YouTube HDR... finally

[Kuschelmonschter]

YouTube HDR content is finally available!

You will find a playlist here. However, these clips will be played as SDR on Sonys for now.

With youtube-dl you can find vp9.2 encodings for those clips:

330          webm       256x144    144p60  156k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 2.38MiB
331          webm       426x240    240p60  256k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 3.87MiB
332          webm       640x360    360p60  485k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 7.35MiB
333          webm       854x480    480p60  909k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 13.83MiB
334          webm       1280x720   720p60 1991k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 28.18MiB
335          webm       1920x1080  1080p60 3201k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 49.70MiB
336          webm       2560x1440  1440p60 11166k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 170.23MiB
337          webm       3840x2160  2160p60 20122k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 335.45MiB

Those are webm however which the native Video app won't play.

We will see whether we will get support for it soon, even for the early 2016 models with the old MediaTek SoC from last year. At least Sony promised that back at CES:

Spoiler

YouTube will also start streaming in HDR quality later this year, using a new VP9-Profile 2 codec that brings HDR support to Google’s VP9 video format. Sony’s Motoi Kawamura, Head of TV Product Planning for Sony Europe, confirmed to FlatpanelsHD that the 2016 models will support VP9-Profile 2 and be capable of streaming YouTube in HDR. We saw a demo at CES and it looked very good.

Source

[stormyuk]

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@zer0ner0 wrote:

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@rooobb wrote:

Just released version 2.04.05 of the standard app on tv and it support HDR. Finally!

Same problem with the colour space though.

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Just updated to 2.04.05 through Google Play:

1. testing with "The world in HDR" video through YT TV app, no HDR indicator on picture menu.

2. By casting YT, I get the HDR indicator on picture menu, but still no max brightness and wrong color space.

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Has anyone tried a factory reset to restore the "max brightness"? I was going to but if someone else has and it made no difference I will just live with SDR as its too much messing about.

[Kuschelmonschter]

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Can you confirm that Kodi (using latest nightly here) plays VP9.2 at the correct BT.2020 color space? For me it does.

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My mistake. It does not. I had 'The World in HDR' in my samples, but it wasn't the original YouTube VP9.2 one, but a transcoded HEVC HDR10 one. So obviously it works.

Sony introduced Oreo in the U.S. with official YouTube HDR support. But unfortunately, color space is still not switched to BT.2020 for VP9.2. What a shame...

[13commander]

Well I just tried in YouTube to play a 4k60HZ vp9.2 HDR video and surprisngly it worked correctly...

Tried on my KD-49XD7005. All settings seem to be correct. Brightness seems ok.

4k HDR Youtube

[Kuschelmonschter]

Oh, you are right. The TV is again picking the VP9.2 stream even with the Nougat firmware. However, it does not max the brightness and wrongly sets color space to BT.709

[stormyuk]

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@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

Oh, you are right. The TV is again picking the VP9.2 stream even with the Nougat firmware. However, it does not max the brightness and wrongly sets color space to BT.709

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Is the "max brightness" not being set a Youtube app issue or something with the Sony firmware do we think?

[Kuschelmonschter]

Color space and brightness are not set by the app. The TV detects that some HDR content is being playback and sets parameters accordingly. In this case, the TV detects the HDR but fails to set parameters correctly. So it is a Sony issue.

[stormyuk]

Thats a shame, probably won't ever be fixed then. Interestingly one of my colleagues says that the brigthness "max" sets ok on his XD90 when playing Youtube HDR vidoes now, my XE90 doesn't. Thats why I wondered if a factory reset would fix it, but, don't want to waste my time.

[rooobb]

Looking at the "nerd info" on youtube, it seems as it lack some kind of metadata to help the tv identifying the right HDR involved (using AUTO)

I've seen that in one video in HLG and others in HDR10 that manually specifying the right HDR type it works as expected (max brightness, right color space) and the video quality is awesome 

[Jecht_Sin]

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@rooobb wrote:

Looking at the "nerd info" on youtube, it seems as it lack some kind of metadata to help the tv identifying the right HDR involved (using AUTO)

The metadata is there... This is the metadata info for The World in HDR, downloaded straight from YouTube with youtube-dl. Check at the end the lines in bold (PQ should mean it's in HDR. And BT.2020 is what we are discussing in here):

General
Unique ID                                : 317899792610391996154637148508605156273 (0xEF2945E2B0F883183BC0E0CFEC3C8BB1)
Complete name                            : /Volumes/NAS326/YouTube HDR/The World in HDR in 4K (ULTRA HD)-2160p 60fps.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4 / Version 2
File size                                : 341 MiB
Duration                                 : 2 min 34 s
Overall bit rate                         : 18.5 Mb/s
Writing application                      : Lavf57.71.100
Writing library                          : Lavf57.71.100
ErrorDetectionType                       : Per level 1

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : VP9
Codec ID                                 : V_VP9
Duration                                 : 2 min 34 s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 59.940 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant

Also I opened a ticket for the Smart YouTube app, asking if he could force the color space in the metadata. The answer has been negative because... Android doesn't allow to do so. At least that's what he said. So either the Codecs/APIs set the right color space, or we have to change it manually.

One interesting note, though. I did an experiment: I uninstalled the YouTube update, which brang the YouTube version back to 2.02.14 (April 2018) and HDR with it isn't working. I thought it started playing in HDR after the last Android TV update (I didn't check it much anymore because I gave up). So, yeah, it might still be Google's fault, although I am not able to play the downloaded YouTube's HDR videos automatically in BT.2020 either with Video or Plex (I bet Kodi would, but I am not going to install it anymore. Even Plex. just installed now, is literally a slide show. Literally. I mean that the 4K videos stop-restart-stop, especially going into settings to change the color space). Actually plex doesn't even switch to HDR the VP9.2 videos anymore. It worked only with HEVC videos, at least the couple I tested.

[stormyuk]

Interestingly for me SmartYouTubeTV doesn't work on my XE9005 anymore, when I try and play a 4K video either in 4K Main or 4K Alt I just get a black screen. LOL.