4K HDR Playback on Mac

[CoffeeDrinker]

Hi there, so I'm made a pretty big purchase. I currently have a mid-2014 15-inch intel i7 Macbook Pro, and will be upgrading soon to a a 16-inch M3 Pro. (the computer will be coming in sometime later this week) Since the new monitor will have HDR support, I was thinking about starting to make the upgrade to UHD 4K with my collection. However, as I've been looking around, it seems that I've gathered contradictory information about the effectiveness of various media players in displaying proper HDR. From what I can gather, VLC supports HDR, but it's currently not working properly on Macs.
IINA fairs a bit better from the reports, but I'm still concerned about how the media player is presenting the file. I am fairly new to all of this, but my hope is to be able to play a file as close to the original filmmaker's intention as possible. I'm hoping to get colours and tones that are as close to the source as possible, but I'm also new to this. Am I better off using IINA, remuxing the MKV and then playing the file in quicktime? (for that matter if I do that, which software should I use to get the file as an MP4 without losing any of the quality?)
Thank you for any help on the issue. I'm not particularly tech savvy, and it makes me so mad the way that with contemporary tech, it's actually inconvenient, and you have to go out of your way to watch a film at home the way it was intended to be seen. (think about the default settings on most new TVs with their gross colours and frame interpolation, the low bitrates on streaming, etc)

[dcoke22]

Infuse is a player worth looking at.

Unfortunately, 'proper HDR' is a complicated thing. There's HDR10, there's HDR10+, and there's Dolby Vision, which has several sub variants itself.

I'm not aware of any player that can play all those formats properly from a straight MakeMKV rip from a disc. (I'd love to be proven wrong of course.)

[CoffeeDrinker]

Remuxing MKV files for QuickTime playback could be an option, aiming to maintain quality while transitioning to an MP4 format. Tools like FFmpeg or HandBrake might aid in this process, ensuring minimal quality loss during conversion.

Your frustration with the lack of default settings to replicate the intended viewing experience is understandable, especially with the tech nuances affecting home viewing.

Considering your quest for fidelity to the source, exploring further with IINA and experimenting with remuxing for QuickTime playback might offer a solution. Hopefully, you'll find a suitable workflow that brings you closer to that authentic viewing experience. Good luck with your upgrade, and here's to enjoying your collection in all its intended glory!

Thank you for the well-wishes! I've tested out IINA vs remuxed Quicktime for some SDR video, and I'm not sure what to think of the results. Quicktime ended up with more artifacts? (I have FFMPEG installed, as I use it with yt-dlp, but since I'm not really that tech savvy, I prefer to use software with a GUI, so I used Subler) Quicktime also had more saturated colours in the shadows, and more desaturated colours in the light. I think the next time I do a test, I may want to compare my own screenshots with others? I don't have a good TV display, so I need to find it somewhere else. I'll test HDR when I can!!

Infuse is a player worth looking at.

Unfortunately, 'proper HDR' is a complicated thing. There's HDR10, there's HDR10+, and there's Dolby Vision, which has several sub variants itself.

I'm not aware of any player that can play all those formats properly from a straight MakeMKV rip from a disc. (I'd love to be proven wrong of course.)

I'm hesitant to use Infuse because of the high price tag. I don't like subscriptions, and if I was to use it, it'd probably be the one-time purchase.

Yeah, with all those different formats, and media players being unable to support all of them, this is really unfortunate. As much as I appreciate the development of digital technology, the lack of accessibility for your average person is bad for the art form and home viewing.

[dcoke22]

I'm hesitant to use Infuse because of the high price tag. I don't like subscriptions, and if I was to use it, it'd probably be the one-time purchase.

Yeah, subscriptions are annoying. Infuse Pro's subscription pricing isn't bad though. It is $1/month, so you can try it out for very little money. And if you like it, $10/year isn't bad and it seems more reasonably priced than the one-time purchase option.

I've tested out IINA vs remuxed Quicktime for some SDR video, and I'm not sure what to think of the results.

Hasn't Apple given up on QuickTime? Quicktime X shipped with Mac OS X 10.6 and was a downgrade from QuickTime 7 that preceded it. It seems it was rewritten when it transitioned to 64-bit in QT X (QT 7 was 32-bit) and not all the functionality made it. The last update was in 2018 it seems. In any case, QuickTime doesn't seem like the path forward.

[SamuriHL]

I use JRiver MediaCenter. It has a fairly advanced video renderer (JRVR) and works very well. I use it on my Macbook Pro 16 M2. I've not tried MakeMKV integration with it (that may be a Windows only thing I truly don't know) but it can handle decrypted backups just fine with full menus and all if you really want. I use it on my Windows HTPC, as well.

[CoffeeDrinker]

Hasn't Apple given up on QuickTime? Quicktime X shipped with Mac OS X 10.6 and was a downgrade from QuickTime 7 that preceded it. It seems it was rewritten when it transitioned to 64-bit in QT X (QT 7 was 32-bit) and not all the functionality made it. The last update was in 2018 it seems. In any case, QuickTime doesn't seem like the path forward.

Oof, that's rather upsetting. So they haven't updated their default media player since 2018? They're pretty hell-bent on bringing us into a dystopia where the only media players are on 'content' platforms, discouraging viewing files on your home computer altogether. (unless your the one editing the video to post 'content') I knew they were trying to kill physical media for awhile, but it's even worse than I thought.

I wonder then, do you think it's possible that my display with IINA may be more accurate, then? I suppose, even though the program confuses me, I could also try using FFMPEG with FFMPLAY, and take a screenshot from that and compare, should I use that to test and compare to? I feel like all I got to go off of at the moment is vibes.

[dcoke22]

I've never used ffplay so I can't comment on its utility as an HDR player.

None of the computer monitors I have support HDR. So while I use MPV all the time (IINA is a Mac specific wrapper for MPV) and IINA occasionally, I have no idea how well it works for HDR. Hopefully you'll report back how the various players work with the fancy MBP HDR display.

[CoffeeDrinker]

I've never used ffplay so I can't comment on its utility as an HDR player.

None of the computer monitors I have support HDR. So while I use MPV all the time (IINA is a Mac specific wrapper for MPV) and IINA occasionally, I have no idea how well it works for HDR. Hopefully you'll report back how the various players work with the fancy MBP HDR display.

Will do! The computer is here and works beautifully. I think I will start with some downloaded HDR footage. They're all MKVs, so I'll have to remux them to see how they look on Quicktime.

What I would really like to do, is test out an actual movie. Tech demos and cinema are quite different. Unfortunately, the 4K drive that I bought on the second hand market was newer than I expected, and has the December 2022 firmware. (it was unopened, came like that out of the box, I did not update it)

Sooooo, I'm gonna sit here and wait to find out when Mike finds a solution and publishes an update to the Pioneer firmware issue. Could be weeks, months, years...decades.