Spears & Munsil 4K UHD HDR Benchmark (Test Discs) May 15, 2023

[p5browne]

Looking forward to my new prize as I open package, retrieve disc and install in my Samsung UBD-M9500.
Oh, oh - disc doesn't meet specs - ejected.
Figured player was wrong - re-inserted - same.
Oh, one of those kind of discs!
Remove, spray with glass cleaner, wipe down with soft tissue, re-insert, and voila, now it works!

Ruined! HDR10 Montage looks magnifico !

Which leads to the question, why other HDR Patterns, and discs glare, and this one doesn't?

With the HDR Montage running, I go into the Menu, NO glaring white lettering - I had to go into the settings to see it was in HDR mode !
I watched the demo materials with it set on 10,000 to see how the set would handle it. Wonderful, no glaring sun, no blatant coloring, just all round natural looking ! Makes all previous HDR materials watched look like they were all from the wrong side of town.

So what's the difference? (The 8K?)

[mrtickleuk]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

The problem with the race to the bottom is that the lower price range are “broken” (not that the UB9000 is perfect). Also, semantics, the UB9000 is double the orice of the 820, not triple. Sadly, there is still no perfect player out there. I’d go for it in a heartbeat.

The prices here, for me. If you really want to split hairs:
DP-UB9000 UK price: £849
DP-UB820 UK price: £299
That's 2.8 times the price. Much closer to "3" than "2".

I'm not saying there is or should be a "perfect" player, but 20 years ago my very simple wishlist of features was easily fulfilled with an abundance of possible options.

The DP-UB820 is almost right for me but it has a fan. If every bloody player has a fan, then I'll have to cave on that. Can I buy the DP-UB9000's backlit remote as a spare part and use it with a DP-UB820, I wonder. Sorry for being off-topic.

Originally Posted by Stacey Spears

What does the 9000 do that the 820 does not? in terms of video, it should be identical. I thought someone said that the 820 has fewer options in the HDR Optimizer, but that is not a feature I use on the player.

Indeed, thanks to Kris Deering for the answer about the Optimizer.
Not easy to compare but pulling specs from Panasonic's UK website and editing the lists until they are comparable, the only differences are

• 9000 is "THX Certified"
• 9000 has "Insulator"
• 9000 has a Coaxial Output
• 9000's LR outputs are XLR Balanced/ Gold Plated
• 9000's 7.1 outputs are Gold Plated
• 9000 has a better remote
• Power and physical size differences

So yes, DP-UB820 is at the top of my list of possibles. I'm heartened to read that its PQ is better than the Oppo player too.

[sapiendut]

Oh wow! The stret price between the two is exactly two fold. Regardless, because I’m using a projector, the 820 is still not ideal. Add the fact that are use the 9000 as a CD player adds value to me.

[mrtickleuk]

UK streets are more expensive. Everything is here. Ho hum.

My trusty Sony DVD player has always been my CD player too

[Stacey Spears]

Originally Posted by dcforsyth

Stacey Spears,
In the future, will there be a manual/glossary for us noobs to better understand all the options this disc offers? I understand a lot of folks on this thread are tech savvy in the audio video world, unfortunately I'm not and I'm sure others aren't either. But I did buy the disc a couple a weeks ago.

I did some basic adjustments last night and wanted to do more but thought I better not mess with things I'm not familiar with.

Basically I'm asking if in the future will there be a brief summary on every menu and submenu on all categories?

I don't have the disc in right now but I did see lots of goodies I'd like to observe/mess with.

Thank You

We have three plans with documentation.
1. Update all current articles for the 3rd edition. One down, more coming over the next week.
2. A novice manual that covers the video setup menu. Basically another version of the getting started guide that will be available in PDF and other formats. Hopefully first version by end of July.
3. A more in-depth manual that covers a lot more patterns. This will be more description on each pattern vs. fully how to use them. Its more for evaluation that reviewers and CE companies will use. Or if you are looking to purchase a new display. This will start to come around the end of summer / start of fall.

All of the questions posed on the various threads will try and be addressed on the forum first and then guides as they come on-line.

For basic setup / calibration, you can use the default 1000. It is what CalMAN defaults the various pattern generates to and it is also what other discs have used. Now, if you can measure your displays peak brightness with a light meter, then I would use the nit level closest to your displays capability.

For evaluation, 1000 and 4000 will be the most interesting since most content is mastered on displays with those capabilities. Dynamic range high and tone mapping will probably be the most interesting to look at as you can see what your display is doing with those high levels. Is it retaining highlight information? How much?

Feel free to comment on the articles. If stuff is missing, let us know. OR stuff you think is missing. The question about which nit level to use is a great example. I will see if we can update it today to include that information, like above.

The reason we also default to P3D65 in 2020 is because current displays can't reproduce out to 2020. So the window patterns used to measure (saturation and gamut) have two versions. CalMAN defaults to 50% stimulus as well. We use 58% stimulus, so if you want to measure with CalMAN, be sure to change that under options. 50% was just an educated guess at the time we added HDR support to CalMAN. 58% is what the ITU has said is a good starting point, which came a year+ later. CalMAN should be switching the default to 58% in the future.

[Stacey Spears]

Originally Posted by p5browne

Looking forward to my new prize as I open package, retrieve disc and install in my Samsung UBD-M9500.
Oh, oh - disc doesn't meet specs - ejected.
Figured player was wrong - re-inserted - same.
Oh, one of those kind of discs!
Remove, spray with glass cleaner, wipe down with soft tissue, re-insert, and voila, now it works!

We have a customer reporting that the latest FW in the K8500 would not play the disc. We know there are issues with Samsung drawing the wrong color on the UI. We did have to re-make EVERY static test pattern on the disc between April and launch to get them to even play on the Samsung because of another bug.

Happy to hear cleaning it worked. Do you have any other BD100s? It was replicated by Sony DADC, so its a proper BD100.

[Stacey Spears]

Originally Posted by p5browne

Which leads to the question, why other HDR Patterns, and discs glare, and this one doesn't?

With the HDR Montage running, I go into the Menu, NO glaring white lettering - I had to go into the settings to see it was in HDR mode !
I watched the demo materials with it set on 10,000 to see how the set would handle it. Wonderful, no glaring sun, no blatant coloring, just all round natural looking ! Makes all previous HDR materials watched look like they were all from the wrong side of town.

So what's the difference? (The 8K?)

How are the menu buttons? The text in the lower left (S&M, nit/gamut) is a pretty low nit level to avoid burn-in. The menu buttons are a bit brighter.

When you say other HDR patterns glare, what do you mean? Other discs? When you say glare, what exactly do you mean?

The HDR Montage is brighter than everything else out there on average. That was a creative choice. More a stress choice. While we want nice looking material, it is also meant to stress stuff out.

The 4000 versions all hard clip at 4000. So be warned about that. The 1000 is a nice pre-rendered DV version. What that means, for those that don't know, is that we used the Dolby Vision trim pass metadata (for the 2000, 1000, 600 and 100 SDR) through the Dolby SoftCMU (think off line render using software on the computer in 32-bit floating point precision.) to tone map them from the master down to that level. The master was used for the two Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and first HDR10 in the menu. Then they were encoded as HDR10. It is very close to what you would get watching the Dolby Vision version on a 1000 nit display.

The idea was you could compare the 10,000 HDR10 to the 1000 HDR10 to see how your displays tone mapping does compared to the pre-tone mapped version. The trim pass gives us access to 6 grading-type controls to control creative intent in the tone mapping stage.

The workflow of the montage
1. The montage was shot on two different RED sensors. Of the 70 shots, 16 were shot on the VistaVision Monstro at 7680x4320. The other shots were shot on the VistaVision Dragon at 7680x4320. The former was used on Stranger Things S3 and the latter on Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
2. I exported all of the shots using RCX as 16-bit REDWideGamutRGB (RWG) / linear light OpenEXR files
3. I then ran all of the shots through our custom deconvolution algorithm. This tries to remove the blur caused by the optical low pass filter in front of the sensor. The OLPF is used to reduce chroma moire being a bayer pattern sensor. This was EXR in and out.
4. It was graded / finished at full resolution in Resolve 14. Again, in and out was EXR.

Now, while monitoring via SDI, everything was gamut mapped correctly. However, on export, not so much. It was not gamut mapped and it hard clipped at 0. (pixels that went beyond 2020 gamut) RWG is a much larger color space designed to hold the information from the various RED sensors. In order to fix the clipping, we used the SDRHDRRemap node in Transkoder. This did an amazing job fixing the clipped gamut. Really helped on the red cactus.

5. The master version was sent through Transkoder to generate all of the versions on the disc. It was also used to create the HDR10+ JSON. It is pretty much what everyone uses for HDR10+.
6. We then used our proprietary software to scale the 8K HD to UHD. I say 8K HD vs. 8K because it is 7680 wide and not 8192 wide. Just like I say UHD over 4K because UHD is 3840 while 4K is 4096. Pedantic? Absolutely! The scaling is based on the same paper as the SSIM scaling in madVR. The anti-ringing algorithm was provided by madVR (Mathias) and then tweak for our application by Shaindow. The same anti-ringing is also used in the deconvolution algorithm.
7. Then everything but Dolby Vision was encoded using x265. The Dolby Vision versions were encoded using the Sony encoder by Pixelogic.

While most content is shot at higher resolution, it is finished at lower resolution and then scaled back up to UHD. We stayed 8K HD until ready to encode and then scaled down once.

For the Dolby Vision 4.0 version of the montage, I plan to re-do the source material to ensure Resolve does not clip. The plan is:
1. Export RWG / Log3G10 from RCX as 16-bit TIFFs.
2. Use our deconvolution (possibly the new version that Shaindow developed)
3. Use Transkoder to gamut map the RWG / Log3G10 into BT.2020 / ST2084 BEFORE grading. They have the best gamut mapping algorithm out there.
4. Use Resolve 16 for the new grade w/ 4.0 trim passes. (should be a nice improvement over current version)
5. Use Transkoder to create some of the other versions again.

As far as new versions of the montage, I have some ideas to make them more interesting. Would love to hear feedback.
1. The HDR/SDR will using a rotating clock wipe vs. a static butterfly. The left half of the wipe will be HDR and the right half SDR. It will continually rotate full screen between the two. This was you see the entire image.
2. The same wipe approach but for ungraded vs. graded. The ungraded will be straight from Transkoder. This way you can see the magic that Shane did during the grade. You can't truly appreciate the work until you see the before and after.
3. An HDR Analyzer version. This one I am most excited about. It will have four inset windows. Upper left is the wave form monitor, upper right is the CIE diagram, lower left is the montage and lower right will be a vectorscope. You will see all of it changing as the video plays. The CIE will be the most interesting as you will see the gamut of the content. Here is a

video

of the analyzer in action. We will be capturing that display and encoding it as a video.
4. Might be fun to use the wipe concept for a version that is UHD and scaled HD. SO we would scale down to HD and back up to UHD and wipe between the original UHD and the scaled version.
5. HDR10+ that toggles on and off throughout the video.
6. New 1000 and 100 SDR trim pass renders from DV 4.0.
7. Possibly a madVR tone mapped version as well.

[Canada]

Originally Posted by Katatonia

Awesome!! The older Blu-ray version of the disc was worth every penny...and then some.

I bought an Oppo after the Spears & Munsil disc was released and got the disc as a free pack in.

[p5browne]

Sorry I wasn't more specific.

Normal viewing of HDR Patterns and Discs, when I go into the TV Menu, all the lettering is a glaring White, and so I know I'm in HDR Mode.

But, with the HDR Montage, switching to the TV Menu, NO Glaring White lettering! Hence, I had to check the settings to see that the Backlight and Contrast were maxed out. So, this is why I asked as to why no glaring White lettering.

Since my set maxes out at 1650 Nits, will re-try watching at 1000, 2000 and 4000. At 10,000 that I used last night, what should have I seen that failed, since it all looked great to me.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by mrtickleuk

The prices here, for me. If you really want to split hairs:
DP-UB9000 UK price: £849
DP-UB820 UK price: £299
That's 2.8 times the price. Much closer to "3" than "2".

I'm not saying there is or should be a "perfect" player, but 20 years ago my very simple wishlist of features was easily fulfilled with an abundance of possible options.

The DP-UB820 is almost right for me but it has a fan. If every bloody player has a fan, then I'll have to cave on that. Can I buy the DP-UB9000's backlit remote as a spare part and use it with a DP-UB820, I wonder. Sorry for being off-topic.



Indeed, thanks to Kris Deering for the answer about the Optimizer.
Not easy to compare but pulling specs from Panasonic's UK website and editing the lists until they are comparable, the only differences are

• 9000 is "THX Certified"
• 9000 has "Insulator"
• 9000 has a Coaxial Output
• 9000's LR outputs are XLR Balanced/ Gold Plated
• 9000's 7.1 outputs are Gold Plated
• 9000 has a better remote
• Power and physical size differences

So yes, DP-UB820 is at the top of my list of possibles. I'm heartened to read that its PQ is better than the Oppo player too.

Half better than the Oppo. Dolby Vision has clipping issues that don't occur with the 203 or 205.

[Stacey Spears]

Originally Posted by p5browne

But, with the HDR Montage, switching to the TV Menu, NO Glaring White lettering! Hence, I had to check the settings to see that the Backlight and Contrast were maxed out. So, this is why I asked as to why no glaring White lettering.

The TV UI is different? I can't answer that one.

Since you said you played the 10,000 version, can you see if the TV UI is glaring when playing the 1000 version? That will eliminate metadata being the difference.

Also, have you noticed you can press the up arrow on the montage and jump to different versions? Also, pressing left arrow will move it to the left side and right arrow to the right. Of course if you press right arrow while on right (or visa versa) it will close the menu.

[mrtickleuk]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

Half better than the Oppo. Dolby Vision has clipping issues that don't occur with the 203 or 205.

I'd expect that to be fixed in a firmware update.

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by mrtickleuk

The DP-UB820 is almost right for me but it has a fan. If every bloody player has a fan, then I'll have to cave on that. Can I buy the DP-UB9000's backlit remote as a spare part and use it with a DP-UB820, I wonder. Sorry for being off-topic.



Indeed, thanks to Kris Deering for the answer about the Optimizer.
Not easy to compare but pulling specs from Panasonic's UK website and editing the lists until they are comparable, the only differences are

• 9000 is "THX Certified"
• 9000 has "Insulator"
• 9000 has a Coaxial Output
• 9000's LR outputs are XLR Balanced/ Gold Plated
• 9000's 7.1 outputs are Gold Plated
• 9000 has a better remote
• Power and physical size differences

So yes, DP-UB820 is at the top of my list of possibles. I'm heartened to read that its PQ is better than the Oppo player too.

Just quick reply:

1. The fan is needed especially because the processor runs really hot when Optimizer is turned on

2. 9000 remote can be purchased as parts

3. 9000 optimizer is needed if you use projector

4. 9000 uses different disc drive than the 820 (and 420) Quieter drive (even with the top cover removed) and discs with errors that stutters on my 820 and LX500 can ne played without a hitch on the 9000.

5. I prefer the Analog out via XLR on the 9000 allows me to retire my Pioneer PD-D9. (not the case with the 820).

[p5browne]

Will check the Montage up arrow tonight.

After seeing your comment about the Samsung UBD-K8500, of course had to try it. Worked OK on my Samsung JU7100, although after watching on the KS9800, it was like moving from First Class to economy. Duller, not as many colors, but still no glowing white menu lettering

[sapiendut]

Is (are) gel filter(s) included with the disc? If not, where I can get them? I’m not talking about just the gel but the ones mounted on cardboard similar to a film slide (but much wider, of course).

[Scenic Labs]

They are not. What is your intended purpose? I ask because they are not useful in adjusting color. HDR rendered them ineffective.

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Is (are) gel filter(s) included with the disc? If not, where I can get them? I’m not talking about just the gel but the ones mounted on cardboard similar to a film slide (but much wider, of course).

[sapiendut]

The pattern asked to use colour filter, so logically the filter should be included

[Scenic Labs]

Look for "blue filter" mode, or "blue only" mode if your TV has it. Not all do, but it is on many. Otherwise, it is better to adjust by eye with the montage if not using instrumentation. The montage footage is intended to look naturalistic on a calibrated display versus content where the director intent is not known.

If you'd like a filter, I'll send one to you (I have tons!) they just don't work. Blue mode works very well.

That said, I'm writing this in 2019. Who knows what new materials might be available in the future? These posts live forever.

Originally Posted by sapiendut

The pattern asked to use colour filter, so logically the filter should be included

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Just quick reply:

1. The fan is needed especially because the processor runs really hot when Optimizer is turned on

2. 9000 remote can be purchased as parts

3. 9000 optimizer is needed if you use projector

4. 9000 uses different disc drive than the 820 (and 420) Quieter drive (even with the top cover removed) and discs with errors that stutters on my 820 and LX500 can ne played without a hitch on the 9000.

5. I prefer the Analog out via XLR on the 9000 allows me to retire my Pioneer PD-D9. (not the case with the 820).

3. You say this because of the extra projector/350 nits mode?

So projector owners with a 9000 do not need to run the player in SDR2020, or does this only apply to owners of the most recent native 4K JVC projectors (which are optimized to be used with the 9000 I believe)?

[kristoffer]

Originally Posted by mrtickleuk

I'd expect that to be fixed in a firmware update.

Maybe, but has Panasonic or Dolby even acknowledged the issue?