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HDR is abhorrent

HDR is abhorrent
« on: May 21, 2021, 11:49:01 PM »
So... Correct me if I am wrong.. This is my understanding right now with what is wrong with HDR..

HDR material is rendered with a target luminosity ? Its not a object model where you can render the material on the fly into a luminosity space of the display device. The metadata in HDR10+ and Dolby Vision lack the power to truly solve the issue. That would require way too much CPU power. So a target is picked and the material is rendered. The target many people seem to be using is for a display that physics has yet to enable. This allows the material to be rendered correctly at some point in the future when displays have reached the ability to do supernova to 0.0001fl range.. So the material we see today is rendered in a way when they create the file that is for a device no one has,,, and when displayed on current displays looks awful because it ends up not having any dynamic range on the actual imager chip in use. Stretching it out to cover the actual display range is almost not possible and results in all sorts of issues. While its possible to make it look "OK", sorta,, its not making full use of the bit depth of the imager chip and not using the full dynamic range of the display device UNLESS its rendered with a luminosity target that is close to the display...

Do I have that right ?

There is no way to fix this or adjust out a incorrect rendering..

Further.. Dolby Vision also seems to use this same general model and more metadat that wont resolve the issue.

The only way this will work correctly is a new standard that renders the video into the dynamic range of the display device on the fly. That seems way to mathematically intense to be implemented any time soon.. Sorta Atmos for video..

It IS possible to render into different luminosity spaces and offer these up by a choice. Like the S&M disc does. So its possible for a AppleTV for example to know what your choice of luminosity target is and then pick the file to play based on this. Its also possible the consumer could pick it.. This would be a good temp solution.. Of course source material people would need to render a number of files, grade each one, store and offer all these taking up like 7 times more space. So the business end of this might be the real problem.

HDR is abhorrent.
 



Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2021, 09:03:40 AM »
Well, HDR is on the edge of technology now, and because displays aren't capable of displaying the full Dynamic Range HDR was intended to capture and show, there are challenges.  And sometimes the result can be poor.  Add to that the variation in the original mastering of the HDR content at the studio level, and things can get messy.

Speaking to the Projector situation, where the challenges are perhaps the greatest, given that the Nit limitation is far worse than with conventional TV's, there are very workable solutions.

JVC's projectors have built-in Dynamic Tone Mapping, where the intent is to bring out about what you're discussing.  And the latest firmware allows you to input your screen size and gain, further enabling the Projector to 'tailor' its Tone Mapping to match what your theater can do.

And taking it to the next level, there are external Video Processors, the madVR Envy and Lumagen Radiance Pro being the prime candidates here.  I have the Envy, and it addresses all of the problems you're talking about.  You tell it how many Nits you have on-screen, and it performs frame-by-frame Dynamic Tone Mapping to optimize how the image looks on your screen.

I have a JVC, and it does an excellent job.  By no means 'abhorrent'.  Quite good.  The Envy takes it up a significant notch, such that I am thrilled with what I'm seeing, regardless of how the original HDR content was mastered.

The Envy also has options for Highlight Recovery, Shadow Recovery and Contrast Recovery, which enable you to tweak the basic Tone Mapping even further.  The results are stunning.

So the situation has changed significantly from when I got my first JVC, the RS400, 5 or so years ago, where it used the dreaded "Gamma D" for HDR.  That was pretty awful.  But things have improved dramatically since then.

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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2021, 12:56:22 PM »
So... Correct me if I am wrong.. This is my understanding right now with what is wrong with HDR..

HDR material is rendered with a target luminosity ? Its not a object model where you can render the material on the fly into a luminosity space of the display device. The metadata in HDR10+ and Dolby Vision lack the power to truly solve the issue. That would require way too much CPU power. So a target is picked and the material is rendered. The target many people seem to be using is for a display that physics has yet to enable. This allows the material to be rendered correctly at some point in the future when displays have reached the ability to do supernova to 0.0001fl range.. So the material we see today is rendered in a way when they create the file that is for a device no one has,,, and when displayed on current displays looks awful because it ends up not having any dynamic range on the actual imager chip in use. Stretching it out to cover the actual display range is almost not possible and results in all sorts of issues. While its possible to make it look "OK", sorta,, its not making full use of the bit depth of the imager chip and not using the full dynamic range of the display device UNLESS its rendered with a luminosity target that is close to the display...

Do I have that right ?

There is no way to fix this or adjust out a incorrect rendering..

Further.. Dolby Vision also seems to use this same general model and more metadat that wont resolve the issue.

The only way this will work correctly is a new standard that renders the video into the dynamic range of the display device on the fly. That seems way to mathematically intense to be implemented any time soon.. Sorta Atmos for video..

It IS possible to render into different luminosity spaces and offer these up by a choice. Like the S&M disc does. So its possible for a AppleTV for example to know what your choice of luminosity target is and then pick the file to play based on this. Its also possible the consumer could pick it.. This would be a good temp solution.. Of course source material people would need to render a number of files, grade each one, store and offer all these taking up like 7 times more space. So the business end of this might be the real problem.

HDR is abhorrent.
 
It was pretty bad a few years ago. Like DLCPhoto said, there are good solutions now. You don't say what your 4K UHD display is though.
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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2021, 04:23:59 PM »
HDR can be a complete fail for sure if your display doesn't play well with it for whatever reason, be it a projector that is lumens challenged and doesn't have anything in the chain to help. (I.e. Panasonic UHD player with their tone mapping type feature, outboard processor, or in the display itself.) I've had to create a setting in my LG OLED TV for shows that get dimmer where the HDR in base settings sometimes yields a picture that is completely dark. Recently, Shadow & Bone on Netflix in the final episode had one of the most difficult scenes I've encountered with a battle happening in a magically darkened environment. But that's also been the case for non HDR scenes, famously the big nighttime battle episode in the 3rd ep of the last season of Game of Thrones where so many people complained that they couldn't see very much of the entire episode. It wasn't in HDR but still caused major problems.

Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2021, 04:46:24 PM »
I am curretly playing with a Sony VPL-GTZ380, but I have the same experience with Sony OLED, LG, and a JVC projector to name a few. In fact EVERY display I have encountered looks worse in every set of calibrations.

As far as adding more math ( Lumingen ) to fix HDR... Hmmm... Thats like trying to fix DirecTV, SURE you can make it look better, but the issue still exists. Plus you get to fool with settings for each bit of source material. ALso you then add more processing to the HDMI signal which mathematically MUST degrade everything that goes thru it. That is just a mathematical reality. The question is does the harm outweigh the good. The math to remap this is lossy Also your starting from less bits which is why once mastered the damage is done. The picture from EVERY other source looks great, 4K SDR is stunning.. Its ONLY HDR that look like ****.. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FIX IT.. And even then 4K SDR still beats the result of more processing.

My view of HDR being Abhorrent is about the standard. The result of HDR when everything is right, the material was aquired in HDR and the moon is full with jupiter aligned with mars,, like on the Spears & Munsil UHD demo material is wonderful. What has me annoyed is this Consumer Technology Association created standard just to sell product, HDR.. Its a terrible "standard" driven to market in order to sell more devices while not properly vetting a standard and with a deceptive certification regime.

I am SMPTE/SID/SPIE so I do understand the standards process and HDR/10/+ along with DV are horrid, misleading and serve one function - for people to buy new gear.

With a bitstream compressed down to 20Mbps,,, a 1080P24 4:2:0 will look better then a 4K60 4:4:4 RGB HDR/DV because you end up crushing even more data down a fixed pipe. While it is technically 4K in its pixels, your only getting maybe 1K after compression and less with moving objects. Bit depth can also get crushed. 4K only looks good if nothing moves. Things in fast motion have no resolution because of compression. A 1080 has way more resolution with things in motion because it does not have the compression that 4K would with the same bitstream cap. We don't want to push MORE data down a fixed pipe. I sure don't want material that was not acquired in HDR rendering into HDR 4K and then stuffed down a pipe. All this does is degrade the material. People are adding HDR to material that was not aquired in it and just destroying the material because of the later compression.

HDR is a plague. Its spread has gone unchecked.

HDR is the Emperors New Clothes.

« Last Edit: May 22, 2021, 04:52:04 PM by Chris_Stephens »

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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2021, 08:17:33 PM »
I suspect the JVC you had was one of the earlier E-shift models? Because HDR on the current JVC's looks quite good. I also assume you have not seem a current version of Lumagen DTM. What size and gain screen are you using? That could be a factor on why you did not think HDR was very good on a JVC. 

A GTZ380 does not do DTM, but it is not bad with HDR. The GTZ380 is not any better with HDR than any of the other Sony projectors, it is just a whole lot brighter. 
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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2021, 01:52:06 AM »
I am curretly playing with a Sony VPL-GTZ380, but I have the same experience with Sony OLED, LG, and a JVC projector to name a few. In fact EVERY display I have encountered looks worse in every set of calibrations.

As far as adding more math ( Lumingen ) to fix HDR... Hmmm... Thats like trying to fix DirecTV, SURE you can make it look better, but the issue still exists. Plus you get to fool with settings for each bit of source material. ALso you then add more processing to the HDMI signal which mathematically MUST degrade everything that goes thru it. That is just a mathematical reality. The question is does the harm outweigh the good. The math to remap this is lossy Also your starting from less bits which is why once mastered the damage is done. The picture from EVERY other source looks great, 4K SDR is stunning.. Its ONLY HDR that look like ****.. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FIX IT.. And even then 4K SDR still beats the result of more processing.

My view of HDR being Abhorrent is about the standard. The result of HDR when everything is right, the material was aquired in HDR and the moon is full with jupiter aligned with mars,, like on the Spears & Munsil UHD demo material is wonderful. What has me annoyed is this Consumer Technology Association created standard just to sell product, HDR.. Its a terrible "standard" driven to market in order to sell more devices while not properly vetting a standard and with a deceptive certification regime.

I am SMPTE/SID/SPIE so I do understand the standards process and HDR/10/+ along with DV are horrid, misleading and serve one function - for people to buy new gear.

With a bitstream compressed down to 20Mbps,,, a 1080P24 4:2:0 will look better then a 4K60 4:4:4 RGB HDR/DV because you end up crushing even more data down a fixed pipe. While it is technically 4K in its pixels, your only getting maybe 1K after compression and less with moving objects. Bit depth can also get crushed. 4K only looks good if nothing moves. Things in fast motion have no resolution because of compression. A 1080 has way more resolution with things in motion because it does not have the compression that 4K would with the same bitstream cap. We don't want to push MORE data down a fixed pipe. I sure don't want material that was not acquired in HDR rendering into HDR 4K and then stuffed down a pipe. All this does is degrade the material. People are adding HDR to material that was not aquired in it and just destroying the material because of the later compression.

HDR is a plague. Its spread has gone unchecked.

HDR is the Emperors New Clothes.
Actually, everything going through the Lumagen  looks better on my 4K projector. That includes AT & T U Verse 1080p sources ( the worst source I have ), Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays. No fiddling required - I haven't changed any settings in a year. Watched both Deadpool 1 & 2 on 4K UHD Blu-ray tonight, and generally watch 3 - 4 movies a week. HDR looks great. 
Direct (585) 671-2972 8:00am - 4:30pm Pacific 
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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #7 on: May 23, 2021, 03:17:55 PM »
I suspect the JVC you had was one of the earlier E-shift models? Because HDR on the current JVC's looks quite good. I also assume you have not seem a current version of Lumagen DTM. What size and gain screen are you using? That could be a factor on why you did not think HDR was very good on a JVC.

A GTZ380 does not do DTM, but it is not bad with HDR. The GTZ380 is not any better with HDR than any of the other Sony projectors, it is just a whole lot brighter.

HDR from the S&M demo material is jaw dropping on the 380. The HDR from pretty much everything is looks like ****.

I have respect for a Lumagen, but, its more math. Its impossible mathematically to not degrade the material to some measurableabe degree. I have played with the Lumagen devices over the years. My AB is with it physically in line and bypassed by skipping it and plugging in directly to the source. This AB has always resulted that a direct connection is always the better picture on material that is well mastered. Of course my Oppo has a big list of mods and I use Wire World Platinum Eclipse cables all short length.

It has been 2 years since I dropped in a Lumagen. I will check with Jim and do a bit of AB once again. Plus Jim is a extert on what is wrong with HDR, so I will start that conversation back where I left off with him.

MY POINT is that I should not have to FIX HDR. Its a terrible standard and most of it is broken. Setting a AppleTV to HDR is a big mistake as then it rrenders all sorts of stuff into HDR making everything look bad.

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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2021, 03:48:19 PM »
Hdr isn’t broken. Displays aren’t capable (yet) of properly displaying the bits for it to be a benefit. That is not without a fix. The lumagen tone maps to the available nits. And the results are outstanding. 
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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2021, 03:58:24 PM »
Actually, everything going through the Lumagen  looks better on my 4K projector. That includes AT & T U Verse 1080p sources ( the worst source I have ), Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays. No fiddling required - I haven't changed any settings in a year. Watched both Deadpool 1 & 2 on 4K UHD Blu-ray tonight, and generally watch 3 - 4 movies a week. HDR looks great.

Are you doing a direct AB bypassing the Lumagen by unhooking the HDMI and plugging directly into the source and looking a 4K SDR vs HDR... I have a Oppo with a linear power supply, disc stabilizer and femto clock mods plus other lesser mods. I use Wireworld Platinum Eclipse cables all short. 3M direct to projector. No processor in the path. Audio is pulled from the 2nd HDMI out. The screen is a Screen Research ClearPix Ultimate

The room has been reviewed. https://www.theaudiobeat.com/visits/paradise_valley_system.htm

Recent vid showing current equip.

The room from 6 years ago and a lot of gear changed, but it has a better view of the room.




Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2021, 04:00:09 PM »
Hdr isn’t broken. Displays aren’t capable (yet) of properly displaying the bits for it to be a benefit. That is not without a fix. The lumagen tone maps to the available nits. And the results are outstanding.

So why do I need a Lumagen to remap ? The std is broken.. The remap has a mathematical cost you MUST pay.

bmoney

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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2021, 07:39:33 PM »
So why do I need a Lumagen to remap ? The std is broken.. The remap has a mathematical cost you MUST pay.
Because your DISPLAY isn’t capable 
SadieMax 2,0 Build thread

Nad t758v3 
7.4.4 diysoundgroup 1099's (3) 
Volt 6 (8 ) 
18" SI subs (4) 
diy 130" 2.40 spandex screen
minidsp 2x4HD
JVC rs600
Lumagen radiance pro 4242
Nvidia shield pro
Emby NAS media player

AVSMike

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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2021, 08:20:02 PM »
HDR from the S&M demo material is jaw dropping on the 380. The HDR from pretty much everything is looks like ****.

I have respect for a Lumagen, but, its more math. Its impossible mathematically to not degrade the material to some measurableabe degree. I have played with the Lumagen devices over the years. My AB is with it physically in line and bypassed by skipping it and plugging in directly to the source. This AB has always resulted that a direct connection is always the better picture on material that is well mastered. Of course my Oppo has a big list of mods and I use Wire World Platinum Eclipse cables all short length.

It has been 2 years since I dropped in a Lumagen. I will check with Jim and do a bit of AB once again. Plus Jim is a extert on what is wrong with HDR, so I will start that conversation back where I left off with him.

MY POINT is that I should not have to FIX HDR. Its a terrible standard and most of it is broken. Setting a AppleTV to HDR is a big mistake as then it rrenders all sorts of stuff into HDR making everything look bad.
If it has been two years since you played with a Lumagen, then you have no idea what a Lumagen can do with HDR. But anybody that has used a Lumagen within the last year will tell you the HDR is very good with a Lumagen. A Lumagen is pretty much set and forget. Oppo's HDR tone mapping is not in the same universe as Lumagen. 

Setting an Apple TV to HDR is improper setup for Apple TV. You set it to SDR and match source. Then when it plays an HDR source, it sends HDR and when it plays an SDR source, it sends SDR. 


My Baffle Wall System: https://discuss.avscience.com/index.php?topic=124.msg902#msg902

Mike Garrett
AV Science Sales
585-671-2968
mike@avscience.com

JVC, Sony, Epson, Marantz, Denon, Yamaha, Stewart, Seymour, Screen Innovations, Screen Excellence, DNP, Da-Lite, Triad, SVS, Martin Logan & more.

AVSMike

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Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2021, 08:26:10 PM »
Are you doing a direct AB bypassing the Lumagen by unhooking the HDMI and plugging directly into the source and looking a 4K SDR vs HDR... I have a Oppo with a linear power supply, disc stabilizer and femto clock mods plus other lesser mods. I use Wireworld Platinum Eclipse cables all short. 3M direct to projector. No processor in the path. Audio is pulled from the 2nd HDMI out. The screen is a Screen Research ClearPix Ultimate

The room has been reviewed. https://www.theaudiobeat.com/visits/paradise_valley_system.htm

Recent vid showing current equip.

The room from 6 years ago and a lot of gear changed, but it has a better view of the room.
I am sorry, but you have no clue, when it comes to HDR. Your Apple TV was not set up correctly and Lumagen by far does a much better job with HDR than your GTZ380 on its own. Yes, i have compared directly. As far as HDR tone mapping goes, the JVC LCOS projectors will do a better job with tone mapping of HDR than the GTZ380. The JVC's just can't light up a large screen like the GTZ380 can. 
Also if you get another Lumagen, and you should, make sure none of your HDMI cables are shorter than 6'. A short cable can cause problems also. You can confirm that with Jim Peterson.
My Baffle Wall System: https://discuss.avscience.com/index.php?topic=124.msg902#msg902

Mike Garrett
AV Science Sales
585-671-2968
mike@avscience.com

JVC, Sony, Epson, Marantz, Denon, Yamaha, Stewart, Seymour, Screen Innovations, Screen Excellence, DNP, Da-Lite, Triad, SVS, Martin Logan & more.

Re: HDR is abhorrent
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2021, 08:44:26 PM »
I don't want to be argumentative here, but I just watched the 4k/HDR Blu-ray of Annihilation, with a JVC NX7, Panamorph DCR Lens, madVR Envy, on a 160" diagonal scope screen.

It was a completely mesmerizing visual experience.  The movie was awesome, and the graphics during the credits at the end were 'out of this world'.  If this is an example of HDR being 'broken', then I guess my brain must be broken as well.

As the others have been saying, until you have seen HDR done 'right', you haven't seen what HDR can look like in your Theater.

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