Intel UHD 770 QuickSync - Hardware Tone Mapping Produces Washed Out Colors on Unraid

[Brendin 0]

Setup:

• CPU: Intel Raptor Lake with UHD 770 iGPU
• OS: Unraid (Docker)
• Emby: Official Emby Docker container (version 4.9.x)
• GPU passthrough: /dev/dri/renderD128 and /dev/dri/card0 mapped correctly
• OpenCL installed: intel-opencl-icd, ocl-icd-libopencl1, intel-media-va-driver-non-free

 

Question: Is this a known limitation with Emby's hardware tone mapping on Intel iGPUs? Plex produces vibrant, accurate colors with the same UHD 770 hardware. Is there a fix or workaround, or is my only option to use software tone mapping (with high CPU usage) for proper color accuracy?

 

 

Emby: Set as 10 Mbps (No Direct Play)

Plex: Set as 10 Mbps (No Direct Play)

ffmpeg-transcode-df0df95e-e4ee-4e9d-b895-2408672e5b81_1.txt embyserver.txt

Edited November 8, 2025 by Brendin

[Abobader 3464]

Hello Brendin,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[GrimReaper 4739]

Have you tried using difefrent algorithm, i.e. Mobius and see how does it compare? 

Edit: Also, if you disable experimental HEVC encoding and transcode to AVC, are you getting same results? 

Edited November 8, 2025 by GrimReaper

[Brendin 0]

Hi, thanks for the reply!

Update:

I've disabled experimental HEVC encoding and tried changing the tone mapping algorithm from Hable to Mobius - still washed out colors. Then I tried Reinhard and still no improvement.

Also, what do you mean by "transcode to AVC"? Is there a specific setting to force AVC/H.264 output instead of HEVC? I can't find that option in the transcoding settings.

[GrimReaper 4739]

4 minutes ago, Brendin said:

Is there a specific setting to force AVC/H.264 output instead of HEVC?

Disabling HEVC does it (you should be able to see it in your ffmpeg log also). 

5 minutes ago, Brendin said:

I've disabled experimental HEVC encoding

 

[GrimReaper 4739]

11 minutes ago, Brendin said:

I've disabled experimental HEVC encoding and tried changing the tone mapping algorithm from Hable to Mobius - still washed out colors. Then I tried Reinhard and still no improvement.

Not sure of any other recommendation at this point, maybe try enabling VAAPI and move it on top, see what kind of results you'd get. Otherwise, maybe @softworkzmight have a hint or two. 

[Brendin 0]

5 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

Not sure of any other recommendation at this point, maybe try enabling VAAPI and move it on top, see what kind of results you'd get. Otherwise, maybe @softworkzmight have a hint or two. 

Update 2:

I tried moving VAAPI to the top of the hardware acceleration list and enabled "VAAPI HW Tone Mapping." This fixed the color issues, but the video looked blocky/pixelated and my CPU would spike to 100%.

Then I changed it to "Extra-T - OpenCL" which didn't use any CPU power, but the colors are still washed out.

 

VAAPI HW Tone Mapping: ON

VAAPI HW Tone Mapping: ON

VAAPI HW Tone Mapping: Extra-T - OpenCL

VAAPI HW Tone Mapping: Extra-T - OpenCL

[Brendin 0]

Update 3:

I tried playing the same video in the Emby app from the Windows Store, and the colors are working correctly! Plex still looks slightly better due to darker/richer colors, but the Emby Windows app is manageable and much better than Chrome.

I'm not sure why Chrome is washing out the colors when the Windows app displays them properly?

For my settings, I'm only using QuickSync (not VAAPI) with the Hable tone mapping algorithm. I tried the other algorithms ( mobius, reinhard) but they're all too bright.

 

Thanks @GrimReaper trying to help!

So, i should say is this normal on Chrome/Edge Browser or a new bug?

 

[softworkz 5066]

@Brendin- please post ffmpeg logs to be sure about what's happening.

[Luke 42077]

@Brendin?