HEVC/4K playback washed out colors ??

General Discussions
21

Has anyone figured out a solution for this or an alternative that will work for playing hdr files using another service? I encounter the same problem with the plex apps on my Samsung tv and Xbox one. Colors similarly look washed out using the Xbox ones tv and movies app or using the dlna player app on my Samsung. Colors look much better with regular 1080p content than 4khdr because of this washed out effect.

I’m wondering if it’s perhaps related to my computer itself. Its a couple years old and may not support hdr. I don’t see why this should matter since I’m not playing the video content on my computer monitor, but it’s jist a thought. I wanted to try vlc, but the app shuts down my Xbox one whenever i try to play a 4khdr file. I also tried kodi, but i could not figure out how to get the app on the Xbox one to “see” my pc

22

@talkshowhost said:
Has anyone figured out a solution for this or an alternative that will work for playing hdr files using another service?

Tone mapping has not been implemented in the Plex transcoder, so everything @ShaGe said in his above experiments is still valid. You have to use Direct Play / Direct stream at the moment for HDR content.

23

@uglymagoo said:

@talkshowhost said:
Has anyone figured out a solution for this or an alternative that will work for playing hdr files using another service?

Tone mapping has not been implemented in the Plex transcoder, so everything @ShaGe said in his above experiments is still valid. You have to use Direct Play / Direct stream at the moment for HDR content.

Could you elaborate? I have the same issue even when I’m not transcoding. Files are in the right format (mp4 ac3 5.1) so that there is no transcoding. Plex server settings confirm its directplay and cpu useage is negligible so i am 100% sure there is no transcoding.

I don’t care if I’m not even using plex. If there’s some other app to use that’s fine. Just asking for recommendations really.

24

@talkshowhost Actually this is a complicated situation. At the end of the day it’s a plex problem, not your devices. Like I said before, my iMac is a 2011 iMac, obviously doesn’t support HDR, while vlc and Mplayerx play 4k HEVC movies washed out the PMP player doesn’t, it plays with normal colors. My iPad Pro plays 4K HEVC movies with normal colors while my 1080p tv doesn’t on appletv PMP. Developers need to make these apps work correctly while playing these movies. I think plex Isn’t focusing on that right now probably because people don’t play as much 4k movies, there’s really no excuse, plex needs to fix thiS ASAP

25

@loose809
Are there any alternatives that will work? Would buying an external hard drive and putting all my movies on it and hooking it up to my tv or Xbox one work? Is there a plex alternative software server that will work?

26

@talkshowhost you have a couple of options. 1. Get a late 2017/2018 4k HDR TV and use the built in PMP. 2. Download the latest infuse app, people are saying with infuse everything looks fine. There’s also other apps that can help, Look it up. 3. Hookup up your Mac/pc to your hdtv using a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Cable and use the PMP app on your computer. Plex needs to fix this crap it’s really annoying, that tv plex app sucks in a lot of ways.

27

@talkshowhost Most people I know maintain two Plex libraries at the moment: one for 4k / hdr and one for 1080p to be able to use the most suitable encoding for each client. My main client is the NVIDIA Shield TV connected to a 4K HDR TV and Direct Play works flawlessly. However, Android clients also embed nearly the same Plex transcoder used in the server, so if the server is using Direct Play / Direct Stream, it’s possible that the transcoder in the Android client also destroys the colors.

Bottom line: you cannot host just 4k hdr files in Plex at the moment, if one of your clients is unable to display this encoding natively.

I have read somewhere else in the forum, that tone mapping is definitely in the works. There is just no ETA.

28

I am glad to see this answered. I believe PMP for Windows 10 is playing HDR back correctly, almost like it is tone mapping? However it is not playing back correctly from roku’s to non-4K TV, or on my iOS devices. But it plays fine of course to UHD TVs from Rokus and SHIELDs. The TV says “HDR” in the screen corner for a second or two at playback e.g.

29

Random observations, all given playing 4K on non-4K, non-HDR screens and having a 4K and 1080p version available on server

  1. Windows 10 Movies & TV app plays 4K correctly
  2. Windows 10 Media player classic does not
  3. Windows 10 PMP does
  4. Roku does not
  5. SHIELD does not
  6. iPhone 7+ plays correctly… seems to choose 1080p version automatically
  7. iPad 2 plays correctly… seems to choose 1080p version automatically

It would appear for whatever reason iOS PMP chooses 1080p by default. It would appear Roku and Shield do not. If in Windows 10 PMP I throttle down from direct stream, e.g. go from 54 Mbps to 20 Mbps 1080p, the color gets washed out. The Plex transcoder for sure is not giving the right color to a 1080p transcoded stream. But in certain situations for whatever reason in Windows, the PMP for a direct stream is mapping correct color from an HDR 2020 space to a 709 space, same resolution.

30

Gonna help you all out here:

Plex serves up a video file that has a variety of properties. YOUR computer, tv, phone etc runs a plex app that recieves that file and plays it according to the abilities of your device.

I currently have plex sitting on a server (dual xeon, lotta ram, mucho bandwidth). I have an nVidia shield which has the plex client, plugged into a Marantz sr7011, 18Gb HDMI to an LG 75" sj-8570.

Depending on your TV vendor, you may need to change the HDMI UHD Color setting to on (Samsung), Input > ‘HDMI Color Subsampling’ to on (Vizio) or ‘Enhanced HDMI’ to on (Sony) for a given HDMI input.

The specific HDMI port may make a difference on your TV. Double-check your user manual to confirm you are plugged into a HDMI 2.0 port supporting HDCP 2.2.

In addition to the HDMI ports on your TV, AVR, and Shield, the type (HDMI 1.4 v 2.0) and the length of HDMI cable will impact your available options. HDR requires HDMI 2.0a. Cable Test doc attached.

If you are using an AV receiver, make sure that your AVR is configured to support 4K signal passthrough and is not modifying the video resolution (disable upscaling). You should use an HDMI 2.0a port supporting HDCP 2.2 on your AVR.

Streaming device (thing you run the plex client on, could also be a tv)
RGB output: Dynamic Range should be set to auto. If your UHD TV can be set to the full range of RGB, then you should set the streaming device to the full range.

YCbCr output: the newest UHD displays may benefit from tweaking the streaming device color space settings. You should set your display to the highest available setting, listed below:

YCbCr 4:2:2 12-bit Rec.2020
YCbCr 4:2:0 10-bit Rec.2020
YCbCr 4:2:2 12-bit Rec.709
YCbCr 4:2:0 10-bit Rec.709
YCbCr 4:4:4 8-bit Rec.709
YCbCr 4:2:0 8-bit Rec.709
UHD sources may be up to 10-bit Rec.2020. Blu-ray sources are 8-bit. Online streaming sources are probably 8-bit. Higher bit rates have more color values and are less susceptible to banding.

4:4:4 is a full bandwidth signal, with full (Cb, Cr) vertical and horizontal resolution. 4:2:2 needs 2/3rds the bandwidth, with ½ horizontal resolution and full vertical resolution. 4:2:0 needs ½ the bandwidth, with ½ horizontal resolution and ½ vertical resolution.

Now this is where it all goes sideways. I can set all my stuff to max settings and have a video either transcode or just cause the whole system to crash b/c the viewing device doesn’t have the codec that big bad 4k file is encoded with.

Yeah, I wish I could play that 50Gb Rogue One file on my big LG but it wont. Plays fine on a sony though… I can play many other 4k files with TrueHD, Atmos, DTS-HD, etc without a hitch. Just gotta know what your capabilities are.

I’ve yet to find something plex is at fault with. Pretty much everything has come down to settings in the AVR, streaming device, or the viewing device. You can look into Nvidia vs Roku vs Fire TV and see all the faults with UHD content…nothing I’ve seen is a silver bullet.

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31

The bottom line is Plex doesn’t play nice with non 4K TVs. So it’s better to purchase a up to date 4K HDR Tv and not deal with this nonsense Plex can’t fix.

32

I would really like for Plex to finally be able to transcode 4K HDR files to lower qualities with EITHER tonemapping OR without losing HDR - it would be sick if both things where to happen bot one of them needs to happen asap because I really like Plex and it would be a shame if I had to go with another program just because Plex doesnt keep up with the current technology.

One thing here that nobody is mentioning - I do have a 1080p HDR TV in my bedroom and I can just direct play 4K HDR content to it via my nvidia shield and it works perfectly. Just saying this in the off-chance somebody also has such a TV and is wondering if this will work.

1 Like
33

@Magnav0xTG yeah… it will work with a 4K hdr tv along with a streaming device that supports HDR, that’s not an issue, but some people don’t have 4K TVs All around the house, when I watch a 4k hdr movie on my non 4K hdr TV, it looks washed out, so horrible, Plex need to do something about this

34

@jongregory75 we all know this! The problem is 4k hdr movies not playing with correct colors on NON 4K HDR TVS, it looks washed out. Plex needs to fix this, other apps can handle it why not Plex ?

35

Does anyone know if this is under consideration by Plex?

36

Hi all,
Any news about this problem?

37

vote for this HDR>SDR feature in plex it only has 3 votes !!

1 Like
38

Thanks for the link, my vote is done.

1 Like
39

Got a LG TV with 4K, upon playing HEVC stuff I get the “HDR” showing up in the right hand corner. Colors seems good to me, but subtitle that is set to yellow is very washed out compared to how it looks on regular 1080P. Anybody seeing this too?

40

I am not 100% sure it’s related but if I transcode 4k with software decoder it seems to look ok. As soon as I turn on hardware decoding it looks washed out and awful.

Edited:
It seems like I was mistaken. Washed out no matter hardware/software decoder.