Dolby Vision now possible through MP4 Mux.

[Jhoopes517]

People recommending the Sony X700 as a Dolby Vision media player should be a little careful.

It does correctly play back dual-layer DV if it is muxed into MP4 format, as described in this thread (meaning no HD audio). However, it doesn't play back dual-layer DV in M2TS format.

If you try and play a file like that via DLNA, it plays as HDR10. If you copy the file onto an external drive and connect directly via USB, then you'll get Dolby Vision output, but it still isn't actually reading the DV metadata from the file - instead it is simply reading the HDR10 stream and then converting that to DV on the fly.

The results still look quite good doing that (and if the M2TS file is only HDR10 in the first place then it will convert it to DV, and that can look very good); but it's not the same as actually using the dual-layer DV information in the file.

so forget mp4 for a second and just talk m2ts.
Even when both the player and the tv are showing dolby vision, it's still faking it? because that's what happens I play both a uhd disc and an m2ts from usb hdd. there's no difference I can find in any setting or menu or info display that is different between disc and m2ts usb. how is one to tell? I can see it being fake over dlna though, where only one of the two devices is showing dolby vision - as I said it seemed iffy, but I honestly can't see the dif with disc vs usb...

From that screenshot you posted a couple days back with playback of the .m2ts over USB it only shows the DoVi coming from the TV. It doesn't show it is getting DoVi from the x700. Can you please double check? Every .m2ts I tried (I tried a couple for sure!) only showed hdr10 from the .m2ts on the x700, but DoVi on the TV cause it was being converted as described by @shasarak

[olevelo]

Just bought a x700 for $140. Wally World has them on sale

How did you get it for 140? It's showing 159 for me.

Must of changed since yesterday. When I purchased it, it was at $138 and change. I just checked and now I am getting quoted the price you just mentioned.

Ah ok. Sounds like it doesn't actually play dual layer DV anyway so not as interested!

[Shasarak]

People recommending the Sony X700 as a Dolby Vision media player should be a little careful.

It does correctly play back dual-layer DV if it is muxed into MP4 format, as described in this thread (meaning no HD audio). However, it doesn't play back dual-layer DV in M2TS format.

If you try and play a file like that via DLNA, it plays as HDR10. If you copy the file onto an external drive and connect directly via USB, then you'll get Dolby Vision output, but it still isn't actually reading the DV metadata from the file - instead it is simply reading the HDR10 stream and then converting that to DV on the fly.

The results still look quite good doing that (and if the M2TS file is only HDR10 in the first place then it will convert it to DV, and that can look very good); but it's not the same as actually using the dual-layer DV information in the file.

so forget mp4 for a second and just talk m2ts.
Even when both the player and the tv are showing dolby vision, it's still faking it? because that's what happens I play both a uhd disc and an m2ts from usb hdd. there's no difference I can find in any setting or menu or info display that is different between disc and m2ts usb. how is one to tell? I can see it being fake over dlna though, where only one of the two devices is showing dolby vision - as I said it seemed iffy, but I honestly can't see the dif with disc vs usb...

"Fake" is rather a strong word, and somewhat misleading. The signal that it outputs is in Dolby Vision format, and will be correctly interpreted and displayed as DV by the television; it's a question of where it gets the DV metadata from. If you play a DV disc then it reads the second video layer and gets the DV metadata from there; if you're playing an M2TS file then it takes the static HDR10-layer metadata and repackages that as DV. What you end up with on the TV screen will often be exactly the same - the only difference is when the DV stream is varying the metadata from scene to scene.

Because the television is receiving a genuine Dolby Vision signal in both cases, you can't rely on the TV to tell you what the player is doing. If you want to see, press the Options button on the X700 remote while it's playing, and see what it says at the top left of the screen. If it's actually accessing the second video layer for metadata then it should say something like "Vision"; if it's only reading the HDR10 layer and converting it'll say "HDR".

(The ability of the X700 to convert HDR10 to DV on the fly is extremely useful, incidentally, especially if you own a 2016-issue LG OLED TV - the Dolby Vision processing is much better than the HDR10 processing, particularly for material with a peak brightness of above 1000 nits).

[Grencola]

"Fake" is rather a strong word, and somewhat misleading. The signal that it outputs is in Dolby Vision format, and will be correctly interpreted and displayed as DV by the television; it's a question of where it gets the DV metadata from. If you play a DV disc then it reads the second video layer and gets the DV metadata from there; if you're playing an M2TS file then it takes the static HDR10-layer metadata and repackages that as DV. What you end up with on the TV screen will often be exactly the same - the only difference is when the DV stream is varying the metadata from scene to scene.

Because the television is receiving a genuine Dolby Vision signal in both cases, you can't rely on the TV to tell you what the player is doing. If you want to see, press the Options button on the X700 remote while it's playing, and see what it says at the top left of the screen. If it's actually accessing the second video layer for metadata then it should say something like "Vision"; if it's only reading the HDR10 layer and converting it'll say "HDR".

(The ability of the X700 to convert HDR10 to DV on the fly is extremely useful, incidentally, especially if you own a 2016-issue LG OLED TV - the Dolby Vision processing is much better than the HDR10 processing, particularly for material with a peak brightness of above 1000 nits).

sounds fake to me frame by frame hdr is the greatest advantage of dv! so it's weird, I tried a few m2ts files again to confirm after reading these comments and the player and the tv both said Dolby vision like I thought. but if I hit stop and play again, after a couple times it just says dv on the tv. I couldn't get the x700 to say dv again until like the 4th or 5th time trying it. then another movie was only dv on the tv. I cycled playback again and around the 6th time trying it dv finally showed on both devices. is it possibly just a bug when it shows it on both, and it's actually never been real dolby vision this whole time then? that's kind of infuriating lol. and yea mp4 shows dv on both devices, no matter how many times I try playing the file I can't get it to fault. mp4 is also a dual layer dv file though so it's interesting that it can read the 2nd layer metadata just fine from discs and mp4s, but trips up with m2ts..

[SamuriHL]

The x700's "DV support" is the most annoying thing I've ever seen in a player. So much so that I replaced it with a UB820. There is no such thing as "converting HDR to DV". What it's doing is COMPLETELY wrong...it IS sending a DV signal but there's no DV data. It's simply activating DV on your TV which is absolutely 100% WRONG. In order to watch an HDR movie, you have to disable DV support on the x700 else it will erroneously send a DV signal with HDR metadata to your TV. When playing an m2ts on the x700, I doubt there's an easy way to discern if it's sending a valid DV signal or just enabling DV and sending HDR. The whole reason I moved the x700 to a non-UHD tv was because of this issue of having to manually enable/disable DV depending on what content you're playing. I was hoping they'd eventually release another firmware to enable the thing to discern the content type on its own. Sadly, that has not been the case.

[Shasarak]

There is no such thing as "converting HDR to DV".

It's quite easy, actually. All you have to do is take static metadata values and re-label them as dynamic values which, quite coincidentally, just happen never to change for the duration of the video.

You can think of it as being like "converting" a still picture to a video by making every frame of the video the same as every other frame. When you play it, it looks like you're viewing a still picture, but the television thinks it's getting a potentially dynamic sequence of frames which just happens not to change.

it will erroneously send a DV signal with HDR metadata to your TV.

The thing is, doing that greatly improves the picture quality on some TVs - particularly those made in 2016 by manufacturers other than Samsung, and particularly when the maximum luminance level in the video is >1000 nits.

Have you ever tried playing Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on a 2016 LG OLED? The buggy HDR tone-mapping exaggerates the film grain to the point where it looks as if black ants are crawling all over the screen. Converting to DV fixes that problem, because the DV tonemapping doesn't have the same bugs. ("Bugs" as in "errors", not as in "ants". )

Have you ever tried using the HDR Optimiser feature on your UB820? Converting from HDR10 to DV does the same thing (and sometimes does it considerably better, because the process is fine-tuned to the capabilities of one specific model of TV).

I sold my my X700 and found one of the last remaining ex-demo Oppo 203 players largely because I need to do HDR10 -> DV conversion as often as possible, and there are some situations where the X700 can't do it.

It's not brilliantly handled, in that it makes no sense to flag SDR material as DV, or to have to deactivate DV in the menus to play a 3D blu ray, but those are minor annoyances in comparison with the benefits of HDR10->DV.

When playing an m2ts on the x700, I doubt there's an easy way to discern if it's sending a valid DV signal or just enabling DV and sending HDR.

It's very easy, actually, you just press the Options button on the X700 remote and see what it says in the top left corner of the screen.

[SamuriHL]

I have a 2018 C8, so, no, I've not tried playing any HDR content on a 2016 OLED. Nonetheless, my gut feeling on it is that by shoving HDR static metadata in a DV signal would produce a vastly brighter image than is intended. There's no DV video track to overlay on top of the main video track, as well. The whole thing sounds wonky to me but I don't claim to be an expert in the HDR arena. I'm still learning. Personally, I just use madvr's tone mapping to get a very dynamic HDR experience. It's fine tuned now to where it surpasses what HDR10+ is capable of. I've gotten to the point where what few titles I have that do have DV I just rip them and watch the HDR version with madvr anyway. DV has promise on future displays that can do much higher max nit levels. With our OLED and LCD screens today, it's better than straight HDR for sure, but, if you use something like madvr's tone mapping you won't miss DV at all. That's simply my opinion. The UB820 tone mapping is decent, as is the 2018 C8's dynamic tone mapping (more or less), but, madvr has gone way beyond what either of those can do.

[ragico]

Is it possible to add subtitles to this container?? and in which format?

[cyperous]

Haven't played alot of dolby vision files on my sony X700 but I did play transformers last knight mostly through the whole file using DLNA server provided through Plex.

My current work flow for making a dolby vision video files.

• Take a decrypted rip and extract the dolby vision track of the main title to .265 and store it for further use

• Use makemkv to extract and make a copy of the movie and include the main audio and forced subtitle track.

• Use handbrake to convert makemkv video file burning the subtitles into the end result video.

• With handbrake make sure to not crop the video.

• Use handbrake to keep the original track, and also add an AAC and EAC3 track converted while encoding the video.

• Use handbrake to keep the HDR intact this requires some manual options for x265 to maintain the original HDR metadata.

• After encode finished extract the audio tracks, keeping the high fidelity track in a storage medium for later (if and when Atmos encoding is possible (may never happen but it saves me from re-ripping later) we can convert this file to ec3+ATMOS)

• Use the extension .aac and .ec3 for the audio tracks (technically I don't need the aac track but incase support for dual later is made possible by more players I wanted to be able to add this file to my library directly instead of keeping both an HDR and dolby vision file. Right now I can't seem to play any of the dolby vision files on anything other than my OLED and X700.

• I use FFmpeg to extract the video track for the encoded mkv and use the annexb option to create a compatible track ignoring all the warnings and errors.

• Once I have to the HDR track, dv track, aac track, eac3 track I use mp4muxer to create the end .mp4 video file.

• Add mp4 to my dolby vision library

• Play file using the X700 or OLED

This is my current workflow I'm not going to go into detail on how to work each step works. I'm a .NET developer and constructed a server/client encoding software that uses a host with the video files that uploads to 1 of 3 linux systems where a server is sitting waiting for commands. Once the video file is transferred to the system I send a command to start encoding. The process is automatic and uses handbrackcli to preserve HDR.

The host computer is a macOS but could work on linux or windows. The server/client is written entirely in .net core.
The host monitors encoding process and displays the info using ASP.NET through a website. My house has three linux system with the encoding client running on each. The host serves up files to each system and starts encoding. As one finishes the next video to served up until all videos have been encoded.

[PSUHammer]

Tried this with Last Jedi UHD. Tsmuxer was unable to parse the playlist (800) but I was able to find the stream file (MT2S) and demux them. I have the base file, an enhanced file and the AC3 audio file. I used the following command:

"mp4muxer.exe --dv-profile 7 -i dv.base.hevc -i dv.enhancement.hevc -i dv.audio.ac3 --media-lang eng -o DolbyVision.mp4"

The output creates the mp4 container successfully. I am using a Plex media server with a Windows 10 machine as the server. I am watching on a TCL R617 65" set via the Roku Plex app. The movie plays fine but is recogized as an HDR10 format, not Dolby Vision.

Anyone else have any luck? Could it just be this set or Plex?

[Mouth_of_Sauron]

I was reading a discussion on Reddit where a member comments that on his Oppo 203 when playing one of these MP4 DV remuxes it reports the video stream as 10-bit, however if he plays the same movie from a full disc copy (including BDMV folder) that it reports the video stream as 12-bit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comment ... ion_remux/

The suggestion being that, although these remuxes are in a DV format, they are not actually sending the DV metadata.

Can anyone with more knowledge than myself comment on this? How do we know we are actually getting DV as opposed to a standard HDR which is packaged as DV but not actually sending the metadata?

I don't want to go through the time and effort of re-ripping all my discs if I am not actually getting true DV.

Thanks

[PSUHammer]

It may be possible to do the eyeball test. There are some UHD films which, based on reviews, have vastly improved experiences with DV over HDR10. If you can do a side by side or sample the same scene from the same movie in both formats on the same set, you may be able to see if there is a difference.

Last Jedi is supposedly brighter and pops more with DV.

[powdeau]

I accidentally put two different tracks from two different movies in makemkv and when I played the file in DV, I could see the second layer in the background with different picture. So I believe we get the metadata.

[Mouth_of_Sauron]

It may be possible to do the eyeball test. There are some UHD films which, based on reviews, have vastly improved experiences with DV over HDR10. If you can do a side by side or sample the same scene from the same movie in both formats on the same set, you may be able to see if there is a difference.

Last Jedi is supposedly brighter and pops more with DV.

I don't have The Last Jedi because it sucked! Might be worth grabbing it though if it's a good one to test with. Thanks

[Mouth_of_Sauron]

I accidentally put two different tracks from two different movies in makemkv and when I played the file in DV, I could see the second layer in the background with different picture. So I believe we get the metadata.

That's very interesting.

I didn't think the metadata would have visually appeared like that, I thought it just told the TV what adjustments to make to the base layer.

Can you actually make out the image of the different movie?

Thanks