iPhone 12 - HDR Video Looks Terrible - On ATV 4th Gen (HD, first with Siri remote)

[boltjames]

So I upgraded from the iPhone X to the iPhone 12 and I have a few of the Apple TV 4th generation now called HD, it was the first one with the Siri remote.

When I shoot 1080p 30 video on my iPhone 12 with HDR enabled, it looks great on my iPhone 12 and looks great when I use AirPlay from the iPhone 12 to send it to my Apple TV.

But when I put the video on my notebook with my 100's of iPhone X videos and use iTunes to AirPlay it to my TV, different story, the 1080p 30 HDR video shot on my iPhone 12 looks terrible, all the bright areas are blown out, looks awful.

I'd like to shoot in 1080p 30 HDR all the time from this point forward and need to know, is the issue my Apple TV or my laptop/iTunes? Doesn't make sense to me how the video will look fantastic when I AirPlay from my iPhone 12 to my Apple TV 4th gen but look so bad when I AirPlay from my notebook/iTunes to my Apple TV 4th gen. I've got an archive of all the family home movies on the notebook and I'd like to start shooting in HDR.

Thanks for any help!

 

[lostless]

HDR is a difficult thing to deal with. HDR as it implies has a wider range of brightness. Think of it like a scale from light to dark. HDR goes above the standard 8bit and capturing all that detail in the darks and lights. Now when converting to your tv, unless you have one of those fancy hdr TVs, you’re dealing with 8bit. The iPhone is probably trying to balance out the hdr and does a contrast/gamma correction before sending to the Apple TV to get the closest representation of the original video. It’s probably built into the OS to do that.
QuickTime , I assume, may not be doing the correcting and sending raw data to the Apple TV and the scale of brightness gets messed up. in doing so, bright things get, what is called, clipped. 8bit can’t go beyond a certain brightness and just blows out anything above a certain brightness and just makes it white. While quicktime may be doing the correction on its playback, the file sent to the Apple TV is not corrected.
I’ve ran into the same problem importing HDR files into an 8bit timeline in FCP. And Apple even warns you when you import and says you have to manually adjust the brightness and gamma.
ive havent tried in iMovie, but I don’t think people will notice because IMovie sets itself to whatever file you feed first. So if you give it an hdr file, it does the movie as an hdr movie.

 

[boltjames]

HDR is a difficult thing to deal with. HDR as it implies has a wider range of brightness. Think of it like a scale from light to dark. HDR goes above the standard 8bit and capturing all that detail in the darks and lights. Now when converting to your tv, unless you have one of those fancy hdr TVs, you’re dealing with 8bit. The iPhone is probably trying to balance out the hdr and does a contrast/gamma correction before sending to the Apple TV to get the closest representation of the original video. It’s probably built into the OS to do that.
QuickTime , I assume, may not be doing the correcting and sending raw data to the Apple TV and the scale of brightness gets messed up. in doing so, bright things get, what is called, clipped. 8bit can’t go beyond a certain brightness and just blows out anything above a certain brightness and just makes it white. While quicktime may be doing the correction on its playback, the file sent to the Apple TV is not corrected.
I’ve ran into the same problem importing HDR files into an 8bit timeline in FCP. And Apple even warns you when you import and says you have to manually adjust the brightness and gamma.
ive havent tried in iMovie, but I don’t think people will notice because IMovie sets itself to whatever file you feed first. So if you give it an hdr file, it does the movie as an hdr movie.

Thank you so much, that really helps.

I do have a fancy HDR Sony TV, and I’d upgrade to Apple TV 4K if I knew the HDR shot on my iPhone 12 would look proper via AirPlay from my laptop as that’s where the archive of home movies is.

 

[lostless]

Thank you so much, that really helps.

I do have a fancy HDR Sony TV, and I’d upgrade to Apple TV 4K if I knew the HDR shot on my iPhone 12 would look proper via AirPlay from my laptop as that’s where the archive of home movies is.

Unfortunately I can’t help, I have neither a Apple TV 4K nor a hdr tv. But it should work in theory.

 

[waw74]

Airplay works in many different ways "under the hood"

one of those ways is to play the media locally on the sending device, rencode that image, and send that newly encoded image off to the appleTV. This method does not support HDR, and it tops out at 1080

another way it works is by just sending the file over the network, and it will be played on the appleTV.

and yet a third way is it can send a file location, and the appleTV will pull that file from the web and play it locally.




Your phone works because it's using the second method, and just sending the entire raw file, It's why your phone screen blanks out when playing videos that way. Your phone can switch back and forth between methods as needed

osX is far behind in airplay, they seem to have focused on the phone, and occasionally let features drip into the Mac. (you still can't send to stereo HomePods from osX, it's supposedly coming in 11.3 though)
Your Mac is probably also using the first method, so it's downgrading to SDR, and sounds like it's doing it poorly. You don't want to see the image on your mac's screen at all.




There should be a way to make the Mac use the "send the file" method, it might require a third party app.


for local HDR playback on a Mac, With MacBooks, they need to be 2018 or newer, for desktop versions it's either 2019 or 2020. I'm not sure how this applies to airplay.

Play HDR video on Mac - Apple Support

Support for high dynamic range (HDR) video, such as HDR movies and TV shows from Apple or other providers, requires the latest version of macOS, a compatible Mac model, and an HDR10-compatible display, TV, or projector.

support.apple.com

 

[boltjames]

Airplay works in many different ways "under the hood"

one of those ways is to play the media locally on the sending device, rencode that image, and send that newly encoded image off to the appleTV. This method does not support HDR, and it tops out at 1080

another way it works is by just sending the file over the network, and it will be played on the appleTV.

and yet a third way is it can send a file location, and the appleTV will pull that file from the web and play it locally.

Your phone works because it's using the second method, and just sending the entire raw file, It's why your phone screen blanks out when playing videos that way. Your phone can switch back and forth between methods as needed

osX is far behind in airplay, they seem to have focused on the phone, and occasionally let features drip into the Mac. (you still can't send to stereo HomePods from osX, it's supposedly coming in 11.3 though)
Your Mac is probably also using the first method, so it's downgrading to SDR, and sounds like it's doing it poorly. You don't want to see the image on your mac's screen at all.

There should be a way to make the Mac use the "send the file" method, it might require a third party app.

for local HDR playback on a Mac, With MacBooks, they need to be 2018 or newer, for desktop versions it's either 2019 or 2020. I'm not sure how this applies to airplay.

Thanks!

So that solves half of what I needed to know- my older Apple TV 4 (first one with Siri remote) is too old to support HDR. Got it. I found yesterday that I can shoot video in HDR, export it in iMovie without HDR, and at least be able to futureproof my family videos in HDR and play back in non-HDR while I figure this out.

The second half of my question: If I upgrade to a new Apple TV 4K, do I need a notebook that specifically states it supports HDR in order to send my iPhone 12 1080p 30 HDR video files from the notebook to the ATV 4K? Or is that an iTunes thing? Or is that an AirPlay protocol thing? Doesn't have to be a Mac, can be Windows, it's the family computer in the kitchen that stores the 100's of videos in iTunes. Just want to start shooting and watching in HDR without the huge files clogging up my iPhone...

 

[lostless]

Thanks!

So that solves half of what I needed to know- my older Apple TV 4 (first one with Siri remote) is too old to support HDR. Got it. I found yesterday that I can shoot video in HDR, export it in iMovie without HDR, and at least be able to futureproof my family videos in HDR and play back in non-HDR while I figure this out.

The second half of my question: If I upgrade to a new Apple TV 4K, do I need a notebook that specifically states it supports HDR in order to send my iPhone 12 1080p 30 HDR video files from the notebook to the ATV 4K? Or is that an iTunes thing? Or is that an AirPlay protocol thing? Doesn't have to be a Mac, can be Windows, it's the family computer in the kitchen that stores the 100's of videos in iTunes. Just want to start shooting and watching in HDR without the huge files clogging up my iPhone...

Fyi, if you use the photos app and just drag and drop from the photos app, it will convert to sdr.

 

[priitv8]

I guess what you see, is the problem, that you get when watching HDR source material with SDR gamma correction. It just looks dull. And is to be expected, because the brightness correction of the two is very different.
Actually, same phenomenon happens when looking at Log-recorded video without proper correction.
Here you can get into the topic :

I would try playing back with IINA (which does HDR rendering properly) and see, if it makes difference.

 

[boltjames]

I guess what you see, is the problem, that you get when watching HDR source material with SDR gamma correction. It just looks dull. And is to be expected, because the brightness correction of the two is very different.
Actually, same phenomenon happens when looking at Log-recorded video without proper correction.
Here you can get into the topic :

I would try playing back with IINA (which does HDR rendering properly) and see, if it makes difference.

Thanks, but I need to AirPlay from my notebook computer + iTunes to my Apple TV, it's got to be simple enough for my wife and kids to use, so I've got to find a way to achieve HDR via that setup with no other apps involved.

 

[Robbosan]

Thanks, but I need to AirPlay from my notebook computer + iTunes to my Apple TV, it's got to be simple enough for my wife and kids to use, so I've got to find a way to achieve HDR via that setup with no other apps involved.

Glad to hear you still have your trophy wife

 

[priitv8]

Thanks, but I need to AirPlay from my notebook computer + iTunes to my Apple TV, it's got to be simple enough for my wife and kids to use, so I've got to find a way to achieve HDR via that setup with no other apps involved.

I need to check that on my end. First thing - how do you get HDR from iPhone 12? As far as I can, see, only option is Dolby Vision. And iPhone 12 introduces new DoVi profile (Profile 8, HLG compatible. sic!). So far I have not found a way to make it cross to aTV 4K (via AirPlay or otherwise) in HDR mode. So, on aTV, I see iPhone 12 footage in SDR only.
Will have to give it another try to see if I can match your usecase.

 

[boltjames]

I need to check that on my end. First thing - how do you get HDR from iPhone 12? As far as I can, see, only option is Dolby Vision. And iPhone 12 introduces new DoVi profile (Profile 8, HLG compatible. sic!). So far I have not found a way to make it cross to aTV 4K (via AirPlay or otherwise) in HDR mode. So, on aTV, I see iPhone 12 footage in SDR only.
Will have to give it another try to see if I can match your usecase.

The way I get the files off my iPhone 12 is to use a lightning cable to my notebook, that let's me see the iPhone's media folders in Windows Explorer, do a sort by date, and drag/drop them to my desktop. Then launch iTunes, drag the file there, it makes a copy in its own file/folder structure, and then its ready for me to AirPlay to my Apple TV. I've got 100's of home movies done in this method after building them in iMovie for the last decade.

As far as my hardware, it doesn't matter what the notebook is.....I can easily replace the Windows machine with a new Macbook if necessary.

 

[priitv8]

So, finally I came around and tested the iPhone 12 Pro HDR footage as per your suggestion. Copy it from iPhone as a MOV file and dropped into iTunes (nowadays the TV) app.
Just out of curiosity, I also set it through Subler and saved as m4v.
So what did it change? The only thing, I can notice, Subler dropped the Dolby Part from the codec configuration box. The transfer function remains the same (HLG) as OOC (out of camera).
How does it play on latest tvOS?

The OOC file plays back as SDR - so brightness is the usual SDR, highlights are burnt out and colors are not of HDR quality. But it is definitely not flat (akin to the LOG-footage), I was assuming before. It is regular SDR image, obviously taking advantage of HLG's backward compatibility with SDR.

The other file plays back in HDR and is much more watchable, than the OOC version. tvOS seems to convert HLG into PQ, but it looks like a proper HDR - colors and specular highlights pop, just as it should be.

PS I use Home Sharing to view - ie I browse and launch from aTV, via Computers app. But pushing from computer side (iTunes or TV app) should be no different.

 

[boltjames]

How does it play on latest tvOS?

The OOC file plays back as SDR - so brightness is the usual SDR, highlights are burnt out and colors are not of HDR quality. But it is definitely not flat (akin to the LOG-footage), I was assuming before. It is regular SDR image, obviously taking advantage of HLG's backward compatibility with SDR.

The other file plays back in HDR and is much more watchable, than the OOC version. tvOS seems to convert HLG into PQ, but it looks like a proper HDR - colors and specular highlights pop, just as it should be.

Thanks! So what ATV are you running? 4K?

 

[lostless]

while we are at it, here is a great video about all this HDR and basically explains what ive been talking about.

 

[priitv8]

Thanks! So what ATV are you running? 4K?

Hi. Yes, the 4K. No other supports HDR or Atmos.

 

[priitv8]

while we are at it, here is a great video about all this HDR and basically explains what ive been talking about.

Unfortunately, he does not explain, what is newly introduced (I've never seen it before iPhone 12) Dolby Vision Profile 8, HLG compatible. And how do we eat it.
Some hints can be found here.
And to understand, how HLG is different from HDR10 and Dolby Vision, can be read here.

PS Incidentally, QuickTime on Mac renders both versions (OOC and from Subler) equally.

 

[boltjames]

Hi. Yes, the 4K. No other supports HDR or Atmos.

So are you saying that if I a) get a 4K ATV and b) use my drag/drop off the iPhone method that c) I will still have the blown out light areas and thus the way I've been managing my videos can't support HDR?

 

[priitv8]

So are you saying that if I a) get a 4K ATV and b) use my drag/drop off the iPhone method that c) I will still have the blown out light areas and thus the way I've been managing my videos can't support HDR?

What I am saying is - if you continue to ingest your home videos into iTunes, as you are doing now, you won't lose the HDR (its still contained in the original MOV file from your phone), but you will have to:
a) wait until tvOS stock player starts to support that particular flavor of Dolby Vision or
b) hope for a 3rd-party player will implement support before tvOS.

Infuse comes to mind instantly. But unfortunately it fails to render OOC DoVi or HLG as HDR - so I get SDR.
Plex client surprisingly recognises DoVi in the OOC clip and engages DoVi mode, but it does not render HLG, so it appears to switch to PQ gamma and ruins the image completely.

The bottom line - you should still archive your home videos as HDR in your iTunes library, but you'd need to wait until tvOS will support them natively.
Plan B - strip the DolbyVision metadata (eg using Subler) and enjoy HDR in plain HLG.