HDR heatmaps and torch mode UHDs

[Agent Kay]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

Huh, that's interesting to say the least. The compression is of course horrendous but it actually looks like the UHD might be slightly low-pass filtered compared to that download.

Know that would happen.
And I bet HDR is to blame

[Amano]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

Out of the four color pictures (with the possible exception for Jerry Maguire, because it looks a tad sharpened) Lawrence typically has the least fine grain on display. I chalked that up to the age and condition of the restoration, but looks like there might be something else going on as well.


Lawrence Gandhi
League Maguire

I had a dream where I saw you adding automatically generated grainmaps to your torchmap and colormap shots (just one for each movie). Oh boy, I wish that dream was true.

[Xorp]

Originally Posted by Agent Kay

Know that would happen.
And I bet HDR is to blame

FWIW the other 4K streaming versions I checked like iTunes look about the same as the 4K Blu-ray, nothing horrible, but the grain is missing that extra level of crispness. Haven't see it look like the Sony streaming version anywhere else.

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Look at that lovely 'squashed' anamorphic grain in League.

I kind of like the anamorphic stretchy grain too, though I'm a bit puzzled why it only seems to turn up (or is more noticeable) sometimes. If it's certain film stocks or scanners or scaling algorithms or what. The grain on Gandhi for example has a more spherical appearance despite also being shot anamorphic.

Originally Posted by Amano

I had a dream where I saw you adding automatically generated grainmaps to your torchmap and colormap shots (just one for each movie). Oh boy, I wish that dream was true.

Unfortunately there's not enough that could be easily automated there. It would be some work trying to identify a suitably large and even patch that wasn't too dark, or too bright, or too saturated, making sure it was actually a representative example and not an optical or VFX shot and so on. The grain is kind of visible on the normal tonemapped screenshots anyway.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

Unfortunately there's not enough that could be easily automated there. It would be some work trying to identify a suitably large and even patch that wasn't too dark, or too bright, or too saturated, making sure it was actually a representative example and not an optical or VFX shot and so on. The grain is kind of visible on the normal tonemapped screenshots anyway.

The only time I've seen artificial grain being nearly flawlessly added into an image was Galaxy Express 999. Thing was, it took Justin a week straight of encoding to do it... and that was just for the first film. Adieu has it as well, and both films had to be done twice, as he wasn't happy with the first attempt. It obviously doesn't add any new detail, but it makes the film look SO much better.

That said, I have heard that 3D conversions of movies shot on film are de-grained to make the conversion easier, then generally an artificial grain layer is added back to the DNR'd image to make it look more natural. I follow a great VFX artist, and I think she said that was done with some 3D conversions. That's probably why Terminator 2 ended up the way it did, as there never was a grain plate added back into it, or Jimbo Cammy-rone doesn't like grain anymore (more likely).

[captainsolo]

I posted in the LOA thread but will repost here. On the grain issue with Lawrence the best manner to check it would be if there was a proper new transfer of LORD JIM since it's the same timeframe, cinematographer, star and format.
But of course it's not even on BD. Neither is the next Lean-Young 70mm title, Ryan's Daughter.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by captainsolo

I posted in the LOA thread but will repost here. On the grain issue with Lawrence the best manner to check it would be if there was a proper new transfer of LORD JIM since it's the same timeframe, cinematographer, star and format.
But of course it's not even on BD. Neither is the next Lean-Young 70mm title, Ryan's Daughter.

TBH I think everyone's missing the big picture here re: the grain. Whatever one may think of the quality of the restoration itself it's mainly the HDR that's setting it off like that in Lawrence and indeed in any number of Sony Light Cannon grades.

[Pyoko]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

TBH I think everyone's missing the big picture here re: the grain. Whatever one may think of the quality of the restoration itself it's mainly the HDR that's setting it off like that in Lawrence and indeed in any number of Sony Light Cannon grades.

What issue are we talking about here, grain popping/posterization in the highlights or something else? You get issues on your ZD9 as well? 4 out of the 6 are not extremely excessive though and unusually low for Sony catalog, including Lawrence.

Originally Posted by professorwho

That said, I have heard that 3D conversions of movies shot on film are de-grained to make the conversion easier, then generally an artificial grain layer is added back to the DNR'd image to make it look more natural.

I mentioned it in the T2 thread but there are different ways you can do it, all with their pros and cons. If you have the same grain in both eyes for example the depth of the grain is zeroed and you get a kind of screen door effect. If it's completely different in both eyes then the brain can get confused due to the lack of correlation and the grain starts to shimmer. You can also move the grain along with any objects that you modify for depth, but then the grain will also be separated into the same planes and will seem to belong to the surfaces of those objects.

This paper has a decent introduction, there are even a couple examples you can try for yourself by relaxing your focus and then trying to refocus on the middle image that appears.

[Pyoko]

Textbook conversion according to the math. Looks more or less identical to the SDR grade with gamma 2.4 and peak white around 147 nits. I could even disable the highlight compression for the tonemapped screenshots because nothing was clipping. Colors squarely within Rec709. Compression on the Blu-ray is horrendous though so still a big improvement.

I really like the film look with regards to the colors/grade and the film emulation, like the halation or the blown-out and slightly cyan-tinted exteriors visible through windows. But as for the resolution debate that's complete nonsense. This has absolutely nothing on a good 4K scan of 35mm, like the recently posted Jerry Maguire for example.

The look here is instead very low-pass filtered + sharpened. Virtually no really fine detail and I frequently got the sensation of somewhat smudged textures and unnaturally sharp outlines shining through from underneath the fake grain. Most likely because of denoising to remove the original sensor noise, but you can also get slightly similar effects depending on what Alexa RAW decoder/settings you use.

UHD color | UHD luminance | BD luminance | UHD tonemap | BD upscale

With a similar highlight roll-off the HDR version would on average be equivalent to the SDR version with peak white at 147 nits (Gamma at 2.40), based on 20 samples. (Min: 145, Max: 148, Median: 148)

[zetruz]

Originally Posted by Pyoko

[Knives Out]

That looks more like a comparison of different Bluray releases than a comparison of a Blu and a UHD.

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by zetruz

That looks more like a comparison of different Bluray releases than a comparison of a Blu and a UHD.

And even then, some people would be like "That's reeeeeeeally nitpicking, you won't be able to tell them apart in motion".

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by zetruz

That looks more like a comparison of different Bluray releases than a comparison of a Blu and a UHD.

Originally Posted by Hedrox

And even then, some people would be like "That's reeeeeeeally nitpicking, you won't be able to tell them apart in motion".

Knives Out is a wonderful test of a TV's ability to display HDR in general though. Not for seeing what HDR can do at any kind of "reference" level, but as a reference (no quotes) for how your HDR's greyscale, black level, gamma, brightness etc is performing relative to the established standards.

We can see from Pyoko's comparison that it is literally just the SDR plonked into an HDR container with perhaps the tiniest trace of more red in the SDR, and I said as much in my own review, so if you've got a properly calibrated ~100-nit SDR 709 output and you can get the HDR of KO to match it then you know that your HDR output is right where it should be when it comes to the white balance and all that other stuff as mentioned.

I'm reminded of Cliff Stephenson (who produced the KO disc along with many others) remarking that DP Steve Yedlin and all the bods at FotoKem could not get the actual UHD HDR disc to match the SDR master at the display level using consumer equipment, and even some professional stuff. I don't know what it says for their collective abilities or, more charitably, the consumer display tech they were using for client monitors that they couldn't dial it in, whereas I've managed it just fine on the ZD9. Huh.

PS

I'd still prefer to watch the UHD of KO for the superior compression as the grain doesn't look quite right, in motion, on the BD to me.

[Fendergopher]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I'm reminded of Cliff Stephenson (who produced the KO disc along with many others) remarking that DP Steve Yedlin and all the bods at FotoKem could not get the actual UHD HDR disc to match the SDR master at the display level using consumer equipment, and even some professional stuff. I don't know what it says for their collective abilities or, more charitably, the consumer display tech they were using for client monitors that they couldn't dial it in, whereas I've managed it just fine on the ZD9. Huh.

I'd bet that most of the time when these professionals are mastering stuff the only consumer displays they deem relevant will be some Samsung FALD set and an LG OLED.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Fendergopher

I'd bet that most of the time when these professionals are mastering stuff the only consumer displays they deem relevant will be some Samsung FALD set and an LG OLED.

LG OLEDs are pretty much standard as client monitors throughout the industry, with a few preferring Panasonic OLEDs instead.

I'm having a back and forth on this with someone in the Elephant Man Criterion BD thread, he feels that HDR is totally broken and there's no way to calibrate for any kind of standard it no matter how many LUTs are pointed at it, and what TV has he got? A 2018 LG OLED which, with all due deference to those who love theirs, hasn't got the greatest processing and tone mapping.

He may well be bypassing its internals with an external LUT box or something but even so, I get the feeling that the more complicated one wants to make HDR calibration then the more one runs into problems. Is it just dumb ****ing luck that the processing and mapping (or lack thereof in earlier sets) in higher-end Sony displays does such a good job with minimal intervention in getting close to what HDR should be? Sure. But that still doesn't mean it isn't correct, though that's been waved away with mutterings about Sony's special sauce making everything not look like it oughta, even SDR 709. Huh, I suppose my metered calibration readings must be lying about that too.

But hey, he's just told me flat out that I'm not "viewing HDR correctly" after commenting on how lush Midsommar looks (and it does, it really does) but after Pyoko's display-agnostic analysis on how Knives Out UHD compares to the BD then I think my setup is juuuuuuust fine.

[Scottishguy]

I pretty confident my C8 is doing HDR right. I think from my experience it's very dependent on what source you are paring it with though. Which is why I'm glad I plopped from the UB820.

Maybe some other OLEDS aren't as source dependent, and can do HDR better off the back of their own processing.

[Geoff D]

And yet matey there in the other thread has an 820 as well, but treats HDR as if it is fundamentally broken.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

And yet matey there in the other thread has an 820 as well, but treats HDR as if it is fundamentally broken.

Has he learned the 820s optimizer is not a tone mapper?

[Fendergopher]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

LG OLEDs are pretty much standard as client monitors throughout the industry, with a few preferring Panasonic OLEDs instead.

I'm having a back and forth on this with someone in the Elephant Man Criterion BD thread, he feels that HDR is totally broken and there's no way to calibrate for any kind of standard it no matter how many LUTs are pointed at it, and what TV has he got? A 2018 LG OLED which, with all due deference to those who love theirs, hasn't got the greatest processing and tone mapping.

He may well be bypassing its internals with an external LUT box or something but even so, I get the feeling that the more complicated one wants to make HDR calibration then the more one runs into problems. Is it just dumb ****ing luck that the processing and mapping (or lack thereof in earlier sets) in higher-end Sony displays does such a good job with minimal intervention in getting close to what HDR should be? Sure. But that still doesn't mean it isn't correct, though that's been waved away with mutterings about Sony's special sauce making everything not look like it oughta, even SDR 709. Huh, I suppose my metered calibration readings must be lying about that too.

But hey, he's just told me flat out that I'm not "viewing HDR correctly" after commenting on how lush Midsommar looks (and it does, it really does) but after Pyoko's display-agnostic analysis on how Knives Out UHD compares to the BD then I think my setup is juuuuuuust fine.

I figured that as long as your TV has enough nits to play with, and it's tracking the PQ EOTF accurately then you're getting as close to the intended HDR experience as you can with consumer displays. What makes things difficult of course is that for most consumer displays you either lose out on contrast, peak nits, or the tonemapping is doing something it maybe shouldn't, when compared to how it looks on a studio monitor where the only limitation is personal taste. I'd imagine that calibration tools for HDR are still more expensive and/or difficult to get a hold of, though the S&M disc seems like a good entry point.

[Scottishguy]

Originally Posted by Fendergopher

I figured that as long as your TV has enough nits to play with, and it's tracking the PQ EOTF accurately then you're getting as close to the intended HDR experience as you can with consumer displays. What makes things difficult of course is that for most consumer displays you either lose out on contrast, peak nits, or the tonemapping is doing something it maybe shouldn't, when compared to how it looks on a studio monitor where the only limitation is personal taste. I'd imagine that calibration tools for HDR are still more expensive and/or difficult to get a hold of, though the S&M disc seems like a good entry point.

Yeah technically there is no TV yet that does the whole shabang. An LG OLED I'd say you are getting the most balanced presentation with DV. Yet you are still cause of LG processing losing out on more fine detail. But I'm ok trading off some detail for better overall colour saturation and DV presentation.

[Platitude]

Has anyone assembled a list of TV's with the best tone-mapping capabilities? Or is there a good resource for learning more about that?