Colors washed out in HDR

[Birkin 0]

This issue just recently started happening out of nowhere. I have an HDR monitor, and when playing content in Emby in the web browser, the colors will appear very grey/washed out. It happens when the playback controls go away. So if I hover the mouse over the video, the colors look totally normal, but once I rest the mouse for a second it reverts back to being washed out. I've attached a couple screenshots showcasing the issue. This doesn't happen on any other platforms I watch my content on, including iOS & the desktop app for Windows. This issue only occurs in the Web Player. Any help or input is appreciated. Turning off HDR in Windows fixes the issue, turning off Auto HDR has no effect.

[Abobader 3463]

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[yocker 1247]

6 hours ago, Birkin said:

This issue just recently started happening out of nowhere. I have an HDR monitor, and when playing content in Emby in the web browser, the colors will appear very grey/washed out. It happens when the playback controls go away. So if I hover the mouse over the video, the colors look totally normal, but once I rest the mouse for a second it reverts back to being washed out. I've attached a couple screenshots showcasing the issue. This doesn't happen on any other platforms I watch my content on, including iOS & the desktop app for Windows. This issue only occurs in the Web Player. Any help or input is appreciated. Turning off HDR in Windows fixes the issue, turning off Auto HDR has no effect.

The reason seems to be that you are transcoding.
HDR is not supported when transcoding and will require tone mapping.

[Birkin 0]

19 hours ago, yocker said:

The reason seems to be that you are transcoding.
HDR is not supported when transcoding and will require tone mapping.

I see what you are saying in the transcoding settings. I have an Nvidia GPU in my server, so I have hardware tone mapping with CUDA enabled & I tried all of the available algorithms, while restarting the server and web page each time, no difference. I also tried enabling software tone mapping and used the various algorithms which also made no difference.

Any ideas? The issue only seems to be present in the web player.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Birkin

[yocker 1247]

39 minutes ago, Birkin said:

I see what you are saying in the transcoding settings. I have an Nvidia GPU in my server, so I have hardware tone mapping with CUDA enabled & I tried all of the available algorithms, while restarting the server and web page each time, no difference. I also tried enabling software tone mapping and used the various algorithms which also made no difference.

Any ideas? The issue only seems to be present in the web player.

A developer would maybe need to look at why tone mapping isn't working since even the software version doesn't work
You would need to upload the logs here for them to look at.

But for the transcoding try increasing the playback quality if that doesn't work then i would bet you are using Firefox.
If possible try Microsoft edge with the HEVC Video Extensions installed, that should support any format or Google Chrome should support almost all.
 

[Luke 42077]

@Birkin

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

[Birkin 0]

On 7/2/2025 at 11:50 PM, yocker said:

A developer would maybe need to look at why tone mapping isn't working since even the software version doesn't work
You would need to upload the logs here for them to look at.

But for the transcoding try increasing the playback quality if that doesn't work then i would bet you are using Firefox.
If possible try Microsoft edge with the HEVC Video Extensions installed, that should support any format or Google Chrome should support almost all.
 

I am indeed using Firefox. But looking at these release notes for Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/134.0/releasenotes/ HEVC\H.264 support seems to have been added?

[yocker 1247]

15 minutes ago, Birkin said:

I am indeed using Firefox. But looking at these release notes for Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/134.0/releasenotes/ HEVC\H.264 support seems to have been added?

I don't think it supports the mkv container format that you are trying to play. I know mp4 will work but besides that Firefox doesn't support that many formats.

I do like Firefox but it is in general a (very) bad browser for media be it sound or video.

Also the washed out colors looks precisely how it did for me when using an Intel ARC card for transcoding.
I had to switch to a Nvidia card to fix that problem.
There are some numbers you can play around with to make it look better, a user in here showed me once, but i can't remember how or who.

Edited July 13, 2025 by yocker

[Birkin 0]

On 7/10/2025 at 8:57 PM, Luke said:

@Birkin

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. Thanks!

 

Hi Luke, here's a quick rundown. I am hosting Emby Server on a local Windows 10 machine that runs through Cloudflare. The problem is that when I idle the mouse, or when the video playback controls go away, all of the colors get very washed out and appear on a kind of grayscale. The issue only seems to occur when I have HDR enabled on my display and I'm using Firefox. If I disable HDR in Windows, or use the Emby application or other web browsers, the issue is not present. I've attached what I believe is the corresponding log file from when I started the stream. I also attached a video showcasing the issue.

ffmpeg-directstream-6e3b38fa-e929-4f7b-90f8-ec1f43adebce_1.txt

[Birkin 0]

7 minutes ago, yocker said:

I don't think it supports the mkv container format that you are trying to play. I know mp4 will work but besides that Firefox doesn't support that many formats.

I do like Firefox but it is in general a (very) bad browser for media be it sound or video.

Ah, I see. I know Firefox has its issues, mostly in compatibility, but I had no idea it flat out doesn't support some of these popular formats. Is there any way to get this media to play in Firefox with HDR still enabled? I'm kinda clueless when it comes to this kinda stuff.

Also, as a note I am indeed using an Nvidia card in my server. It's an old GTX 960 I had laying around.

Edited July 13, 2025 by Birkin

[yocker 1247]

4 minutes ago, Birkin said:

Ah, I see. I know Firefox has its issues, mostly in compatibility, but I had no idea it flat out doesn't support some of these popular formats. Is there any way to get this media to play in Firefox with HDR still enabled? I'm kinda clueless when it comes to this kinda stuff.

Also, as a note I am indeed using an Nvidia card in my server. It's an old GTX 960 I had laying around.

I don't think so.
I know you can edit and enable somethings by writing about:config in the URL input but if there is anything to enable MKV i don't know.
Maybe there is some addon that enables it but i don't know, sorry.

Okay if you are using a Nvidia card that shouldn't cause a problem then.

Try playing the video in Chrome or even better Microsoft Edge.
That should at least eliminate the transcoding.

[Kirkiazz75 1]

Hello,

I was in the same situation with Firefox with HDR10 4K 265 film.

I tried with Chrome and worked like a charm. 

With Firefox, the color was almost grey.

With Brave & Edge, the media took a long time to start. 

[giggs711 0]

This is happening to me as well but with the Android app