when you can see TV’s that have already progressed to the point where we’d like our monitors to be.
The ASUS/Acer monitor’s main downfall is in darker scenes. Black levels are quite poor and in high contrast HDR scenes where there is a lot of darkness mixed with something super bright…then you will get a flashlight halo effect around that bright part that I found pretty distracting. You can see this in the RTings Review - Acer Predator X27. In bright outdoor scenes that monitor can look excellent. But that’s often the case with any monitor or TV…it tends to be how they handle darker scenes and now how they handle HDR that separates the men from the boys, as it were. Those monitors do have Full Array Local Dimming (FALD) which, combined with the high brightness and increased color gamut put them miles ahead of the average PC monitor–enough to clearly see the benefits of HDR. Those high contrast scenes were a major distraction to me, but others may not be as sensitive to that halo effect so if it’s doesn’t bother you…don’t let it and don’t even look for it 
