[Soli]

I am not entirely sure what you mean by by "handles it right". HDR to SDR conversion would be lossy no matter how good the conversion. There does seem to be a significant difference in how windows player and MPV player, windows player seems way too dark while MPV player looks pretty good. VLC player and kodi do not handle it at all or so it seems making every 4k movie almost unusable.

I understand any conversion is not going to be imperfect but anything is better than nothing and there could be adjustments user can make manually. In the end conversion is only a temporary measure until I get a HDR monitor.

It doesn't sound like what you are suggesting is simple enough to be worth it after all it would be a temporary fix. If it's actually simple enough please explain bit more. I would let emby server transcode but my cpu barely handles 4k playback alone. Maybe when Ryzen APU's come out I can do that if I don't have a HDR monitor by then.

it it simple. Download the the file and unpack it. Inside there will be 6 files targeted at different luminance levels of your monitor. Use Kodi display settings (you can even reach the setting from the now playing OSD) to load a 3dlut, play a movie. Then try another 3dlut until you find the one that looks the best for your eyes. For the best effect do turn uff the backlight (or whatever that increases the brightness, and i mean "brightness" in the normal sense of the word, not the brightness slider in your tv menu since that actually control the backlight 99% of the time)

I have already said that no software does this right - it can be argued it's better than anything but, but yes they all have their own more or less sucky implementation. I don't think Kodi should do something sucky. The backbone is already in Kodi to do it the right way, it's just not automated yet.

[DominicM]

What option are you referring to? There is only buffer size under System -> Display -> Calibration. In what directory does Kodi look for these files?

There should simply be an option to enable HDR to SDR conversion, it would be acceptable for most people, advanced options can be in the xml file. The way it is now it looks so bad it's practically unwatchable, so basically Kodi does not support HDR and by extension most 4K movies, not good for an app that is built to mostly play movies/tv. It's a temporary solution so there is not much point in having a great solution in a year or two when many people already have HDR displays. Even a sucky solution is better than no solution, at least it's usable in the mean time.

[Soli]

I gave you a chance and tried to help you even if you were being a whining baby. I'm not going to waste any more time on you.

[DominicM]

I wouldn't call it help when you provide false information, in any case if you resort to insults I'd rather not have your "help". I expressed my opinion in a reasonable way, really not sure what your problem with my last post was...

[scott967]

MediaInfo only shows it is 10 bit, is there any telltale sign to look for?

 I am looking at the "Life of Pi" sample linked in the Kodi Wiki sample video files.  I run Mediainfo 17.12 on the file and it gives me (extracted pertinent info):

Code:

Color range: Limited
Color primaries: BT.2020
Transfer characteristics: PQ
Matrix coefficients: BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries: Display P3
Mastering display luminance: min: 0.0200 cd/m2, max: 1200 cd/m2

compare to a generic AVC "HD" result:

Code:

Color range: Limited
Color primaries: BT.709
Transfer characteristics: BT.709
Matrix coefficients: BT.709

When I play "Life of Pi" on Kodi 18 180121 nightly on windows 7  I see ffmpeg is correctly decoding this info, and DXVA isn't available for it as expected so it is decoded in software.  It appears on win 7 Kodi is using pixel shaders for rendering which I don't really understand shader code, but I'm guessing this is where the conversion from color space BT-2020 to BT-709 and transfer function PQ to BT.709 (which I guess is commonly referred to as Gamma 2.4) has to be done.

Edit:  I installed one of Soli's 3dlut files and turned on color management for "Life of Pi" and it looks very good.  Would seem to be a viable solution for showing HDR10 files on SDR (in my case cheap Samsung 1080p) displays.

scott s.
.

[DominicM]

MediaInfo only shows it is 10 bit, is there any telltale sign to look for?

 I am looking at the "Life of Pi" sample linked in the Kodi Wiki sample video files.  I run Mediainfo 17.12 on the file and it gives me (extracted pertinent info):

Code:

Color range: Limited
Color primaries: BT.2020
Transfer characteristics: PQ
Matrix coefficients: BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries: Display P3
Mastering display luminance: min: 0.0200 cd/m2, max: 1200 cd/m2

compare to a generic AVC "HD" result:

Code:

Color range: Limited
Color primaries: BT.709
Transfer characteristics: BT.709
Matrix coefficients: BT.709

When I play "Life of Pi" on Kodi 18 180121 nightly on windows 7  I see ffmpeg is correctly decoding this info, and DXVA isn't available for it as expected so it is decoded in software.  It appears on win 7 Kodi is using pixel shaders for rendering which I don't really understand shader code, but I'm guessing this is where the conversion from color space BT-2020 to BT-709 and transfer function PQ to BT.709 (which I guess is commonly referred to as Gamma 2.4) has to be done.

Edit:  I installed one of Soli's 3dlut files and turned on color management for "Life of Pi" and it looks very good.  Would seem to be a viable solution for showing HDR10 files on SDR (in my case cheap Samsung 1080p) displays.

scott s.
. 

 Life of Pi is actually one of the movies I have. In MediaInfo I see Colour primaries: BT.2020 so it's not the same as the sample you used. I did just try it with windows default player and I feel like I was watching it in black and white in kodi, will have to re watch it's so different. This difference might actually be partially due to the fact that I am using a wide gamut monitor on windows machine though it's not HDR.

[nzskater]

Testing ATMOS speaker setup and so downloaded some UHD content (because it was easier to find than 1080p ATMOS) and inevitably ran into this issue - in Windows Media Player (on Win10) the content looks over saturated, with bright highlights missing detail and crushed blacks, via Kodi it looks washed out, with a general drop of saturation and contrast. I installed MPC and madVR and the content plays fine on my non UHD/HDR TV, with low (under 5%) CPU utilisation. Surely Kodie can be configured to do the same?

[scott967]

There is a lot work going on for this in Kodi 18.  Some is already available in the currently nightlies, some is still coming.   If you must have madVR renderring external player or DSplayer are viable options.

scott s.
.

[LaMpiRko]

So, I've got the latest kodi for android box and have a 4k 10bit hevc sdr file.

It does look washed out. Was hoping that the file would provide a bit more picture quality, but it looks even worse.

Tried on the Kodi and the Plex addon.

Would appreciate any help.

[fritsch]

No help possible. On Android all video decoding and rendering is done by a black-box (Mediacodec Surface) we have no influence on rendering.

[brochild]

Edit:  I installed one of Soli's 3dlut files and turned on color management for "Life of Pi" and it looks very good.  Would seem to be a viable solution for showing HDR10 files on SDR (in my case cheap Samsung 1080p) displays.

scott s.
.

Hi Scott
Can you please point me to where I can download the Soli's 3d lut files?
I have Samsung UHD and Samsung 1080p TVs.

[scott967]

Hi Scott
Can you please point me to where I can download the Soli's 3d lut files?
I have Samsung UHD and Samsung 1080p TVs. 

 This post has link:  2591215 (post)

scott s.
.