Trouble exporting HDR video for proper playback in Plex

General Discussions
1

I’ve watched many tutorials and have read Apple’s help articles, but still am not having success getting my HDR edits exported and looking proper in Plex… The image in my exported HDR videos look blown out, whether viewing on my iPhone, my HDR monitor, or my HDR TV.

See in the attached image the comparison.

On the left is my viewer in Final Cut Pro 11. (I use my M4 iPad Pro as my display for the viewer)

In the center is the exported video viewed in Quicktime Player on macOS.

On the right side is the same exported video being played in Plex.

Here you can see how blown out the image is. The greens look neon, and you lose a lot of detail in the sky.

It appears this way using Plex player on my Mac, but also using Plex on my HDR TV.

compare-for-plex
compare-for-plex1920×354 75.1 KB

In my export settings (from Final Cut Pro 11), color space was set to: Wide Gamut - Rec. 2020 HLG
For video codec, I tried both HEVC 10-bit and HEVC 10-bit w/ Dobly Vision 8.4

Any ideas why these HDR exports are looking blown out when being played in Plex?

Thanks for the help!

2

I could be wrong, but the 2020 HLG method of storing HDR color is not well supported, yet. It was a relative late arrival, compared to Dolby Vision and HDR10.

If you have the choice, use 2084 PQ color transformation and “HDR10” as the storage format.

3

And good tip. I changed my project to PQ from HLG, and exported a new movie to use PQ HDR. It at least decent now - no longer blown out.
Not as bright as what I see in my Fina Cut Pro project. Any clue why?
It looks sooooo good on my M4 iPad Pro as a monitor when working in FCP.
Now, the PQ HDR export looks pretty decent in Plex, but doesn’t reach the same brightness or saturation. But progress!