I am kinda hoping for a Plex employee to respond. Is Plex working to add tone mapping for transcoded HDR content? The ability to transcode 4k video is pretty much pointless without tone mapping…I am hoping Plex is already working on this feature. Anyone know if they are?
21 Likes
Plex employees do not answer questions that begin with: When is Plex going to… ?
1 Like
It’s not an easy problem to solve.
Here’s why
So does that mean its not going to happen? Or its just going to take a while?
Augmenting the above:
… nor do support staff answer questions like that without definitive direction from Engineering.
Personally speaking?
- Apple is having trouble getting it right. If they’re having trouble…
- If you have HEVC HDR, what requires HDR → SDR ? again
- All my media is remuxed into DirectPlay format. HDR is metadata on top of SDR. The SDR image plays just fine on my SDR displays
The issue is when you play 4k HDR on devices that dont support it. Like for example if i try to watch Black Panther in HDR on my iphone, it has to transcode it because you cant direct play it. So then it looks all its color. All of my media is remuxed 4k HDR. On my 4k HDR tvs its fine. but my regular 1080p tvs it looks horrible.
It is a solveable problem.
It has been solved in Firecore.
It has been solved with MadVR.
Plex is not a culprit in the bad HDR->SDR implementation per se, because in some viewing chains the HDR->SDR conversion works.For example, if you directplay 4K in Windows PMP on a non-HDR screen the colors look fine. Here, the software on the PC end is doing the “transcoding.” And of course if Plex directplays 4K on a 4K screen using a 4K-capable player it looks wonderful.
However, when Plex on the server side transcodes 4K to 1080p, it looks bad. Like when perhaps an iOS user streams outside the home, or if you stream using a Roku 4 on a regular HDTV. Also, and I tested this recently, when Plex creates an “optimized version” of a 4K file, the resulting file always looks like crap (colors-wise).
As I understand it, it’s Plex’s reliance on ffmpeg that hobbles 4K tone mapping at present.
PLEX:
Please fix this.
4K is the future!
Be a part of the future 
5 Likes
What you’re asking is:
“Plex, please solve the problem nobody in the industry has figured out yet”
To that I say what I’ve said my entire career:
“Tough is easy; the seemingly impossible takes a little longer”
In the the interest of not debating a topic which has no immediate answer, can we just let this go until there is something to be said about it? This is bordline “beating a dead horse” until such time as there is anything to say/report
Doesn’t this fall on ffmpeg and requires a lot of tweaks to saturation/color which can be a minefield of personal preference?
Do you have some alternative to ffmpeg that’s crossplatform and no massive licensing fees which would get passed on to the consumer? Last I looked MadVR is directshow… windows only
4K might be the future but I bet the metrics show it’s a very low percentage of the user base using it let alone transcoding down
To your point about metrics, its a little skewed. A lot of people dont use 4K in Plex because of this issue. Also, 4k just in the last 6 months has exploded. Almost every single movie comes out in 4k now. We will see a very rapid and exponentially increase take rate on 4k, we already have.
Sorry, HDR is not just metadata on top of an SDR image. In fact, if that were all it was then it would be as simple as stripping the metadata to maintain SDR compatibility with non-HDR displays.
http://files.spectracal.com/Documents/White%20Papers/HDR_Demystified.pdf
3 Likes
Quote source please
Until recently you couldn’t even “backup” 4K content and only source was from IPTV
Many haven’t even purchased 4k tvs nor have clients that support x265
If anything the big boom is people watching more and more on mobile devices which don’t need 4k resolution to be clear.
IMO, 4K HDR ->SDR should be a low priority and bug fixing high… but that’s me
To your point, if I want to watch 4K HDR content on my phone I will need Plex to transcode the file for playback (or I am going to need a phone with a LOT of storage). The lack of tone mapping capability in the current transcoding engine means all transocdes look like drab garbage.
2 Likes
I would have more sympathy if Plex wasn’t pushing so hard on useless stuff like News and this mobile app redesign that is terrible.
12 Likes
The reason it needs to be a priority is because of the reason you listed its not…if i want to watch my sources on my phone it looks like poop. Im not going to have a 1080p library and a 4k library. Thats insanity. I already have 250+ 4k hdr movies, im not going to go and back fill 250+ movies. That will take so much time, storage and steal valuable limited bandwidth.
2 Likes
I stand corrected on HDR. Apologies for confusing it with another technology. Please forgive me, it’s been a long week.
With that, It’s been fun.
It’s weekend time
3 Likes
That is actually what I am doing. I have one 4K library with 305 titles and my standard BD library with 1763 of which 305 of those are the 4K titles again, but the 1080p BD version. If Plex can sort out HDR->SDR playback I can free up quite a bit of space. Fortunately, I have a lot of space so for now it isn’t deal breaker and more of a ‘nice to have’.
That’s an enhancement to me especially since the underlining encoder/decoder is where it has to be done which plex has no control over development-wise and moving to another one would require tons of regression testing+proof of concept so you’re SOL regardless timeframe-wise. Would be nice if they exposed that under the Advanced settings similar to how you can change the default player in android… this would let people hack away and put stop-gap measures in place while they look into official means.
I have the same issue with my 3D content and plex… I have to have two libraries and two versions since the 2D copy embedded in the 3D version is sub-par for regular playback/transcoding. At least 4k hdr transcoding will eventually happen meanwhile proper 3D will never happen since it’s dying out due to crap passive 3d tvs killing the experience.
Plex needs to stabilize their software and stop messing up the UIs first and foremost imo… I don’t even want to think about some of the new stuff they rolled out instead of fixing things. This is the same thing that happened to Ubuntu when they tried to unify their UI, followed by monetizing it and it pretty much killed them. I get they need to think of future revenue streams and I know where this is all going… local media support is likely going to be less and less a focus… remember your roots maybe 
This is how things go though… eventually they’ll either get it right or someone else will come along. Then that someone else will hit the same snags… cycle continues
/2 cents
2 Likes
Please give me a title that really shows me why 4k is so wonderful.
I just don’t see it.
( I have 4k TV’s and Shields to play it on )
