Pale HDR

[Milldor 14]

When viewing some HDR videos they seem pale and not tone mapped correctly. There seems to be no correlation between video properties. Other players show the video correctly and the app works correctly as well. 

I've included a screenshot from VLC and Emby theater, it's obvious which is how it should look. 

This happens in SDR and HDR viewing modes in windows.

[carbonbaseunit 10]

Is this being transcoded by the server while playing in Emby Theater?

[thelanranger 11]

This is a huge issue on Xbox. NOTHING in HDR plays properly for me. It all looks just like your screenshots.

I pretty much watch everything in either VLC or KODI on the Xbox at this point and I'm kinda getting to a breaking point where I'm about to just abandon emby entirely. I have a Firestick, PC, Roku, a phone, and an Xbox and there's little not no consistency across the platforms and I'm not really getting confidence that 'it just doesn't work on the xbox just buy a shield' or anything of that nature. It seems like fundamental, core, software issues in the player. VLC 'just works' and I really don't understand why playing the actual video on at least a handful of specific platforms is not the prime objective.

[Luke 37362]

We are working on improving it. Thanks for the feedback.

[Milldor 14]

On 23/12/2021 at 23:04, Luke said:

We are working on improving it. Thanks for the feedback.

It's been terrible since you moved to MPV but anyone ever mentions that decision people have a hissy fit.

[RanmaCanada 362]

HDR on Emby Theatre is an issue with HDR on windows being a complete utter s$T$ show.  Honestly if you want to watch HDR stuff you should be using almost anything but a PC.  Until MS can resolve the issues with HDR in windows, I suggest you avoid it.  If you don't believe it's an issue, just check the /r/htpc sub on reddit.  The majority of users have given up on watching anything on their htpc and have moved to Shields.

[Milldor 14]

11 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

HDR on Emby Theatre is an issue with HDR on windows being a complete utter s$T$ show.  Honestly if you want to watch HDR stuff you should be using almost anything but a PC.  Until MS can resolve the issues with HDR in windows, I suggest you avoid it.  If you don't believe it's an issue, just check the /r/htpc sub on reddit.  The majority of users have given up on watching anything on their htpc and have moved to Shields.

While hdr in Windows is less than perfect. It still seems to work fine when using kodi or madvr. 

[generiq 113]

17 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

HDR on Emby Theatre is an issue with HDR on windows being a complete utter s$T$ show.  Honestly if you want to watch HDR stuff you should be using almost anything but a PC.  Until MS can resolve the issues with HDR in windows, I suggest you avoid it.  If you don't believe it's an issue, just check the /r/htpc sub on reddit.  The majority of users have given up on watching anything on their htpc and have moved to Shields.

They just don't know what they're doing. Which is fine, shield is a very easy to use alternative. 

 

6 hours ago, Milldor said:

While hdr in Windows is less than perfect. It still seems to work fine when using kodi or madvr. 

The issue is electron. 

Just use the GPU renderer and hardware acceleration set to auto.

And probably update mpv.

Edited January 3, 2022 by generiq

[Milldor 14]

I have a shield but I prefer using my htpc. 

Changing renderer or updating things doesn't help with this. Its been an ongoing problem and considering we pay for this service I don't think we should have to change devices when the developers have chosen to cause this when adopting a different platform. 

[generiq 113]

Post a screenshot of your stats when it plays with pale color.

[RanmaCanada 362]

On 04/01/2022 at 15:08, Milldor said:

I have a shield but I prefer using my htpc. 

Changing renderer or updating things doesn't help with this. Its been an ongoing problem and considering we pay for this service I don't think we should have to change devices when the developers have chosen to cause this when adopting a different platform. 

And again, it's due to MS screwing up HDR in windows.  Just because Kodi and MadVR have fudged their way around it, doesn't mean that it's solved.  

But here is a guide from the forums to use MadVR with Emby.  

 

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/windows-hdr-broken.3194947/

HDR in windows is broken, period.  if you want a trouble free experience, use your Shield.

[Milldor 14]

I came here to query a fix for the software from the developers not a bunch of workarounds. 

I already know the state of hdr in Windows but if I wanted to use the shield I wouldn't bother asking the question. 

I also don't want to use an external player as it doesn't track progress properly. 

 

[generiq 113]

I'm pretty certain that it's because copy mode is being used due to the improper use of libmpv in an attempt to circumvent the problem with electron making the UI disappear. Hardware acceleration is completely broken in Theatre when using the libmpv renderer. There is a conflict between the libmpv renderer and electron, which forces mpv to default to copy mode to get around it, which in turn results in what you're seeing. Don't expect this to be resolved, unless electron updates. Here is the issue that was reported to mpv . If electron updates to use OpenGL ES 3, and emby then updates the electron build in Theater (don't hold your breath), then everything will work (maybe). But as is, when playing any HDR content, you have to use the GPU renderer and that will allow you to use d3d11va hardware acceleration. That is the hardware acceleration that Windows needs for the swapchain. It also allows mpv to determine if it needs to or can apply tone mapping. So using libmpv instead of the mpv actual player (as it used to), made everything much worse than the original disappearing UI issue. For people using systems that can't use HDR at all, they are just fine (and others like myself, who can actually use HDR with no problems and also still have the UI). But all others are screwed.

I was going to suggest that you could try using software decoding with libmpv, but that appears to be completely broken, resulting in a blue screen (I am using the latest mpv). This used to work, but doesn't appear to anymore.

I also tried dropping in the latest electron build, and that was a fail, also.

These are your options.

Emby is spending all of their time on the new app, and not doing anything with the current Theater release. Even though mpv has had something like a thousand commits since it was last updated by emby. Emby last updated mpv on Dec 29th 2020. I build my own, and replace what is in Theater.

[generiq 113]

7 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

HDR in windows is broken, period.

No it isn't. They're just a bunch of cry babies who want the return of the heinous auto-switching between SDR and HDR. I'm so happy that Microsoft has killed that. Good riddance to that stupid piece of s**t! Now I just turn it on and leave it, and it works perfectly! Those cry babies need to have their computers taken away. They don't deserve them! 

[Milldor 14]

On 06/01/2022 at 06:07, generiq said:

No it isn't. They're just a bunch of cry babies who want the return of the heinous auto-switching between SDR and HDR. I'm so happy that Microsoft has killed that. Good riddance to that stupid piece of s**t! Now I just turn it on and leave it, and it works perfectly! Those cry babies need to have their computers taken away. They don't deserve them! 

I'd rather there be an option to allow auto switching. But you're right in that it basically just works now. 

[Milldor 14]

After having found out that a new app is in development this topic is moot. 

.... As long as the new app handles it 

[Mobius 18]

Sorry, bit late but I  just came across this thread.

My non-technical 2 cents...

Last year, ET was playing HDR with no issue that I could see and I didn't even have to configure anything. A reminder of just how good ET can be as a media player.. Then at some point, playback was pale as the topic says. Since there were no intel driver updates, and with MS updating all the time; I figured that the pale playback it's likely due to some change MS made.

However, HDR still plays perfectly fine in both portable versions of mpv.net and MPC-BE (current vers' 1.5.4). Not only is the HDR saturation good with these players, but they are both very fast to load, play, skip etc. Especially mpv.net. Only had to initially muck about a bit with the audio config to get the sound right.

Whatever the cause of the sudden pale playback; it seems to be an issue that the Emby developers have to resolve.

Don't play a lot of HDR content, so using another player as a workaround isn't a big issue for me at the moment. However I must admit I am a little confused as to why these portable players seem to have no issue with HDR and yet ET still does.

Running ET and server on Win 10 Pro 21H2 using the HD 630 of a 7th gen i5

Best to health to everyone.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Mobius
mistakes

[Luke 37362]

14 hours ago, Mobius said:

Sorry, bit late but I  just came across this thread.

My non-technical 2 cents...

Last year, ET was playing HDR with no issue that I could see and I didn't even have to configure anything. A reminder of just how good ET can be as a media player.. Then at some point, playback was pale as the topic says. Since there were no intel driver updates, and with MS updating all the time; I figured that the pale playback it's likely due to some change MS made.

However, HDR still plays perfectly fine in both portable versions of mpv.net and MPC-BE (current vers' 1.5.4). Not only is the HDR saturation good with these players, but they are both very fast to load, play, skip etc. Especially mpv.net. Only had to initially muck about a bit with the audio config to get the sound right.

Whatever the cause of the sudden pale playback; it seems to be an issue that the Emby developers have to resolve.

Don't play a lot of HDR content, so using another player as a workaround isn't a big issue for me at the moment. However I must admit I am a little confused as to why these portable players seem to have no issue with HDR and yet ET still does.

Running ET and server on Win 10 Pro 21H2 using the HD 630 of a 7th gen i5

Best to health to everyone.

The next update will have an updated mpv so we'll see if that helps.

[Mobius 18]

On 4/17/2022 at 10:57 AM, Luke said:

The next update will have an updated mpv so we'll see if that helps.

Thanks Luke, but I no longer have an issue.

HDR playback is no longer pale.

Noticed high gpu usage on my HD 630 during HDR playback due to ffmpeg.exe. Stats for nerds showed that the video was being transcoded from HEVC to H264. No reason why it should do that. Tested a non-HDR video encoded with H264 and again ffmpeg.exe is transcoding. Again, no reason to do this.

Went into Users settings and unticked:

• Allow audio playback that requires transcoding
• Allow video playback that requires transcoding
• Allow video playback that requires conversion without re-encoding

The non-HDR H264 video was no longer transcoding, GPU usage was minimal and HDR playback works fine.

So it seems my issue is unrelated to the OP and due to unnecessary transcoding.

Running the Beta version of Emby Server on 7th gen i5 using HD 630. Win Pro 21H2 64bit

[Luke 37362]

Quote

Went into Users settings and unticked:

• Allow audio playback that requires transcoding
• Allow video playback that requires transcoding
• Allow video playback that requires conversion without re-encoding

I wouldn't do that, because if you read the help text, this is likely to cause playback failures in other situations. Instead I would look at the stats feature in the video player to learn why it was transcoding, and then address that. For instance, you might have configured some other option that is causing it.

[Mobius 18]

15 hours ago, Luke said:

I wouldn't do that, because if you read the help text, this is likely to cause playback failures in other situations. Instead I would look at the stats feature in the video player to learn why it was transcoding, and then address that. For instance, you might have configured some other option that is causing it.

Okay think I found the issue.

I turned back on all the ‘allow transcoding features’ and 'Stats for Nerds' shows streaming HLS with a media exceeds bitrate limit. See screenshot below.

Note also the high fps in the screenshot.

So why streaming all of a sudden instead of direct play?

In the ‘Dashboard/Playback’ under ‘Playback/Video’ settings both ‘Home network quality’ and ‘Internet Quality’ are set to ‘Auto’

I never stream files over the internet and so I have never changed the default settings from ‘Auto’. Emby seems to ‘think’ it needs to stream these video files (as if over the net) and not over the local network. Both the server and the client are on the same PC btw.

So to test; I changed the ‘Internet quality’ from ‘Auto’ to the highest bitrate of 4K-120Mbps.

and now 'Stats for Nerds' shows ‘Direct Play’, so it seems I have a better solution now.

Doesn't explain why though.

The PC runs behind a VPN. Given that the server and client are on the same PC; I thought maybe there’s some routing issue going on despite no routing needed.

Could the server and or client 'think' the files are being routed over the net?

On a separate issue; why does ‘Auto’ falsely detect there is not enough bandwidth and switch transcoding to a lower bitrate?

So I tested again. Switching ‘Internet Quality’ back to ‘Auto’, disconnecting the VPN and restarting Emby server. Everything now plays fine.

So the VPN and or Emby server have changed something, since everything was working fine. In addition I noticed that if I enable the VPN Kill switch and disable the VPN then ET cannot find the server. (Again both the client and server on on the same PC) so with my limited knowledge; they should be able to see each other unless the problem arises because despite only needing local access; the VPN is preventing communication.

I can see that on startup that Emby.Theater.exe connects to github and electron.exe to Atlanta Georgia. I assume this is likely update checking. From that point on they and Embyserver.exe all go through the VPN’s local IP. So the VPN is the likely the culprit.

Changing ‘Internet quality’ from default ‘Auto’ to 4K-120Mbps works around this issue.

In any-case I have restored the transcoding permissions as you suggested and in doing so was able to resolve a problem that was apparently mainly due to my VPN.

This is way off the OP topic Luke so do with it what you deem fit mate.

Cheers and thanks again for reminding me to look elsewhere.

Edited April 22, 2022 by Mobius
mistake

[Luke 37362]

Thanks for the feedback.