Real-world support for full range and greater color depths

[benwaggoner]

I am doing some playing around with 0-255 luma range and 10-bit encoding.

I was wondering how good real-world player support is for those modes. I know that there are certaninly good software players for those. But how about GPU accelerated playback? Or ASIC-based playing in living room and handheld devices?

I imagine 0-255 is more broadly supported, since it's part of the original profiles. I know there's been plenty of talk about 10-bit support in ASICs, but I'm not sure if those are in the wild yet, or if the devices's media software will support correct playback of those if provided with files in Hi10P. Let alone Hi422P or Hi444PP.

So, can anyone offer any tips for what players and devices are or are not known to work? I'd love to be able to see what kind of quality differences I can get outside of computer monitors.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I'm not aware of a single consumer grade hardware player.

There are plenty of hardware players for the pro market, but even those are few and far between in my experience. AVC-Intra is about the only common implementation I'm aware of...

[vivan]

I could be wrong, but xvYCC looks like fullrange and AVCHD supports it (and there are a lot of players that support it)...

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by Blue_MiSfit

I'm not aware of a single consumer grade hardware player.

You mean for the 10-bit and higher profiles?

I'd think that there should certainly players out there that can handle High Profile using a 0-255 luma range. Or is even that not broadly supported?

Originally Posted by vivan

I could be wrong, but xvYCC looks like fullrange and AVCHD supports it (and there are a lot of players that support it)...

Link?

I'm sure that plenty of things that can play AVCHD out over HDMI can use xvYCC, but I don't believe the AVCHD bitstream itself can be anything beyond 8-bit 4:2:0. So it'd have to use post-decode upsampling in the player itself.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Right. I'm sure any hardware player could PLAY full range, but whether it would display it correctly is another story entirely

In any case, I have no experience in this matter whatsoever!

[ajp_anton]

Full range has no effect on the bitstream. The only difference is that with TV range, the "contrast" of the image is bad, and there's a flag that says whether this should be compensated for or not.
I can imagine some players just ignoring this flag and automatically compensating for it even if they shouldn't, so the blacks and whites will be crushed in the final displayed image, but it will be decoded correctly in any case.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by vivan

I could be wrong, but xvYCC looks like fullrange and AVCHD supports it (and there are a lot of players that support it)...

Coming back to this some months later.

Are you saying that xvYCC would require --range pc and not --range tv?

My understanding of xvYCC is that it wouldn't have luma our of the 16-235 range. But does it need --range pc in order to allow the broader chroma range for xvYCC?

It seems like we'll need the xvYCC flag for playback to not get black levels wrong in this case.

[kabelbrand]

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/technol.../xvycc_01.html

With 8-bit quantization of luminance and color-difference signals, definition formula are set and the color gamut is expanded by using values between 1 and 15 and between 241 and 254 as picture signals. Definitions over 8 bits are also used to support precise gradation.

My understanding is that besides using luma and chroma values outside of the TV range you would still set the encoder to TV range for compatibilty with non-xvYCC devices.
This is assuming the encoder does not clip the input levels to TV and encodes the full range. I think x264 handles it this way as long as input and output range are the same.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Although there are some GPU's that support vxvYCC colour, they need to be connected to a display device that also supports vxvYCC... And currently these are only manufactured by Sony

[kabelbrand]

I had a quick look at the histogram of the "Mastered in 4K" Ghostbusters BD and levels seem to be within the regular video range!? This is not what I expected...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally Posted by kabelbrand

I had a quick look at the histogram of the "Mastered in 4K" Ghostbusters BD and levels seem to be within the regular video range!? This is not what I expected...

Please list your playing and viewing equipment?

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by kabelbrand

I had a quick look at the histogram of the "Mastered in 4K" Ghostbusters BD and levels seem to be within the regular video range!? This is not what I expected...

Just because they had a workflow that could preserve xvYCC colors doesn't mean that the master actually had many. I've not seen that particular Ghostbusters discs, but most version I've seen are pretty washed out. The mid-80's weren't a golden age for film stock.

[kabelbrand]

Originally Posted by SeeMoreDigital

Please list your playing and viewing equipment?

I used AviSynth with DGDecNV to load the elementary stream and added Histograms in Classic and Levels mode.

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Just because they had a workflow that could preserve xvYCC colors doesn't mean that the master actually had many. I've not seen that particular Ghostbusters discs, but most version I've seen are pretty washed out. The mid-80's weren't a golden age for film stock.

That's true, maybe I should have bought a more recent movie for this test, e.g. Battle Los Angeles.

Originally Posted by jq963152

Who says that the "Mastered in 4K" Blu-ray Disc encodes actually are encoded in xvYCC?

Source please.

Sony does. If you want a source just search Sony's site for any of the Mastered in 4K discs and they talk about the expanded colors which is the xvYCC output such as the PS3 does. It's not our job to do your basic research. But if it is beyond your means to type in "Mastered in 4k and xvYCC" into Google here are a few of the many links you will find.

Sony’s “Mastered in 4K” Discs Support xvYCC Color

From here:

On the other hand, "mastered in 4K" Blu-rays also turn out to be the best picture quality ever produced on a Blu-ray disc, and will really look amazing when played on a Sony 4K TV.

There are three technical measures that elevate a "mastered in 4K" disc above the rest:

Enhanced bitrate: these discs exclude content extras in favour of using all available disc space to deliver the film in a greatly enhanced bitrate. Where most Blu-ray discs are typically delivered in rates in the 24Mbps to 30Mbps ballpark, these "mastered in 4K" discs deliver at 35Mbps to 38Mbps. A greater bitrate means a much clearer picture, and less moments where blocking or blurring will occur, particularly in action sequences.

XvYCC support: in the Blu-ray standard, xvYCC (also known as x.v.Color) is a colour space option that to date, has almost never been supported. XvYCC extends the available colour gamut to better represent the colour space that the original film was intended to be displayed at, while the standard sRGB space cuts off a lot of information in the red and blue-green sections of the spectrum. As long as your Blu-ray player and your TV support xvYCC, these discs will deliver a solid colour enhancement over other discs on the market.

Sony 4K algorithms: this final feature is a sweetener focused on giving Sony 4K TV owners a better experience with these discs than any other 4K TV owners. Being part of the same family, Sony Pictures and Sony Bravia have shared proprietary algorithm information to give the best possible upscaling performance on these films. Sony 4K televisions will be able to identify a "mastered in 4K" disc and use an upscaling algorithm based on the same formula used at Sony Pictures to downscale the film from 4K to HD. This secret sauce is likely to give a Sony TV the edge over other TVs that must use less-specific algorithms to upscale the content.

From here:

The packaging indicates that the expanded colors can be enabled through any xvYCC-compatible TV and Blu-ray player

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally Posted by jq963152

I highly doubt that the official Blu-ray Disc specifications allow for xvYCC H.264 encoding, but not sure, so i asked in the more appropriate thread, see:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...17#post1634217

Sufficed to say, it's Sony who are promoting and pushing this implementation.

You know Sony. They're the guys who created Blu-ray and the Blu-ray specification!

And if you refer to kabelbrand's post above, you'll find a link to some more information on Sony's web site!

Originally Posted by jq963152

I highly doubt that the official Blu-ray Disc specifications allow for xvYCC H.264 encoding, but not sure

Yes it most likely isn't. Hence why it requires both a Bluray player that specifically supports it and TV that can do xvYCC (for now pretty much only Sony equipment for both). Did you bother to even read the links I provided such as:

The packaging indicates that the expanded colors can be enabled through any xvYCC-compatible TV and Blu-ray player

Originally Posted by jq963152

But then it's not a Blu-ray Disc ?

Sure it is. Hence the Blu-Ray logo and Sony calling them "Mastered in 4K Blu-Ray titles".

SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES "MASTERED IN 4K" BLU-RAY TITLES TIMED WITH SONY 4K TVs

Originally Posted by jq963152

If the official Blu-ray Disc specifications do not allow xvYCC encoded video, then how can a disc containing xvYCC encoded video be a Blu-ray Disc?

It doesn't disallow it.

Originally Posted by jq963152

So xvYCC encoded video is guaranteed to be fully backwards-compatible with all Blu-ray Disc players?

Yes the discs are compatible with all players you just get regular gamut if it doesn't support xvYCC.

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by paradoxical

Yes the discs are compatible with all players you just get regular gamut if it doesn't support xvYCC.

So how does it work then? The extended primaries get truncated or something? Or is it some kind of an enhancement layer? Multiple encodes?

I suppose it's time to transcend whatever latent remnants of HD DVD bitterness I have and pay more attention to Blu-ray .