Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

[Cyber]

Advanced Auto HDR shader(Pumbo) vs Lilium's inverse tone mapping

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/141sa9f/guide_improving_hdr_fidelity_on_windows_11/

GitHub - dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm: Transform Windows 11's...

@Dennis1, take a look at this:

@MajorPainTheCactus

I’ve actually had versions of this shader that had a non-zero black and I got a lot of complaints - you can change this by changing the gamma cutoff point in the shader arguments this should give you 90% of what youre seeing in the photo admittedly without the non zero ‘horizontal pixels’ of the slot mask but aperture grille will look perfect.

When looking at my PVM’s, the base black (because the black mask is interleaved with the slightly reflecting phosphors) is not of the level of the base black on my OLEDs so it is more accurate to have a non zero black.

Feel free to give it a try if you’re interested.

[JHorbach1]

@Dennis1

Those LG OLED’s have a feature which is very important to achieve a convincing bright and dynamic CRT look. The feature is called “dynamic tonemapping”, which you can switch on in the menu. If you don’t have a LG OLED I am not sure if other brands of TV’s and monitors have a similar setting. The 1400 nits Philips Mini-LED monitor for example hadn’t such a setting. Maybe MajorPainTheCactus can tell us if his Samsung QD-OLED has a similar feature.

When using this with RetroArch, do I need to enable HDR in the settings? I’ve tried to use it, the screen looks like the gamma is too high… My TV is a LG C1. I Double-checked the configurations.

[Cyber]

@JHorbach1

When using this with RetroArch, do I need to enable HDR in the settings?

Definitely not. This method used Reshade exclusively for the shader effects and SDR to HDR Tonemapping. You shouldn’t even have Video Shaders enabled in RetroArch. So you want RetroArch to be in regular SDR mode and also the Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Shader in Reshade.

Feel free to ask more questions if you’re stuck again.

[Dennis1]

Cyber is right, in Retroarch HDR should not be enabled. Lilium’s inverse tonemapping takes care of this. In Retroarch and Reshade Megatron everything should be configured as SDR. Only make sure, that in Windows HDR is enabled and your display receives a HDR signal from the PC.

[western]

how are you having this working in duckstation, I was getting nowhere trying to get the hdr addon (either the original or lilium fork) to kick in in reshade on anything other than old pc games using dgvoodoo. no stand alone emulators. the one exception: in pcsx2, the lilium inverse tonemapping shader was recognizing hdr in the picture, even though the hdr addon wasn’t working, giving me the same old “turn on hdr if your monitor supports it” message. I assume with dosbox, xemu, and scummvm my problem was opengl, but dolphin, pcsx2 and duckstation are set to vulkan and it’s the same thing. trying the nvidia dxgi swapchain thing didn’t change anything except it stopped making the screen dim after quitting until I turned hdr off and back on.

[Dennis1]

This is how I set everything up and it works for me:

I also get the error message in Reshade at the addon tab, that HDR support is not enabled, but it works nonetheless and HDR is activated from Windows side and the TV running in HDR.

And it works the same way in Duckstation and PCSX2 if I choose DirectX 11 or 12 instead of Vulkan and install Reshade with the correct API. DXGI Swapchain is also not neccessary for me.

It is important to install “Reshade with full add-on support” (not the “normal” version) and then during installation select Lilium’s AutoHDR add-on and the inverse tonemapping shader, but i guess you did this correctly.

In some emulators like Flycast for example, I have to manually override the “CSP_Override” setting like in this picture to get it to work:

As you may notice, the screenshots are a bit blown out, but that is because Lilium’s inverse tm is doing its thing and I have not found a way to accurately capture screenshots with HDR and correctly present them here.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

I have not found a way to accurately capture screenshots with HDR and correctly present them here.

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

Wow! Now I’m looking forward! In the meantime, anyone ready for some HDR screenshots of Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor in action? You need to enable HDR in Windows 10 or 11 and use the photo viewer for this to look as intended. If HDR is not enabled, you’ll still see a good quality image but it won’t have the same brightness as what you see during gameplay with Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor running in HDR mode. https://mega.nz/file/FExXyKbQ#HBKrAf5FTLU8fng-bjOIXjMU6rlYm9etJu28RKEmAsw h…

@Azurfel

Special K can also take .jxr HDR screenshots of Retroarch with HDR shaders included.

CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader Preset Packs

Here are some screenshots (jxr for HDR) of my modified version (glass, 67% mask, no curvature) Public Best viewed with HDR + WCG

4K Vertical Overlay Community Contributions

So, it does capture it correctly as a .jxr file. And if I open it in Windows Photo it looks correct. But if I export the jxr file as a jpg or png, or open the jxr file in Chrome the luminance is off again. Do you do anything to tone map the files before you share them? EDIT: Nevermind, I found a little utility that can do it automatically, it can be set up to watch the capture folder and convert them all as they come through too, which is nice: https://github.com/brion/hdrfix [RetroArch Sc…

[Dennis1]

Thank you, will try it out!

[Cyber]

You’re welcome! I updated the post with a couple more tools.

[Dennis1]

The first issue I have is, that I can’t save screenshots in the .JXR format. I tried it with the Windows 11 screenshot capture function and also Nvidia Experience Screenshot utility. They both just save pictures in .png format. without any HDR information. Retroarch just crashes when I add it to Special K…

Also Lilium’s tonemapping is based on HDR SCRGB instead of HDR PQ, which may also plays a role here and I am not sure, if capturing inverse tonemapped pictures is done the same way as normal HDR pictures.

But I have a very simple solution for all of us. I just capture screenshots in SDR without HDR tonemapping and then if I want to view them with full brightness, I just put my display in HDR mode and then drag the Windows SDR brightness slider to maximum:

This way pictures look pretty much identical and bright, just as if I play them with Lilium’s inverse tonemapping.

Here is an example:

Put your display in HDR mode and SDR slider to maximum and it will look correct with only minor differences. Best is to download the picture and view it in fullscreen, as it gets even brighter then, for me at least.

[Dennis1]

Here is a comparison of pictures I just captured with my phone off my OLED.

This screenshot shows how the game runs with Lilium’s HDR tm:

And here is a snapshot saved in SDR, just viewed in HDR and the SDR slider to maximum:

The differences are small and I think it is the easiest way either to upload pictures in SDR and view them in HDR with the SDR slider to max or just take pictures off the screen with a camera while running the shader in HDR. For our purposes I think this is sufficient.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

The first issue I have is, that I can’t save screenshots in the .JXR format. I tried it with the Windows 11 screenshot capture function and also Nvidia Experience Screenshot utility.

What GPU do you use? I use a GeForce GTX 1070.

To take HDR screenshots in .jxr format you need to open GeForce Experience, then click on the Settings (Gear icon) then check “Enable experimental features…”

In-Game Overlay also needs to be enabled.

Windows must be set to HDR for it to work. However if you start Windows in SDR Mode, then switch to HDR Mode then try to take a screenshot it wouldn’t work properly unless you toggle the In-Game-Overlay off then on again in GeForce Experience.

If Windows was started with HDR Mode enabled, the HDR capture in .jxr format should work.

Some nVidia Graphics cards can also record video in HDR, mine cannot. I get a message on attempting to record video that tells me it can’t be recorded in that mode.

That’s an easy way for me to know if I’m going to get proper HDR captures in .jxr format. Once I get that message when trying to record I know it’s going to work. If it starts recording, I know that GeForce Experience is still in SDR Mode.

@Dennis1

Put your display in HDR mode and SDR slider to maximum and it will look correct with only minor differences.

I believe you but my OLED TV, which is my only HDR display is currently out of order so I can’t try it, however I’m able to watch HDR Mastered content using my own manual Tonemapping on my non HDR TV and it looks really good.

I was just contemplating if I could make a similar profile for game mode.

Here are my FakeHDR Settings if anyone else wants to try something like this:

TV: LG 55UB8300-UG

Input Label: PC

• Energy Saving: Off
• Picture Mode: isf Expert1
• Backlight: 100
• Contrast: 100
• Brightness: 50
• H Sharpness: 25
• V Sharpness: 25
• Color: 100
• Tint: R26

Expert Control

• Dynamic Contrast: Low
• Super Resolution: Off
• Color Gamut: Wide
• Edge Enhancer: On
• Color Filter: Off
• Gamma: 2.4

White Balance

• Color Temperature: Cool
• Method: 2 Points
• Pattern: Outer
• Points: High
• Red: 0
• Green: 0
• Blue: 0

Color Management System

• All Defaults <0>

Picture Option

• Black Level: Low
• LED Local Dimming: High

[Dennis1]

@Cyber

What GPU do you use? I use a GeForce GTX 1070.

I have a RTX 4060 Ti.

@Cyber

To take HDR screenshots in .jxr format you need to open GeForce Experience, then click on the Settings (Gear icon) then check “Enable experimental features…”

That worked, thank you!

I just converted the JXR picture to SDR with this tool you posted:

Releases · bvibber/hdrfix

Unfortunately the result is not good as you can see here:

Colors and brightness look very different than what Lilium’s tm is doing.

I can send you also the original XJR file, but I am not sure where to upload it, as all sites I tried don’t support pictures in JXR and this size.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

I have a RTX 4060 Ti.

With that you should also be able to record HDR video.

@Dennis1

That worked, thank you!

You’re welcome. I’m glad it worked!

@Dennis1

I just converted the JXR picture to SDR with this tool you posted:

That’s not necessary if capturing a .jxr using GeForce Experience as the .jxr file contains both the HDR image as well as a tonemapped SDR image as well in the same file. If you open the file with HDR disabled in Windows, it will correctly load the Tonemapped SDR version. The tonemapping seems pretty high school to me but of course it won’t look identical to the HDR version.

If you capture a .jxr using Windows Game Bar, it’s supposed to save an HDR .jxr and a separate tonemapped SDR .jpg (or .png can’t remember).

@Dennis1

Colors and brightness look very different than what Lilium’s tm is doing.

All of those tools and methods I posted produce differing results.

@Dennis1

I can send you also the original XJR file, but I am not sure where to upload it, as all sites I tried don’t support pictures in JXR and this size.

I use Mega, have you taken a look at my examples?

[Dennis1]

@Cyber

With that you should also be able to record HDR video.

I just tried to record a video with Retroarch running the Lilium shader and that results in very weird colors etc.

But what works is recording with Retroarch’s inbuilt HDR instead of Reshade and Lilium. When I view the video file it looks exactly like it looks in RA with proper HDR. For presenting the shader on Youtube for example this should be a good solution.

There is something with Lilium’s inverse tonemapping, which results in a different video output. Maybe its due to the SCRGB tonemapping, I am not sure.

@Cyber

If you open the file with HDR disabled in Windows, it will correctly load the Tonemapped SDR version.

That works! It’s not 100% identical to the HDR version as you mentioned correctly, but colors look more correct now.

@Cyber

I use Mega, have you taken a look at my examples?

I have seen your examples, but without registration I can’t upload anything there. Did you have to register for uploading the images?

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

Did you have to register for uploading the images?

Yes, it’s just a cloud storage provider like Dropbox or OneDrive not a dedicated image hosting platform.

Those entities still have a lot of catching up to do.

@Dennis1

For presenting the shader on Youtube for example this should be a good solution.

You can try but after YouTube reencodes it and messes up the colour format, I don’t know if it will still look good.

I think YouTube only supports YCbCr 4:2:0 Chroma Compression for HDR Videos and these shaders require at least RGB Full 4:4:4 for proper subpixel colour addressing.

There are some Mask, Display Resolution and TVL combinations which might be compatible with 4:2:0 so you can experiment with those as well but I look forward to seeing your results.

Here are some pictures that I just took of your screenshots while viewing them on my FakeHDR TV.

https://mega.nz/folder/BFZXiSQS#_WewqlIOaQk7LrrVBlEfCg

Hopefully they should give you an idea of how good they and “normal” they look to me in person.

I had to lower the refresh rate to 30Hz in order to get the RGB 4:4:4 Full that is needed for them to look correct.

[Dennis1]

Ok, I think I will register at one point, if it’s free. Posting some Videos on Youtube I might also do in the future when I have some motivation to do it. But then I have to do it with Retroarch’s inbuilt Megatron HDR, which will not result in the same look as Lilium’s inverse tm and Reshade.

[Cyber]

@Cyber

I think YouTube only supports YCbCr 4:2:0 Chroma Compression for HDR Videos and these shaders require at least RGB Full 4:4:4 for proper subpixel colour addressing.

There are some Mask, Display Resolution and TVL combinations which might be compatible with 4:2:0 so you can experiment with those as well but I look forward to seeing your results.

For Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor you can try:

Display's Resolution - 1 (4K) 
Resolution - 2 (800TVL)

in order to get around YCbCr 4:2:0 Chroma Compression Limitations.

Alternatively, you can use the Shadow Mask pattern.

[western]

you seem to have the lilium shader twice in your reshade parameters list there, I only have one and it’s always like your second one that says error and “only hdr color spaces supported”

[Dennis1]

@western

you seem to have the lilium shader twice in your reshade parameters list there

Yes, I did notice that. I think it is because I had reinstalled Reshade a few times. One of the two is not active though (with the error message) and does not interfere with double tonemapping.

As for why it is not working for you I have no idea at the moment. Did you try to manually override the CSP setting? If you follow the instructions from my post #2475 it normally should work.