Anyone have this working? I bought the new ATV4k in hopes Photos or AirPlay would finally let me see my home movies in glorious 4K DVision. Sadly this is not the case. Still stuck at 1080 SDR.
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4K DVision in Photos app? AirPlay?
- Thread starter ThatGuyInLa
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Can ANY Mac laptop or desktop play 4K DV home videos using Photos app? Or is it just iPhones and iPads?
I have been waiting for this feature which Apple promised way back in days when announced, yet we still do not have it.
Only way I can play the videos in HDR is to save them on usb and play it directly on the TV's own OS. I at least see HGL HDR on my LG Oled for the videos I recorded on my iPhone 12 Pro
What is your Apple TV settings? Apple's AirPlay, Photos, Screen Savers require Format to be set to Dolby Vision (or HDR if your TV is HDR10 or HDR10+). SDR with Match Dynamic Range won't work as these apps do not support that setting.
Set to Dolby 4k.Those settings do nothing to allow Airplay or ATV native Photos app to display actual Dolby and 4K. If you check the source it’s 1080p SDR being tone mapped Dolby and scaled to 4K.
YouTube and some others do the same. You may be looking at a Dolby 4K screen mode, but the content behind it is still 1080p SDR. However, for the case of apps that support 4K and Dolby/HDR, those will be displayed correctly. (YT will do 4k but not HDR)
This is why it’s important to leave ATV in 4K SDR mode and let content change it. So you can easily confirm what the content is viewing as. At least until the world of all content is finally Dolby 4k.
On a 77” OLED, it’s very easy to tell the difference between 1080p scaled and native 4k as well. Heck save for the size, all the image cues that show obvious true Dolby are quite apparent just holding your phone up to the TV and comparing the footage. It’s night and day. Literally. No matter what ATV is set to.
Dolby/HDR as well as 4K, simply does not work for ATV Airplay and Photos app.
In photography, HDR means increasing the dynamic range of light within standard photos. The human eye has a greater dynamic range of light than the standard camera can deliver in a single photo. To get around this limitation, there are bracketing methods by which we can take multiple photos of the same field of view varying the amount of light by 1/3 or 1/2 stop in each subsequent photo. Then we can stack these photos, usually 3 or more, in a method that will allow a greater range of light, therefore greater detail in dark and bright portions, into a more pleasing composite photo. This is what is known as an HDR photo. Some cameras can actually do this internally and automatically, but the camera is simply taking a few bracketed photos then stacking them into a single composite image/photo. Best results are doing it yourself, assuming you know how.
In video, HDR not only provides greater contrast and detail between darkest blacks and brightest whites, it also increases the number of displayed colors. SDR TVs typically have 8-bit color capability which can deliver up to 16.7 million colors. But HDR TVs have at least 10-bit color which delivers up to 1 billion colors, which is 64 times as many as the SDR TVs can deliver. The increased number of colors means less color banding, more vibrant color, and of course greater contrast and detail in whites and shadows.
If you have a great photo that was saved in 16-bit PNG format with the Display P3 color profile embedded within it, then it should display nicely on a 4K TV which has 10-bit color. On a TV with 8-bit color it might show a lot of color banding though, as well as less vibrant colors. So if you view your photos via the ATV 4K Photo app and they show color banding or less vibrant colors than they do on your Mac or iPad or iPhone, it might be that the ATV settings are not using a 4K HDR option. It could also mean that your photos don’t have the proper color profile embedded within them, or you saved them as 8-bit PNGs by mistake, or you saved them as JPEGs which are always 8-bit. It is what I call crap in, crap out. A poorly saved photo can look like poop if it doesn’t have the proper color profile embedded or it was saved with only 8-bit color.
I’ve got several 10-bit photos and art images I created and use as screensavers with my ATV 4K 1st gen. They look stunning as screensavers. I use the following settings:
Format: 4K SDR
HDMI Output: YCbCr
Chroma: 4:4:4
Match Content: Range & Frame Rate
If I use those settings to view the same photos and images via the ATV Photos app I will get color banding and other issues. But when I change the format to 4K HDR they look good. Although they still look a bit better via the screensaver feature. Apple has stupidly limited some of its own apps to not use the match content feature, so we have to manually change settings. You could certainly leave the format setting on Dolby Vision or 4K HDR all the time, but then the darn menus will be too bright to look at and you will get a lot of fake HDR. Apple needs to get their act together and totally think through their FW rather than just shooting from the hip all the time. Over time they have created a pile of poop as far as FW goes. It is bad enough when companies like Netflix create poor apps for the ATV, but Apple doing so to their own apps is totally absurd.
In video, HDR not only provides greater contrast and detail between darkest blacks and brightest whites, it also increases the number of displayed colors. SDR TVs typically have 8-bit color capability which can deliver up to 16.7 million colors. But HDR TVs have at least 10-bit color which delivers up to 1 billion colors, which is 64 times as many as the SDR TVs can deliver. The increased number of colors means less color banding, more vibrant color, and of course greater contrast and detail in whites and shadows.
If you have a great photo that was saved in 16-bit PNG format with the Display P3 color profile embedded within it, then it should display nicely on a 4K TV which has 10-bit color. On a TV with 8-bit color it might show a lot of color banding though, as well as less vibrant colors. So if you view your photos via the ATV 4K Photo app and they show color banding or less vibrant colors than they do on your Mac or iPad or iPhone, it might be that the ATV settings are not using a 4K HDR option. It could also mean that your photos don’t have the proper color profile embedded within them, or you saved them as 8-bit PNGs by mistake, or you saved them as JPEGs which are always 8-bit. It is what I call crap in, crap out. A poorly saved photo can look like poop if it doesn’t have the proper color profile embedded or it was saved with only 8-bit color.
I’ve got several 10-bit photos and art images I created and use as screensavers with my ATV 4K 1st gen. They look stunning as screensavers. I use the following settings:
Format: 4K SDR
HDMI Output: YCbCr
Chroma: 4:4:4
Match Content: Range & Frame Rate
If I use those settings to view the same photos and images via the ATV Photos app I will get color banding and other issues. But when I change the format to 4K HDR they look good. Although they still look a bit better via the screensaver feature. Apple has stupidly limited some of its own apps to not use the match content feature, so we have to manually change settings. You could certainly leave the format setting on Dolby Vision or 4K HDR all the time, but then the darn menus will be too bright to look at and you will get a lot of fake HDR. Apple needs to get their act together and totally think through their FW rather than just shooting from the hip all the time. Over time they have created a pile of poop as far as FW goes. It is bad enough when companies like Netflix create poor apps for the ATV, but Apple doing so to their own apps is totally absurd.
When I display videos or photos shot in iPhone with HDR, highlights look significantly brighter when Apple TV is set to Dolby Vision, but not when it is set to SDR with Match Dynamic Range turned on. Ditto for using AirPlay 2.
I suppose it is possible that Apple TV has amazing SDR to HDR tone mapper, but why is that highlights on older photos or videos shot in iPhones without HDR look far less bright and saturated?
As for comparing your iPhone to your 77" TV, I don't think that's a fair comparison. Smaller iPhon screen probably has better peak brightness performance, further amplified by the illusion a much smaller screen might create.
As for the resolution, photos and videos sure look far more detailed than 1080p.
As for YouTube, I did A-B testing with YouTube for webOS and YouTube for tvOS. To my eyes, HDR contents look very similar. But it is frustrating that SDR contents look like fake HDR when the Format setting is set to Dolby Vision or HDR.
Going back to my point. I think HDR is a mess on tvOS. I sure wish HDR just works without all these confusions.
In the post above yours, I illustrated that HDR for photos is not the same as 4K HDR for videos. The industry does not use DV or HDR10 to give photos HDR look. The industry uses color profiles embedded in 10-bit or higher image files. If you save your photos as JPEGs, I don't care how they look on your iPhone or iPad, they will look like lower level images on any other device, including the ATV 4K. The photos, or artwork, must be in 10-bit to look as vibrant as you want and to have the enhanced level of contrast and detail in darks and whites. So you have to save them in a format that is 10-bit or higher, such as PNG or RAW or TIF, etc. But you have to pick a format that the Photos app will recognize and display. As far as the Photos app in ATV 4K, SDR will not display 10-bit color or higher photos as 10-bit, it will display them as 8-bit compressed images that look dull and lifeless. So the ATV 4K has to be set to either DV or HDR in order to show the photos with 10-bit color. The merely sets your TV to view things in 10-bit color, it doesn't magically improve a crappy 8-bit JPEG though. In order for the photos to look like they have 10-bit color, they actually have to have been saved to 10-bit color and with an embedded color profile like P3 Display which is used by various Apple devices.
The good explanation how HDR in photography differs from HDR currently emerging in consumer video space (HLG, HDR10 and Dolby Vision) can be found in the article referred to below.
In short - HDR photography squeezes (compresses) the large dynamic range of subject into the limited dynamic range of the media (photo paper or SDR display). This is achieved by the bracketing technique w5jck described. Doing this, we simply bring extremely light and dark details of the subject closer to the middle grey level.
HDR video attempts to expand the dynamic range of the medium (-> increased brightness levels and color space of the HDR screens, compared to the old SDR screens). Doing this we do not squeeze the range of brightnesses of the subject, we try to expand the range of representable brightnesses of the display device.
www.mysterybox.us
In short - HDR photography squeezes (compresses) the large dynamic range of subject into the limited dynamic range of the media (photo paper or SDR display). This is achieved by the bracketing technique w5jck described. Doing this, we simply bring extremely light and dark details of the subject closer to the middle grey level.
HDR video attempts to expand the dynamic range of the medium (-> increased brightness levels and color space of the HDR screens, compared to the old SDR screens). Doing this we do not squeeze the range of brightnesses of the subject, we try to expand the range of representable brightnesses of the display device.
HDR Video Part 1: What is HDR Video? — Mystery Box
It’s October 2016, and here at Mystery Box we’ve been working in HDR video for a little over a year. While it’s easier today to find out information about the new standard than it was when I first started reading the research last year, it’s still not always clear what it is and how it works. &
www.mysterybox.us
Sadly I am not seeing this behavior. When I set my ATV to DV, it does enable and when I launch Photo's pictures and video thumbnails do appear to seem HDR (I’m using the term HDR as all encompassing for DV too) however as soon as I click play on a HDR video, my screen flashes to black, video plays and I am no longer in HDR mode. (DV) just standard SDR. When video stops playing, flashes to black and I’m returned to HDR mode and the HDR thumbnail.
SO.
I read your reply again, more carefully. In addition to making sure ATV is set to DV (HDR) I turned OFF all the Match option options. NOW it’s working!
Yeah it's pretty wonky. I filed a bug with Apple, so hopefully, it will get fixed.
I suspect most of Apple's tvOS developers use the default settings for highest capable of TV -- Dolby Vision 60 fps, Match Frame Rate and Match Dynamic Range turned off.