[samhayne]

Maybe a too general problem but... whenever I’m trying to watch HDR videos with Kodi they are suuuuuperdark and oversaturated.
But I don’t even find HDR settings in Kodi.

My setup:
Windows 10
Kodi 19.1
Nvidia 1070
LG E9 TV + 2 ancient PC displays

The E9 is setup as an extended (not mirrored) display right now.
If start a movie the HDR logo of my LG TV shows up... but the colors are just crazy.

Looking around in google I only see very old posts about washed-out colors.
No recent guide or anything and hdr is too short as a keyword to search in this forum.

[samhayne]

top: VLC + enabled HDR in Windows settings
bottom: Kodi after it enabled HDR

[asavah]

To receive meaningful assistance you will need to provide a full debug log.

The instructions are here... debug log (wiki)

If you are using the Basic Method, then ensure the following is applied...
1.Enable debugging in Settings>System Settings>Logging,
2.Restart Kodi
3.Replicate the problem.
4.Upload the log to Kodi Paste Site manually or use the Kodi Logfile Uploader. (wiki) With either method post the link to the log back here.

If you are using the Advanced Method ensure you have correctly created and applied the advancedsettings.xml file (wiki)

In both instances, you should see the word DEBUG throughout the log.

Note: Full logs only. No partial or redacted logs
Do NOT post your logs directly into the forum. Use the Kodi Paste Site. Post the link to your pasted log in the forum

[samhayne]

Hmm... discovered something:

It actually works SOMETIMES.
Usually the clip starts too dark.
But sometimes it starts with the correct colors and then after a few seconds the screen flashes dark and green (like when switching resolution) and it comes back again with too dark colors / too much saturation.

And every 10th time or so I start the HDR movie I’m lucky and it actually keeps the correct colors. (at least it does so for 10 minutes now)

[PatK]

This may be a tone mapping issue, suggest @jogal is the point man for this and keep an eye out for those threads. Check Section 5.7 Colour Management Video playback (wiki) Also you can set-up 3D LUT file(s) or ICC mode profiles created from light meter calibrated measurements especially for HDR titles converted to SDR. But from your posts, I get that sometimes the hardware get's it right, but then jumps out after a time, which might be the way the media is encoded or at least seen by the default player. That debug log is going to be important along with a proper known playback Samples (wiki) and a few words about the hardware.

[samhayne]

Okay. Here are some logs for you, a bad one and a good one.

Here's the video clip I used for testing:
https://4kmedia.org/lg-new-york-hdr-uhd-4k-demo/

As I had the theory that 4K + HDR may be too demanding for my hardware I played it in FullHD. Didn't help.


A) So here's the bad log:
Started Kodi, played the clip - was displayed from the start with wrong colors, LG showed the HDR logo, after a few seconds screen started flashing, colors still wrong.
When stopping the clip, Kodi stayed in this dark state, all the UI was super-dark.
Even after quitting Kodi Windows was way darker than it should be. Could solve it be turning the TV off and on. If I do this Windows/Nvidia seem to reinitialize the display as windows/icons rearrange and rescale wildly.
https://paste.kodi.tv/pikipekixa.kodi

B) And here's a good log:
Started Kodi, played the clip - came out in the correct colors right away. I think the screen also started flashing after a few seconds but came back with the correct colors. Stopped the video and quit Kodi.
https://paste.kodi.tv/vuyubenilu.kodi


@PatK : I listed some of my hardware above. Here it is again:

My setup:
Windows 10
Kodi 19.1
Nvidia 1070
LG E9 TV + 2 ancient PC displays

Additionally mentionable is maybe the HDMI cable I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-300...3?dchild=1
The CPU is an Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3.

[yeahme49]

Have you tried unplugging the 2 monitors and just having the TV hooked up to see if that makes a difference? I would also try running at 60hz instead of 120hz and see if that does anything.

[samhayne]

Well… I didn’t really unplug them but disabled them in the driver. Didn’t help.
Setting the display to 4K@24Hz also didn’t help.
It sometimes works… but most of the time it does not.
Colors get dark and stay so even after quitting Kodi.
Turning the TV off/on or turning HDR on/off in the Windows display setting or unplugging the HDMI cable briefly are all methods that would lead to normal colors again, after Kodi darkened everything.

I got no problem in HDR gaming or when turning HDR on in the Windows settings.
It also looks like Kodi turns on HDR correctly as LG’s HDR icon appears - and - in the LG TV’s menu I can select from different HDR presets which are only available for selection when HDR is active.

I just don’t know what Kodi is doing with the colors and why they even stay permanently after leaving the clip and even after quitting the program.
I use VLC for now to watch HDR content as tonight Kodi failed showing the correct color even ofter the 20th try… while this afternoon it worked in 2 out if 3 tries.

[jogal]

May be is video range mismatch between TV / Kodi.  Try set HDMI TV video range explicit in full (0 -255) from TV settings (not AUTO detect). Is also possible TV stores two independent HDMI settings, one for SDR other for HDR. Then is needed adjust two times.

Alternatively you may try limited range (16-235) in both Kodi and TV. In Kodi is from Settings > System > Display > Use limited colour range.

Also may help Nvidia driver clean install (reset to driver factory defaults) and install latest (466.77 at this time).

EDIT: That has also been an Nvidia driver bug in the past "With HDR enabled, black levels are incorrect. [200682795]"
https://www.google.com/search?q=%5B200682795%5D

[samhayne]

Thanks, @jogal.
Played around with the color range settings… didn‘t help.
The drivers I had already (clean) installed and also installed the current nightly version of Kodi.
Didn‘t change anything.

The programmer in me tells me that it‘s some race condition problem… as it sometimes works and sometimes doesn‘t.
Playing around with the „Delay after change of refresh rate“ value sometimes help if the correct colors just wouldn‘t kick in, even after the 20th try.

Also interesting: Colors seem to be somewhat fine in windowed mode of Kodi… but get bad again immediately after entering fullscreen.
Also… when hitting the Windows key, making the task bar show up, colors get normal immediately. But when I click into Kodi again, the bad colors return.
Another related thing: I got the same effect today (dark colors) after a OneDrive message popped up while playing Assassin‘s Creed: Odyssey in HDR today. But things returned to normal again immediately after focus returned to the game.


Anyway… ultimately I think I found a solution now: Activating „Allow hardware acceleration - DXVA2“ in Kodi‘s Player settings seems to do the trick for my machine.
At least it didn‘t fail any more today after I enabled it… and after disabling it I immediately got the wrong colors again.
I really hope, that‘s it now and the problem doesn‘t reappear after a machine restart or the next moon phase.

[PatK]

I think I found a solution now: Activating „Allow hardware acceleration - DXVA2“ in Kodi‘s Player settings

I'll take that as a solve for now.

Thread marked solved.

[moeSizlak]

Maybe a too general problem but... whenever I’m trying to watch HDR videos with Kodi they are suuuuuperdark and oversaturated.
But I don’t even find HDR settings in Kodi.

My setup:
Windows 10
Kodi 19.1
Nvidia 1070
LG E9 TV + 2 ancient PC displays

The E9 is setup as an extended (not mirrored) display right now.
If start a movie the HDR logo of my LG TV shows up... but the colors are just crazy.

Looking around in google I only see very old posts about washed-out colors.
No recent guide or anything and hdr is too short as a keyword to search in this forum.

I had this same problem too, it annoyed me for over a year.  Today after hours of troubleshooting I may have found the root cause.  A long time ago I installed an .ICC color profile for a monitor (that I don't even use any more).  After going into windows Color Management control panel, on the "All Profiles" tab, at the bottom, under "ICC Profiles", I removed 2 custom profiles I had there and rebooted.  Ever since then the problem has not recurred.  FINGERS CROSSED.

[moeSizlak]

Never mind.  Problem recurred today.  This is a bug.

[PatK]

Be cautious of when you launch display, should you launch Kodi utilizing 2 displays with extended or duplicate, the renderer might take the wrong profile. @moeSizlak I don't see this as a general 'bug' if it's a matter of keeping fingers crossed for your set-up; suspect drivers.

[moeSizlak]

Upgrading to Windows 11 finally fixed this problem for good (for me).