Elevated Black Levels since update

[mawazi 1]

I'm getting consistently elevated black levels since the update. It almost looks like it's sending 16-235 range rather than full range to the TV. I compared the same video using my Chromecast Ultra, and the black levels were good.

 

EDIT: I've tested more videos now and they're all showing the same issue. They all look fine when viewed through Chromecast Ultra and through iOS. I checked with all three players and all are direct playing.

 

EDIT 2: A bit more info, This is happening using an Apple TV 4k connected to an LG OLED. Happening with both mp4 and mkv containers, with HEVC and H264 video codecs. The Emby interface looks fine, black blends in with the black borders of the TV.

 

EDIT 3: Sorry for so many edits. I played back one of the files using mpv on my PC, setting mpv to output limited range, and the resulting video looks very similar to what I'm seeing through the Apple TV.

Edited February 1, 2019 by mawazi

[benvoid 0]

Got the same issue with almost every video.

I‘m using the Apple TV 4K as well and a Samsung Qled 4K TV. Especially the high resolution videos look all awful.

Edited February 1, 2019 by benvoid

[Luke 37049]

I suppose we could set the output levels on mpv @@corey.

[sfatula 185]

I have that too, along with blockiness when playing antenna (1080i) recordings from Emby dvr. 

[red-mojo 0]

I have the same problem and I also noticed that the Apple TV is no longer matching frame rate and dynamic range, which may be related.

My Apple TV is configured to match the content's frame rate and dynamic range (see Apple Support). With the new player, the Apple TV stays in Dolby Vision mode even if I play SDR content.

[corey 312]

@@red-mojo — the new player does not currently support matching frame rate and dynamic range. That’s something we’ll be looking into.

[mawazi 1]

I'm hoping this will be a fairly quick fix as I've found my SD content to be almost unwatchable now, and that makes up a large portion of my library. I tend to put a lot of work into my encodes (a lot of that devoted to the various Star Trek shows) to get them looking 'just right,' so it's a bit of a let down when they play with gray blacks and blocky. I think the blockiness is just another symptom of the raised black levels, I can see noise/blocks that I usually wouldn't be able to.

 

Thanks for all your hard work!

[mawazi 1]

I believe I've figured it out. If the Apple TV is configured to default to 4k Dolby Vision (its "Format" option), it means that the Apple TV interface (along with the Emby interface) will be sent to the TV as Dolby Vision. When using the built-in player, the Apple TV would switch to 4k SDR when the SDR video was played. With the custom player, that's not happening, and the resulting picture is compromised. If the Apple TV's "Format" option is changed to 4k SDR, everything works just fine. I don't have any Dolby Vision files to test if they are played appropriately once this change is made.

[mawazi 1]

Bad news. The custom player is also not matching frame rates, leading to jumpy playback of 24fps content when output is defaulting to 60hz. Ah, it looks like this was mentioned already above. The TV seems to be trying its best to smoothly display the 24fps video at 60hz, but not entirely succeeding. Considering most video content is going to be 24fps, this is definitely concerning. I also have 25fps videos, which I haven't tested, but I'm guessing they won't play smoothly either.

 

Update: I've found that turning off the Apple TV's "Match Framerate" option while leaving Format at "4k SDR 60hz" fixes the jumping issue. I believe this behavior will vary by TV, some are better than others at locking onto 24hz video within a 60hz signal.

[Luke 37049]

Thanks for the info.

[mawazi 1]

Is it possible for Emby to use mpv's display-resample feature? This would no longer require the refresh rate to be changed. However, in my experience, it requires more processing power than integrated GPUs tend to have available.

[Luke 37049]

If supported on the platform then yes.

[abat119 8]

I too am dissapointed with the new player. On one hand it is great that everything I throw at it now direct-plays (albeit a minor issue for me since most things direct-streamed before... but still nice), but on the other hand I lost two key features that I really like on my Apple TV 4K: native 24p playback and HDR support (besides the black level issue which I too have noticed...). This basically makes my new UHD-TV not much better than my old 1080p TV.

 

It's like you guys went 1-step forward and 2-steps back.

 

Hope you can resolve these issues promptly. Or at the very least, maybe work with Infuse to integrate your server with their player because that one works flawlessly but I prefer the overal experience on Emby.

 

Or maybe give us an option to choose which player we want to use (Native-Apple or your new one) until you sort out these issues...

 

Thanks for listening and keep up the great work overall : - )

 

EDIT: If I'm already here.... can you please bring over the new design of the Android TV to Apple? I also have a Shield and I am LOVING the new makeover. It would be great if all your apps were uniform : - )

 

Thanks again!

Edited February 2, 2019 by abat119

[tchirou 23]

Just following this topic

[don.alcombright 13]

as a FYI, since you are using MPV as Plex is, the issue is not occurring with Plex. Not saying your code base is the same of course, but it would seem the underlying player MPV is fine. Most videos are pretty tough to watch in the current state. My Apple TV 4K is set to Dolby Vision, matching.

Edited February 5, 2019 by don.alcombright

[momo2 1]

I have the same issue. The apple tv is playing everything in Dolby Vision, even when the file is not dolby vision encoded. Using Apple TV 4K with LG OLED 2017 model. Tried AVI and MKV files. The Emby app even shows the "DOLBY" symbol on EVERY video's info page (the page where you press play and see the info about the movie, such as actors).

[ebr 14910]

The Emby app even shows the "DOLBY" symbol on EVERY video's info page (the page where you press play and see the info about the movie, such as actors).

 

Hi.  That's an indicator that the item has a Dolby audio track. 

[Guest asrequested]

Is it possible for Emby to use mpv's display-resample feature? This would no longer require the refresh rate to be changed. However, in my experience, it requires more processing power than integrated GPUs tend to have available.

 

That resamples the audio. You won't be able to bitstream the audio, if you want to use that. You probably want to use --scale and/or --dscale  with oversample, to smooth it out

[Michael K. 24]

I too am suffering from poor image quality, with the black levels being the most glaringly obvious. I hope it's fixed soon.

 

Anyway, thank you for working so hard on the many other improvements. I'm very happy to have the subtitles available during playback. Keep up the good work! 

[Luke 37049]

We're looking into this, thanks guys.

[mawazi 1]

That resamples the audio. You won't be able to bitstream the audio, if you want to use that. You probably want to use --scale and/or --dscale  with oversample, to smooth it out

 

That doesn't make much sense to me. When you set video-sync to display-resample it uses the temporal scaler to match the video to the display's refresh rate. It does also use some intermittent, minor audio resampling to help compensate for drift. Scale and dscale are spatial scalers, and have nothing to do with framerates and refresh rates.

[Guest asrequested]

That doesn't make much sense to me. When you set video-sync to display-resample it uses the temporal scaler to match the video to the display's refresh rate. It does also use some intermittent, minor audio resampling to help compensate for drift. Scale and dscale are spatial scalers, and have nothing to do with framerates and refresh rates.

@@mawazi

 

I know it seems that way, but if you bitstream audio, it can't be resampled.

 

https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#options-video-sync

 

 

 

The default action is to adjust the video to the audio

 

 

If you were to use --video-sync=display-resample in mpv with audio bitstreaming enabled, there will be nothing in the stats or the log. But if you disable audio bitstreaming, you'll see log entries like this;

[   0.712][v][cplayer] Change display sync audio drift: -1

and the stats will look like this;

 

 

 

So what you really want is to smooth out the video frames, as they are adjusted to match the audio.

 

https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#options-scale

 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Doofus

[sfatula 185]

Needs to handle interlaced video (antenna) better, it's bad at it right now. 

[mawazi 1]

@@mawazi

 

I know it seems that way, but if you bitstream audio, it can't be resampled.

 

https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#options-video-sync

 

 

 

The default action is to adjust the video to the audio

 

 

If you were to use --video-sync=display-resample in mpv with audio bitstreaming enabled, there will be nothing in the stats or the log. But if you disable audio bitstreaming, you'll see log entries like this;

[   0.712][v][cplayer] Change display sync audio drift: -1

and the stats will look like this;

 

 

 

So what you really want is to smooth out the video frames, as they are adjusted to match the audio.

 

https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#options-scale

 

 

But in order to use tscale you also have to turn on interpolation and use a vsync mode starting with display-, according to the mpv manual. I don't see what good using oversample with scale or dscale does, unless you're changing the resolution of the video. Is audio bitstreaming a requirement of emby and/or apple tv? If it's just about keeping the audio bit-perfect than it's nothing I care much about, my ears are unlikely to notice any difference. The alternative to bitstreaming is having mpv decode and send the audio as PCM, from what I understand.

Edited February 25, 2019 by mawazi

[Guest asrequested]

Interpolation is separate to oversample. It does a little more than simply oversampling. But the point I'm trying to make is that with audio bitstreaming enabled, mpv will silently disable display-resample. Audio bitstreaming isn't a necessity, I was just pointing it out, in case that's what you wanted. If you want to use Atmos or Dts-X you have to bitstream. But if you don't use those, bitstreaming isn't needed. mpv will decode all audio. If you use copyback and no audio bitstreaming, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Doofus