Sony Black Crush on late-2014 / early-2015 BDs

[Geoff D]

Sure, but if I force the full 0-255 range on my TV with 16-235 content it washes out everything because the black level of the content is now a whole 16 points brighter than the TV's range is set at. That's the point I was making in reply to Eddie who was saying you could replicate the effect by playing video content in PC levels, when it's actually the other way around. And as you say, we can't just get around the problem by engaging PC levels when playing back these discs because the detail's been eradicated during mastering.

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Sure, but if I force the full 0-255 range on my TV with 16-235 content it washes out everything because the black level of the content is now a whole 16 points brighter than the TV's range is set at. That's the point I was making in reply to Eddie who was saying you could replicate the effect by playing video content in PC levels, when it's actually the other way around. And as you say, we can't just get around the problem by engaging PC levels when playing back these discs because the detail's been eradicated during mastering.

That's why I said it depends on what you mean. If you change your TV's settings to full range you're not applying any range expansion/compression to the video, you're recalibrating your TV's range so the effects will be reversed (it depends on whether your frame of reference is the video or the display.)

But yeah, the way to replicate this Sony effect on a normal Blu-ray is to do the range expansion on the video stream one more time than is necessary for your display (for example feeding an expanded full range stream to a display set to expect a video range.)

[James Luckard]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

That's why I said it depends on what you mean. If you change your TV's settings to full range you're not applying any range expansion/compression to the video, you're recalibrating your TV's range so the effects will be reversed (it depends on whether your frame of reference is the video or the display.)

But yeah, the way to replicate this Sony effect on a normal Blu-ray is to do the range expansion on the video stream one more time than is necessary for your display (for example feeding an expanded full range stream to a display set to expect a video range.)

I just wish someone at Sony understood this issue as clearly as you guys seem to. Sigh. I've done everything I can, notified people I thought/hoped could make a difference. Meanwhile, crickets chirp...

[Clark Kent]

This problem doesn't seem to be happening with all of Sony's Blu-ray releases. I watched Predestination pretty closely for the problem and I saw no evidence of it for that BD.

I suspect the problem is being introduced when they author the final video for Blu-ray. The missing black crush on streaming copies indicates the digital film intermediates haven't been ruined.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

That's why I said it depends on what you mean. If you change your TV's settings to full range you're not applying any range expansion/compression to the video, you're recalibrating your TV's range so the effects will be reversed (it depends on whether your frame of reference is the video or the display.)

But yeah, the way to replicate this Sony effect on a normal Blu-ray is to do the range expansion on the video stream one more time than is necessary for your display (for example feeding an expanded full range stream to a display set to expect a video range.)

Thanks for the info. There are a few releases that are too bright (e.g. UK Rumble in the Bronx) so it follows that some ****-ups take it to the other extreme and destroy the blacks. If I'm understanding you correctly, it's as if they put content that was already at video levels through the PC-to-video remapping process which assumes that the content is at PC levels, thereby making it far too dark on a video-level display (and leaving us unable to recover the information because it's clipped out at the mastering stage, not the display stage). Am I on the right track?

[HD Goofnut]

Is this the same kind of problem we saw with Margin Call? It was discovered that it was done with PC levels as well.

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Thanks for the info. There are a few releases that are too bright (e.g. UK Rumble in the Bronx) so it follows that some ****-ups take it to the other extreme and destroy the blacks. If I'm understanding you correctly, it's as if they put content that was already at video levels through the PC-to-video remapping process which assumes that the content is at PC levels, thereby making it far too dark on a video-level display (and leaving us unable to recover the information because it's clipped out at the mastering stage, not the display stage). Am I on the right track?

Sort of, but it's a bit tricky to parse and keep track of this stuff. Maybe this can clear it up further (unless I've already confused myself at this point.)

If the image is too contrasty and blacks are crushed (e.g. these Sony discs):
At some point the image was expanded from video-to-PC even though the input was already PC. 16 (dark grey) was remapped to be the new black at 0, and everything below it disappeared.

or

At some point the image was treated as video even though it was PC, and no PC-to-video compression took place. 16 (dark grey) remained at 16, but the image was now output as being video legal, essentially assigning it to be the new "video black" at 16, and everything below was thrown away.


If the image is too washed out (e.g. letterbox isn't true black):
At some point the image was compressed from PC-to-video even though the input was already video. 0 was remapped to the new "video black" at 16 (but there would be no values that low in the input), and the original "video black" of the input at 16 was raised to some higher value (in the final output appearing as dark grey.)

or

At some point the image was treated as PC even though it was video, and no video-to-PC expansion took place. 16 ("video black") remained at 16, but the image was now output as PC full range and any subsequent application would treat the value at 16 as dark grey and there would be no additional information below that.


In the first two cases there's nothing to be done. Since the information outside the video range is gone it's going to look like crap no matter what you do. In the second two cases you could at least get back something close to the original contrast by forcing an additional video-to-PC expansion, though the effective bitdeph of the image would be reduced, and there might be some extra banding as a result.

[jscoggins]

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

Sort of, but it's a bit tricky to parse and keep track of this stuff. Maybe this can clear it up further (unless I've already confused myself at this point.)

If the image is too contrasty and blacks are crushed (e.g. these Sony discs):
At some point the image was expanded from video-to-PC even though the input was already PC. 16 (dark grey) was remapped to be the new black at 0, and everything below it disappeared.

or

At some point the image was treated as video even though it was PC, and no PC-to-video compression took place. 16 (dark grey) remained at 16, but the image was now output as being video legal, essentially assigning it to be the new "video black" at 16, and everything below was thrown away.


If the image is too washed out (e.g. letterbox isn't true black):
At some point the image was compressed from PC-to-video even though the input was already video. 0 was remapped to the new "video black" at 16 (but there would be no values that low in the input), and the original "video black" of the input at 16 was raised to some higher value (in the final output appearing as dark grey.)

or

At some point the image was treated as PC even though it was video, and no video-to-PC expansion took place. 16 ("video black") remained at 16, but the image was now output as PC full range and any subsequent application would treat the value at 16 as dark grey and there would be no additional information below that.


In the first two cases there's nothing to be done. Since the information outside the video range is gone it's going to look like crap no matter what you do. In the second two cases you could at least get back something close to the original contrast by forcing an additional video-to-PC expansion, though the effective bitdeph of the image would be reduced, and there might be some extra banding as a result.

[EddieLarkin]

Haha it can be hard to get to grips with. But no, I did have it the right way round; if you apply the change at your player then switching to PC Levels causes everything to crush. This is why when you have a transfer like Rumble in the Bronx, which is washed out, you can apply the change and "crush" everything to the right position.

It appears someone at Sony applied this change at the last step for some God forsaken reason, on otherwise perfectly adequate transfers. There is nothing you can do about it from the disc, but you can replicate it on other discs to give you an idea of what's gone wrong. Panasonics, Oppos and PS3/4s all have the option to alter the colour space if you have one Geoff.

[Geoff D]

So if you do it in the player it's different than doing it at the TV level? **** it, I'm out. It's beyond my ken.

One last thing though, Pyoko is spot on about the appreciable bit depth being reduced on titles that are mastered too brightly. Even when you bring the brightness back down (either by lowering the brightness or changing to PC levels in the player) they've got noticeable banding; this I noticed on the French release of Kingdom of Heaven.

[StingingVelvet]

If I hook my PC up to my TV without changing the levels to limited then I get massive black crush. I know that for a fact.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

If I hook my PC up to my TV without changing the levels to limited then I get massive black crush. I know that for a fact.

On my Samsung TV, which I use for a monitor, if I switch to Limited the letterboxing jumps up 16 points from black to grey. With the Full range selected the blacks aren't crushed, the image is darker but the detail is still there, you can see it if you dial the brightness up. The perception of crush and actual crush are slightly different things!

Glad to see the option works on my PC, before I needed a plug-in to change the level, now it visibly works when you change the option from the drop-down menu. That's with an Nvidia card.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by chip75

On my Samsung TV, which I use for a monitor, if I switch to Limited the letterboxing jumps up 16 points from black to grey. With the Full range selected the blacks aren't crushed, the image is darker but the detail is still there, you can see it if you dial the brightness up. The perception of crush and actual crush are slightly different things!

Glad to see the option works on my PC, before I needed a plug-in to change the level, now it visibly works when you change the option from the drop-down menu. That's with an Nvidia card.

Well maybe your TV supports full range and mine does not, I don't know. I have a Toshiba. In either case, I know for a fact mine is crushed to hell without switching to limited because I did extensive testing. I was just telling Geoff that using full on a limited TV definitely causes crush, not the opposite.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Well maybe your TV supports full range and mine does not, I don't know. I have a Toshiba. In either case, I know for a fact mine is crushed to hell without switching to limited because I did extensive testing. I was just telling Geoff that using full on a limited TV definitely causes crush, not the opposite.

It's does that with the playback source on Full, yes. But not the TV itself, which goes the opposite way if I force it into Full with Standard content. Haven't got a clue why that is. I don't wanna go cross-eyed again!

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's does that with the playback source on Full, yes. But not the TV itself, which goes the opposite way if I force it into Full with Standard content. Haven't got a clue why that is. I don't wanna go cross-eyed again!

Neither of my TVs support full. I wish they did, for my PC if nothing else.

[Geoff D]

What, you've got nothing in the HDMI options? I can pick the colour space on mine too, although it's limited to BT601 and BT709 sadly.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What, you've got nothing in the HDMI options? I can pick the colour space on mine too, although it's limited to BT601 and BT709 sadly.

Neither my Toshiba or my Vizio support full range. The Toshiba is likely too old and the Vizio too cheap. They're both great TVs though, and for BD it doesn't matter, so I shouldn't complain. Once in a while I like to hook my PC up to my TV to play an old video game or something though and it's annoying to have to switch the range every time.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Well maybe your TV supports full range and mine does not, I don't know. I have a Toshiba. In either case, I know for a fact mine is crushed to hell without switching to limited because I did extensive testing. I was just telling Geoff that using full on a limited TV definitely causes crush, not the opposite.

Are you switching from Full to Limited on your PCs graphic card's settings? Yesterday when you posted, I could see a clear difference with video-playback with MPC, the letterboxing went brighter with Limited, but today I can't see a change, just when I alter Dynamic contrast enhancement and Colour enhancement adjustments. So I'm not sure what's happening today!

Bear in mind that, although when it did work the image did go darker, it looked like what we see with SONY's Fury captures (but the detail was still there underneath). Are you also changing the settings on your Blu-ray player? when you're not using your PC, depending on what your player is set to can also disable some of your TV functions, although they'll just be greyed-out and accessible. If you haven't had the option before, I doubt it will appear now!

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by chip75

Are you switching from Full to Limited on your PCs graphic card's settings? Yesterday when you posted, I could see a clear difference with video-playback with MPC, the letterboxing went brighter with Limited, but today I can't see a change, just when I alter Dynamic contrast enhancement and Colour enhancement adjustments. So I'm not sure what's happening today!

Bear in mind that, although when it did work the image did go darker, it looked like what we see with SONY's Fury captures (but the detail was still there underneath). Are you also changing the settings on your Blu-ray player? when you're not using your PC, depending on what your player is set to can also disable some of your TV functions, although they'll just be greyed-out and accessible. If you haven't had the option before, I doubt it will appear now!

Yeah, nVidia has a limited or full range toggle. On my monitor it looks fine, but when outputting to my Toshiba I need to switch it to limited or else I get massive black crush. It's really noticeable in video games especially.

My BD player (Sony S5100) is set on auto I believe. I'm not even sure it outputs full range, and I know neither of my TVs support it.