MadVR in use with LG OLED Thread

[SamuriHL]

I'm hoping I'll get to some testing tomorrow. I have the week off but I do have a few things to get done earlier in the week. I'm excited to play around with these curves. Totally sure I have no real idea how they work but that's never stopped me before. LOL

[SamuriHL]

I'm using your settings with Fer's old medium. I like what I'm seeing. A lot.

[quietvoid]

It's too bad I don't understand why shadow detail isn't being recovered by the curves at high nits, apparently everyone else has improved shadows.

[SamuriHL]

That's a good question. That would be a nice improvement. I haven't actually looked at how you defined the curves yet. I just pulled them in and watched a movie. It looked damn good.

[quietvoid]

I'm getting quite tired of testing my own curve, and it doesn't seem to be optimal.

I realized testing in SDR didn't really show properly how the brightness would differ, and I was trying to retain more brightness with the curves.
Turns out everyone is just making the curve as flat as possible to retain detail, and using other settings to get some brightness back.

In HDR, the brightness difference really is not very noticeable but the detail retained is.
So I'll just settle with Neo-XP's curve adapted to 870 DPL, until madshi comes up with something more automated.

I posted about issues with Fer15's medium contrast recovery, so I'm sticking with Neo-XP's Log Conservative even though it is slightly less bright.

To get back the shadow detail it's necessary to use the alternative histogram, and though it increases overall brightness there's not that much contrast loss in HDR.
It's hard to perceive if an overall darker image with the same highlights looks more "contrasty" compared to a flatter background, but that's the compromise with all curves so far.

So for now I updated my gist to Neo-XP's adapted curve, and these are my settings: https://postimg.cc/PLPwdwG2

[chros]

@quietvoid, can we playback single layer (profile 5/8) mkv (!) DV files with FireStick 4k? Of so, how? Thanks
(I tried to remux it into ts with latest tsmuxer nightly, but oppo doesn't trigger DV with those files. And I don't know how to extract hevc+rpu to create an mp4 DV file with dbl mp4muxer.)

[quietvoid]

Oh man you made me post out of topic instead of linking to makemkv

Anyways now I'm curious if my 200 DTN can be lowered.
With Neo-XP's curve, disabling DTN results in way less clipping than the default curve.
Now DTN can actually just be used for contrast

I ended up lowering DTN to 100, so back to what it was before.
Except with the curves now there is no clipping at all.

madVR has never looked this bright AND detailed, this is what HDR is supposed to look like.
Not the dark, high DTN look. At least IMO.
We've just been stuck with going darker because the curve wasn't optimal to retain detail.

Most shots in S&M keep their contrast, but everything else is just way brighter and midtones/shadows are improved a lot.

[SamuriHL]

Damn. I'm going to give this a try later today. Post a new screen cap of your madvr settings?

[quietvoid]

Not much changed except for DTN: https://postimg.cc/7G7FDhGt
Using Neo's curves adapted to 870, the file is in my signature.

If you like things darker either increase DTN or try disabling the alternative histogram and/or FALL detail (those are good to keep bright skies).

[SamuriHL]

In my environment I like things slightly brighter. I use a lower DTN than you do (or did before this latest round of changes). I'm going to play around this afternoon. This should be fun.

[SamuriHL]

Well this is definitely getting us somewhere for sure. I think we need to tweak a bit here and there but this is the right direction to be going in!! I like!

[quietvoid]

We might have to look again at how the TV behaves above 870 nits target again, too.

[SamuriHL]

That's a good point. A lot of testing in our future.

[chros]

Thanks for the reply, quietvoid!

Back on topic: although I haven't played with the curves yet (DTN is off here), but how does it affect (along with the rest of the options) the resulting PQ curve?
I mean, if the image is brighter then what happens to director's intent?

[quietvoid]

The curves by themselves don't make anything brighter, they just resolve the highlight detail better.
I compared passthrough and DTN 100 and they seem to have same brightness midtones, so I'd assume it's fine.

Scenes under 509 nits are set at 1:1 and should be left untouched.

Now if you don't use DTN I don't think everything becomes brighter, but you lose contrast in those high brightness areas.

[SamuriHL]

I went a little too hot when I watched Infinity War earlier and had DTN set to 75. I need to back that down a bit. I think 100 maybe a good place to be. One of the things that impressed me is the tesseract in the beginning. It's one of the reasons I use Infinity War to judge how these things help or hurt. They aren't especially bright scenes, but, there are points in there that are very bright, plus fire, plus a ton of shadows. But the tesseract is something I pointed out to madshi before. It can NOT be looked at statically. I.E. freezing it won't help. But when you have a proper curve and settings, the DETAIL moving within that thing as Loki holds it up in front of Thanos is unbelievable. There's shadow detail within the damn thing and it moves. Your settings with Neo's modified curves are some of the best representation of that I've seen in a long time. I like it a lot.

[chros]

Originally Posted by quietvoid

I compared passthrough and DTN 100 and they seem to have same brightness midtones, so I'd assume it's fine.

Which content did you test it with? Maybe I'll play around with these during the weekend.

[quietvoid]

I mostly test with S&M, Batman v Superman and The Meg.
In this case I think The Meg has similar levels with alternative histogram and FALL detail brightening skies quite a bit.

I think it's possible that madVR is trying to make things as bright as the source PQ values would allow, hence matching brightness with passthrough.
Obviously with the exception of highlights, where the tonemapping is much better (and the only place where creator's intent might be different, because of garbage default TV mapping).

By the way, I quickly looked at 1000 target nits and it still seems to be clipping, so nothing changed for that I guess.
Maybe the curves had to be readjusted but I doubt it would do anything.

[chros]

Thanks for keeping the spirit alive
I just tried out your settings and curves (@800 DPL) with MMFR sample: it doesn't fix the big blue patches in the beginning.

Also, does the DTN work at all with b124? (the bug you have reported with b123) I don't think so ...

[quietvoid]

The curves are not meant to fix the "issues" in MMFR, that's a saturation problem.

DTN works just fine, with the default curves it would just clip, but now there is more detail without DTN as well.

If you didn't regenerate the curves for your DPL there might be differences, the file only has points for 870.
You'd have to follow Neo-XP's method to redo it for another DPL.