HDR not working properly after April Update (Vero 4K+)

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been using my Vero 4K+ for the past year and everything was working fine and flawlessly. Watching 4K HDR content on my TCL 4K TV (55R615) looked great with clear picture and vibrant/deep accurate HDR. Unfortunately after the April Update hit my system everything’s changed. First when I went to settings after the update some settings had been changed from what they were before and then whenever I tried to play HDR content my TV would register it as HDR but it would clearly not be HDR as everything was extremely washed out. The only fix I’ve found that alleviates the issue so far has been loading up a 4K HDR file/movie and then switching to another input then back. This helps the HDR and picture greatly but it still doesn’t make it look like it did completely before the April Update. (Plus the fix also doesn’t stick as it reverts back to washed out “HDR” when I switch to another movie/file. (Please note I did extensive testing of these files over the weekend and they all looked/worked fine before the update. Also no TV settings have been changed or reset, same with HDMI cables etc.

Any help or fixes would be extremely appreciated and also I’m sure other people are having this issue as well so hopefully when they see this Topic they’ll be able to benefit as well.

Here are some logs: https://paste.osmc.tv/okirahepid

Here are some pics showing before and after applying the “fix” (Just to showcase how washed out it is in comparison) also if any additional information is needed please let me know.

So far, no! Can you ssh into the device and when you are getting washed-out colors go

cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/config

and post the output here.

Is the output of that command any different when the colors are looking good on the screen?

Um No… Could you explain/walk me through SSH I’m relatively tech savvy but I don’t have much experience and wouldn’t want to mess or do anything that could make the situation worse. Thanks!

Details regarding how to access the command line interface can be found here on our Wiki: Accessing the command line - General - OSMC

Ok so an update, before I jacked into my Vero through SSH. I decided to do a quick reinstall to see if that fixed anything.

After reinstalling the December version of OSMC. Everything is now fixed and running/looking gorgeous again. So ultimately it’s gotta be something in the update. I did notice that on the December version my Display Mode is set to Windowed and grayed out while on the April Update it was set instead to Fullscreen by default with the ability to choose between the two. (Maybe that has something to do with it - I don’t feel like downloading the update again to check though lol) I think I’ll hold off on updating for a while until all the bugs are out.

Now that the visuals are squared away I do have a question regarding audio. I have a Razer Leviathan (2.1 soundbar + sub-woofer) connected directly to my Vero using Optical with PCM selected. What should my audio settings be? Should I choose 2.0 or 2.1 for number of audio channels, enable or disable Passthrough, and or Dolby transcoding etc. Thanks for all the help I really appreciate it.

Check this thread for audio setup info: Audio setup and information

Maybe is a misconfiguration of the Use limited colour range (16-235) option and how you have configured the entire setup Vero + Kodi + TV, please follow this link in order to know more about video levels.

Hope it helps.

TBH I don’t recommend that link as it talks about things which are not relevant to OSMC devices. Bottom line is:

Input: we need to know whether the source video is limited or full range. Atm, vero assumes all source video is limited range.

Output: this can be set to either limited (normal for TVs) or full (normal for monitors). This option is new since December.

I am having this issue as well. Here is the contents of my config file:

cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/config

cur_VIC: 16
VIC: 16 1920x1080p60hz
Colour depth: 10-bit
Colourspace: YUV444
Colour range: full
EOTF: SDR
YCC colour range: full
PLL clock: 0xc000029a, Vid clock div 0x000b0000
audio config: on
3D config: off

It’s not every file, either. Here’s some mediainfo from a 4k file that has the issue (also the black letterbox bars around the video are a grey colour in this case):

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 2 h 13 min
Bit rate                                 : 7 796 kb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 1 608 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.053
Stream size                              : 7.26 GiB (61%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 152 r2851 ba24899
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=4 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=7796 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / vbv_maxrate=62500 / vbv_bufsize=78125 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : Atmos / TrueHD
Codec ID                                 : A_TRUEHD
Duration                                 : 2 h 13 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 4 945 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 8 175 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : Object Based / 8 channels
Channel positions                        : Object Based / Front: L C R, Side: L R, Back: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            :  / 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 1 200.000 FPS (40 spf)
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 4.61 GiB (39%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Since H.264 isn’t used for any commercial 4K material, plus the fact that the black bars have been cropped (3840x1608) tells me this is a re-encode of a UHD BluRay.

It’s likely an incorrect re-encode that doesn’t correctly convert the HDR to SDR, so colors will be washed out. Also, the video stream also doesn’t contain information about the color matrix to use, so it would be assumed to be Rec.709, not Rec.2020, which will also cause an incorrect display.

1 Like

Good call. I just tried downgrading to the December firmware and while the letterboxing is black again that video file is definitely washed out.

You need to set the output to limited range.

Forgive me for jumping in here but which entry gets set to limited …?

Colour range: full
or
YCC colour range: full
or both?

both