How to Disable Tonemapping?

[doritokllr]

Hello! New user here.

I've just installed and configured Jellyfin 10.10.6 on my TrueNAS Scale server and things are working well, however I can't seem to disable HDR tonemapping. It's killing my transcodes here while other software that does a similar job works very well with tonemapping disabled. I've tried going into the admin dashboard > Playback > Transcoding and setting the "Tonemapping algo to use" to "none" but it is very clear that it is still doing it. I can do A/B testing and while disabled in other software it is all washed out on the computer I'm testing from as it should be but on Jellyfin it is absolutely still doing the mapping. I have changed settings and then restarted Jellyfin, restarted the docker container, and though it should make no difference restarted the server as well.

Am I missing a very obvious check box somewhere?

There will shortly be a video card in the system that will be doing the heavy lifting here but I do need to know where or how to disable this for the time being.

As an example the screenshot shows Jellyfin on the left and another similar software on the right.

I've gone into the configuration files to see what is there and it also seems to indicate that it is disabled in all aspects but it is not actually off.

  <EnableTonemapping>false</EnableTonemapping>
  <EnableVppTonemapping>false</EnableVppTonemapping>
  <EnableVideoToolboxTonemapping>false</EnableVideoToolboxTonemapping>
  <TonemappingAlgorithm>none</TonemappingAlgorithm>
  <TonemappingMode>auto</TonemappingMode>
  <TonemappingRange>auto</TonemappingRange>
  <TonemappingDesat>0</TonemappingDesat>
  <TonemappingPeak>100</TonemappingPeak>
  <TonemappingParam>0</TonemappingParam>
  <VppTonemappingBrightness>16</VppTonemappingBrightness>
  <VppTonemappingContrast>1</VppTonemappingContrast>

Thanks for any help!

[TheDreadPirate]

If the clients needs the video transcoded for any reason, including just to burn in subtitles, it will always convert to SDR. Tone mapping makes the conversion to SDR look good.

What kind of HDR is it? And what is the client device? And are you using subtitles?

[doritokllr]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm using several different video files all in 4K. Some are dolby vision some HDR10. I'm testing playback to a web browser at the moment and it does need transcoding for that but it is not burning in subtitles on any of the files I've been trying to test with.

I'd like to ensure proper playback across a firestick that does not support HDR, a Roku Ultra 4k that does, and web browsers as well a iOS devices. From what you've said there it looks like if I have an HDR video of any kind and it is going to play on any device that does not support HDR content then it's going to tone map it regardless of whether I want it to or not? I'm ok with washed out colours in some content so long as the playback is ok while transcoding but if it needs to transcode it with tone mapping then my server can only produce about 11fps and I cannot actually watch the files. A video card is forthcoming but not available yet.

Is my interpretation of what you are saying accurate? I've allocated 16 cores and 16 gigs of ram to Jellyfin and it is still far too heavy with tonemapping to play the files I have.

[TheDreadPirate]

AFAIK, HEVC is only supported in browsers on Windows. And only if you've installed the HEVC system decoder via the Microsoft Store. So expect HEVC to be transcoded in browsers. In which case you will need to enable tone mapping.

What you stated is correct. Until you get your dedicated GPU, you will just need to uncheck the tone mapping check box in the dashboard.

[doritokllr]

Thanks again, however there is no tone mapping checkbox in the dashboard that I can find. Am I missing something obvious?

[TheDreadPirate]

Since you don't have hardware acceleration enabled, the check boxes don't appear.

What are the specs of the server? If you have a relatively recent Intel CPU, you don't NEED to buy a dedicated GPU.