[Geraldius]

I was seeing a lot of the noise described here when I first started viewing HDR on my Epson 5040 projector. Then I completely turned off "image enhancement" and the noise disappeared. I suspect that the image enhancement/edge detection algorithms don't know what to do with the additional color information and incorrectly process it. Don't need image enhancement anyway for 4K content.


You all should check your display device settings to see if there is some kind of image enhancement setting that can be disabled. Usually the default is 'on' at some medium level.

 

[Quebecker]

I was seeing a lot of the noise described here when I first started viewing HDR on my Epson 5040 projector. Then I completely turned off "image enhancement" and the noise disappeared. I suspect that the image enhancement/edge detection algorithms don't know what to do with the additional color information and incorrectly process it. Don't need image enhancement anyway for 4K content.


You all should check your display device settings to see if there is some kind of image enhancement setting that can be disabled. Usually the default is 'on' at some medium level.

The Marvell shows are so bad that even this tweak won't help.

But that's a good tips for other stuffs

 

[Geraldius]

The Marvell shows are so bad that even this tweak won't help.

But that's a good tips for other stuffs

Actually it was Marvell's Iron Fist that got me to hunt down a fix. The noise was so bad it was unwatchable. Turned enhancement off and the noise completely vanished.

 

[DaveFi]

Actually it was Marvell's Iron Fist that got me to hunt down a fix. The noise was so bad it was unwatchable. Turned enhancement off and the noise completely vanished.

It's really bad in general. The Marvel shows have tons of added grain. I watched the first flick on my smaller 4k Samsung, decided it wasn't worth it- now I watch them on my 60" 1080p Sharp.

 

[Geraldius]

It's really bad in general. The Marvel shows have tons of added grain. I watched the first flick on my smaller 4k Samsung, decided it wasn't worth it- now I watch them on my 60" 1080p Sharp.

You are right that the Marvel shows are very grainy. Walking Dead is another. My point was that the HDR does not have to make it worse. It seems that image enhancements, especially sharpening and edge detection do make it worse, then when HDR is applied those enhancement artifacts end up becoming color exaggerated. By turning off all image enhancements on the display and just letting the signal play unmodified, I get a picture with equivalent graininess whether streaming from an XB1 at 1080P SDR for example, compared to streaming through the Sony UBP-X800 at 4K + HDR, with the benefit of 'slightly' better color from the HDR.

 

[Krista]

I own the LG OLED65C6P. When I watch Dolby Vision or HDR or Netflix/Amazon Video/ VUDU (in tv app) I get a lot of visual noise. The best way to describe if you take a picture in low light there is a lot of pixelation, or if you took a picture really high ISO using photography lingo. (see attached)

This doesn't happen with normal UltraHD 4k, normal 4k is beautiful. This doesn't happen with all Dolby Vision/HDR content.

Netflix:
Great: Chef's Table and Marco Polo come in great.
Crappy: Luke Cage, Santa Clarita Diet, Jessica Jones, The OA, and majority of the Dolby Visions.

Amazon Video:
Doesn't have the grain issue, but the back light in scenes is obnoxiously bright in comparison to the characters in the foreground.

Vudu:
Rented "Suicide Squad" lots of noise and wasn't up to par.


Network: getting 180mbps, I've even tried hard wiring ethernet.

TV age: bought 3 weeks ago.

I know what you mean. I was watching Iron Fist and the background had so many speckles and they almost seemed to flash, that it was driving me up the wall. At least the skin tones didn't look so bad, but it made me wonder if someone sensitive enough might get seizures! The grain was insane. (oled55e6p)

 

[Krista]

Actually it was Marvell's Iron Fist that got me to hunt down a fix. The noise was so bad it was unwatchable. Turned enhancement off and the noise completely vanished.

What TV do you have? The grain is horrible on my oled55e6p. I'll double check settings.

 

[Geraldius]

It's an Epson 5040UBE projector on a 135" screen. Believe me, if there's grain I'll see it.


Since posting that I finally started being able to stream full bitrate UHD from Netflix. Now the grain in Iron Fist is even less apparent. Artificial grain plays hell with upscalers. Was only getting 1080p/HDR before. Now getting true 4K/HDR stream.

 

[fcwdev]

What TV do you have? The grain is horrible on my oled55e6p. I'll double check settings.

Just got Star Trek Beyond (4K DV) on Vudu on a oled65e6p. Watching in dolby vision, I found the grain unacceptable. Turned off dolby vision and the picture looked great ... For the HDR/DV version, I tried to turn off all related settings and could still see the grain (sharpness at 0, edge enhancements off, ..) ... I'm migrating back to physical media to see if that's any better (w/ oppo 203). I have seen some good DV/4K content on Vudu (Arrival, American Sniper, Mad Max) , but this is a couple of movies in a row now with this grain mess and it seems like every movie I watch now requires experimentation first to get the best viewing experience.

 

[s2vjr]

Solution?

Read all the posts in this thread but don't see a solution. Is there one on the TV side or is it strictly in the hands of the content provider? This graininess is really pissing me off. Walking Dead is what made me search the issue but I too have noticed it on Iron Fist and Jessica Jones.

As I was typing this...I decreased "Sharpness" from 20 to 0. At first glance the picture looks significantly better with graininess gone. Need to watch more however, not 100% sure.

65" Samsung KDS8500

 

[Caesarea]

I've got the same issue with the original 4K HDR Bluray disc of "Batman versus Superman".

Proudly, I demonstrated the beautiful picture of the professionally calibrated LG OLED65E6V to my friends and family. But this was for a short time when I started the movie Batman versus Superman. First, I thought the screen was defect, but testing other material I didn't see the grainy picture.





Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-N910C met Tapatalk

 

[jamiethechapman]

Yeah, this is becoming a thing that's really common, and I agree that it tends to happen more with Dolby Vision movies (though that could be purely coincidental). Since getting an Apple TV 4K and watching a lot of 4K HDR/DV content, it can be really hit and miss. I watched IT last night, and it was quite noisy. Interstellar as well is a SUPER noisy/grainy film, but the transfer is getting stellar reviews so I assume it's on purpose?

Then I'll watch Ghost in the Shell, another 4K/DV film on iTunes, and it's 100% stunning, couldn't look better.

Has anyone watched Blade Runner 2049 on iTunes 4K/DV? I want to pick it up, but I can't find impressions on the transfer quality.

 

[adsl-ryoga]

Hello,

I own a Sony A1 OLED alongside an Oppo 203 Ultra Bluray Player.

Recently I tested Ultra HD Blurays in HDR such as the Harry Potter or the old Spiderman movies. A lot of scenes were showing extreme noise and I was thinking that the 4K upscale of an old movie was the culprit for this.

But I started to test some settings on my Oppo and when I turned off HDR or set it to "Strip Metadata", the picture became much cleaner ... the noise was still visible to a certain extend, but not nearly as aggressive as before. The overall brightness is not lower since I kept [X-Tended Dynamic Range] enabled which gives an HDR-like look but without the noise that is appearing when HDR is actually enabled.

I also watched some newer movies as well for comparison, for example Prometheus. The movie already has a quite clean look with only a tiny amount of noise but again in certain scenes of the movie, the already faint noise is completely gone when I turn off HDR or strip the metadata via the Oppo's settings.

Can anyone attest to that or perhaps even explain why that is?

EDIT:

As of now, it is hard to tell which component is actually causing this behavior so I have made a list and gathered some thoughts for troubleshooting:

Factors I assume relevant for the noise in HDR content:

1. AV Receiver Denon AVD 4300
2. HDMI Cable
3. Ultra Bluray Player Oppo 203
4. Sony A1 OLED TV settings (for Example X-tended Dynamic Range)
5. Sony A1 OLED TV itself
6. HDR issue

And here are my thoughts on narrowing down the issue for each factor and possibly troubleshoot:

1. Bypass AV Receiver by connecting the player directly to TV and test a 4K HDR scene that has a lot of noise
TESTED: connected the Oppo 203 directly to the TV but it did not change the outcome, when displaying HDR content the noise was visible when HDR was active and was reduced when stripping the metadata
2. Use a different HDMI cable to connect the BD player to the TV and test a 4K HDR scene that has a lot of noise
TESTED: also when the Oppo was directly connected to the TV with a different HDMI Cable (on a different HDMI Port) the outcome was still the same: lots of noise when HDR active, reduced when stripping metadata
3. Connect the PC directly to the TV and test a 4K HDR scene that has a lot of noise
TESTED: tested the same content via a PC and PowerDVD 17 Ultra. Also, when the same same HDR content was displayed, the outcome was still the same: when HDR was active, the noise was very pronounced. Unfortunately I wasn't able to strip the metadata so I deactivated the HDR on the TV itself... I doubt this has the same effect so I won't even go there.
4. Test a 4k HDR scene with a lot of noise and change the TVs settings for X-Tendeded Dynamic Range and Contrast
TESTED: When changing the settings of the TV like X-Tendeded Dynamic Range and Contrast, there is no change in terms of noise. The picture will get brighter or darker, but only stripping the metadata will really make a difference for HDR content. Interestingly, Noise reduction will not reduce the HDR noise.
5. Test HDR on a different TV (LG OLED) - see if it also makes a difference when HDR is activated or deactivated
TESTED: Thanks to Nobbygon who owns an LG HDR OLED TV and also an Oppo 203, he was testing HDR movies with HDR set to On and to Strip Metadata and was able to compare the settings. He confirmed that HDR while on will look very noisy/grainy and when stripping metadata, the noise is reduced (about 50%).
6. search the internet for clues, if HDR itself can cause this behavior:

http://vcl.itn.liu.se/publications/2015/EMU15/SGA15_paper.pdf​

http://www.itn.liu.se/mit/research/...ssing/real-time-noise-aware-tone-mapping?l=en​

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnar...ings-you-people-wouldnt-believe/#1978af9717c2​

As soon as I get to test and verify my above described findings, I will update my post

Best
Gregor

 

[Nobbygon]

I'm experiencing the same issues with picture noise as well.

I'm running an Oppo UDP-203 to an Anthem AVM60 processor then LG OLED55C7T. I first encountered UHD bluray noise when I upgraded my TV to the current LG model. At the time, I was passing the 4K signal through a Marantz SR6008 which I though might have been the culprit as it wasn't HDR certified. I discovered the same thing as adsl-ryoga in the post above; going direct from the Oppo to the TV made no difference compared to passing through the Marantz receiver.

I purchased the Anthem processor as part of a system upgrade and also changed out all the HDMI cables to ensure they were certified at 18Gbps and HDR capable. There was no change in the amount of grain/noise in the picture which was very surprising.

I'm going to try the "strip the metadata" approach as mentioned above and see if that helps.

It is worth mentioning that I have watched some UHD Blu-rays such as Passengers that exhibit no image noise what so ever. This leads me to believe that the noise is 'disk based'. The worst one I've seen so far is the 4K version of Blade Runner (original). The noise in that is horrific.

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

Cheers,
Angus.

 

[adsl-ryoga]

It is worth mentioning that I have watched some UHD Blu-rays such as Passengers that exhibit no image noise what so ever. This leads me to believe that the noise is 'disk based'. The worst one I've seen so far is the 4K version of Blade Runner (original). The noise in that is horrific.

Yeah it is my assumption that HDR is only exaggerating already existing noise. So older movies that already show a certain amount of noise or grain will look even more noisy / grainy when HDR is active. But if the source is already very clean to begin with then HDR won't have a huge impact. For example, Prometheus already looks very clean and only shows just a little bit of noise when HDR is active - this little noise is completely gone when I strip the metadata via my Oppo.

I believe that the UHD Disc contains the original movie as a 4K Upscale / 4K intermediate. This file is probably remastered and reworked to the best possible quality that can be achieved at the time of release and has the same or even better quality than the normal Bluray counterpart. So in terms of noise, the UHD file and the normal Bluray version are not much different. But then there is also the HDR metadata on the UHD Disc which will change the output in terms of brightness and contrast. I believe that this process of changing brightness and contrast via HDR metadata is causing the exaggerated noise based on the Oppo 203's function to show HDR or to strip the metadata. With HDR, one can see extreme noise in for example Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in certain scenes - but when the metadata is tripped, only the pure movie file will be played back and noise will look less aggressive.

I did not get to do my full testing yet unfortunately due to time constraints - but since you have a different TV (LG OLED) and you also have an Oppo 203 that has the ability to show UHD Blurays either with HDR or stripped metadata: could you do a comparison between HDR active and stripped metadata and see if it has the same effect on your TV?

Thanks and best Gregor

 

[Nobbygon]

I did not get to do my full testing yet unfortunately due to time constraints - but since you have a different TV (LG OLED) and you also have an Oppo 203 that has the ability to show UHD Blurays either with HDR or stripped metadata: could you do a comparison between HDR active and stripped metadata and see if it has the same effect on your TV?

Hi,

I've just tried the 'strip metadata' setting on the Oppos HDR picture setting page and I'm left with more questions than answers. Firstly, selecting 'strip metadata' does clean up the noise in the picture by, IMO, around 50%. It also stops the letterbox above and below the movie scene from flashing a dim white in the opening scene of Blade Runner, when the smoke stacks are erupting with fire. When I strip the metadata the letterbox is a pure black, like it is supposed to be.

I did discover that the 'strip metadata' setting forces my TV (LG OLED55C7T) to switch back to SDR mode and I can't find a way to get it back into HDR as it automatically detects the HDR signal and adapts. Stripping the metadata does make the picture look more SDR as the detail in darker scenes is lost compared to when HDR is on.

I'm a little lost now as I've tried every picture setting on the TV and Oppo-203. At this stage it's settle for a noisy HDR image or a less speckled SDR image. Not particularly ideal when you spend almost a 75% premium to get a UHD Blu-ray over a standard one.

 

[adsl-ryoga]

I've just tried the 'strip metadata' setting on the Oppos HDR picture setting page and I'm left with more questions than answers. Firstly, selecting 'strip metadata' does clean up the noise in the picture by, IMO, around 50%. It also stops the letterbox above and below the movie scene from flashing a dim white in the opening scene of Blade Runner, when the smoke stacks are erupting with fire. When I strip the metadata the letterbox is a pure black, like it is supposed to be.

I did discover that the 'strip metadata' setting forces my TV (LG OLED55C7T) to switch back to SDR mode and I can't find a way to get it back into HDR as it automatically detects the HDR signal and adapts. Stripping the metadata does make the picture look more SDR as the detail in darker scenes is lost compared to when HDR is on.

I'm a little lost now as I've tried every picture setting on the TV and Oppo-203. At this stage it's settle for a noisy HDR image or a less speckled SDR image. Not particularly ideal when you spend almost a 75% premium to get a UHD Blu-ray over a standard one.

Thanks for Testing!

When stripping metadata, the signal is supposed to be recognized as SDR. An HDR signal consists of the SDR movie + HDR metadata ... when the metadata is stripped, then only the SDR signal is sent to the TV and correctly recognized as SDR.

On my Sony, the effect of stripping the metadata is not as severe as on your TV perhaps since it can create its own dynamic metadata with its "Extended Dynamic Range" Feature... this will not transform the SDR movie into an HDR signal, but it will at least have an HDR-like look. I was under the impression that the LG OLED55C7T had a similar feature, but I'm not a 100% sure on this.

I did not see a loss in shadow detail when stripping metadata but will test this myself as well now. Do you have an example scene?

Yeah I think HDR is a mixed bag. I think its a feature that looks very good on already pristine sources, but it's not so ideal for noisy / grainy content.

So for my own conclusion, I would rather watch older or highly noisy / grainy movies on regular SDR Blurays or if I happen to own a 4K HDR Disk of these movies set my Oppo 203 to strip the metadata and at least benefit of the higher resolution and the wide color gamut. I don't think those older movies were meant to be pushed past their limits ... I think HDR is very demanding on the source material and, just like with photos, when pushing shadow and highlight details to the max, the end result can vary in quality and must not always be ideal.

I think HDR is a game changer for the more modern movies such as John Wick, Guardians of the Galaxy, Lucy and so forth... those movies will really benefit from HDR and will look the best way possible to this date.

 

[StayingSalty]

This might help, grain may appear a noise

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=14333476&postcount=618

Calibration definitely plays a part, the HDR EOTF seems to be very unforgiving to grain if your luminance curve isn't getting the mid-tones correct - that is, the part of the image which lives between the shadows and the highlights (hence the name). My prior calibrations had the lower part of the curve correct but after about 50% brightness it started to lose a fair bit of luminance until it reached the upper peaks of the highlights, I thoughtI had tons of brightness to spare on the "light cannon" that is the ZD9 so I reckoned I could get away with it. For a while, it was good. Old curveunder the spoiler.

Spoiler

Basically the mid-tones were too dark while the highlights were happily blasting away as they would normally be and I think it meant that there was too big of a difference as to how the grain looked in those respective parts of the image, if that makes sense, allowing through less of the "velvety" organic structure of the grain and more of the out right digitally compressed part of it which lives in the highlights. Plenty of newer films looked amazing but I'd put in something like Crouching Tiger and would be knocked sideways by the grain, not "dancing ants" bad but so intensely "digital" looking that it put me right off.

But with my latest recal (covered here: http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=14305881#post14305881) I dipped the gamma and contrast compared to my prior settings and now get a curve that's still holding firm in the lower areas of luminance but which is now much 'fuller' in the mids whilst toning down the extremes of the absolute peak of the signal, now measuring 1750 nits at its brightest rather than 1900. Freshly calibrated curve under the spoiler.

Spoiler

In a nutshell, I think by making sure that the upper mid-tones are properly illuminated it stops the brightest, 'fizziest' part of the grain in the peaks from dominating the softer, more "velvety" grain in the mids, and the two combine beautifully now. That's not to say grain is gone, it's still plentiful in movies like Crouching Tigger and plenty variable from scene to scene, it just doesn't look as electronically false as it did before.

 

[adsl-ryoga]

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=14333476&postcount=618

Very interesting, thank you! I plan to have a professional calibration performed and will check if it makes a difference in regards of noise in HDR sources.

 

[StayingSalty]

Another helpful link

Why does an older movie occasionally look grainy?