WOW! Did I lose a lot of colour! (Trying to convert from HEVC HDR to a BD)

[Lathe]

Man, apparently I have a LOT to learn!

Okay, I took a very good looking HEVC HDR encoded MKV file of about 6 gigs and I wanted to convert it to a regular (1080) playable Blu-ray. I used BDRB which does the conversion, but WOW it looks totally different. When I play the original HEVC file with VLC, the colours are super deep and vibrant, it looks great! But... after converting it, it now looks all washed out and horrible! What the hell did I do? I'm GUESSING it has something to do with the HDR which I believe has to do with how the colours are processed. But man, what a HUGE difference! Is there any way to convert these kinds of lovely looking HEVC HDR files into a playable x264 Blu-ray format and be able to keep all that colour? Otherwise, there just is no point it looks so awful.

And, I can't just settle with playing them with the VLC player, because although I do have a fairly strong up to date computer, video card, memory, and my OS on an SSD, AND I've done a bunch or research online, it does not play smoothly. I did change some of the settings on the VLC player like disabling the hardware acceleration which did help. And I did the setting the FFMPEG threads and the x264 threads to '3' thing, and increased to a huge cach size AND tried changing the output video modules, but although better it still doesn't play right. Therefore my strong desire to convert it to a playable format for my old OPPO player like Blu-ray. BUT... only if I can keep all those beautiful colours! Is there a 'simple' way to do that, or should I only try to convert NON-HDR encoded HEVC files if I wish to do that?

Really appreciate any input or suggestions, thanks!

[Anakin]

I ran into this issue. You need to use BT709 colour space.

[Lathe]

I ran into this issue. You need to use BT709 colour space.

Thanks! I'm now reading about converting using Handbrake and I've come across several comments about using the BT709 colour space. But... I don't know how to use it My first reading about Handbrake LOOKED like it did it automatically even converting from UHD HDR to 1080 Blu-ray, but some seem to say there is a colourspace setting somewhere.

Is there a setting in BDRB that does that conversion? That is what I used in converting it like I said above, but the resulting colours were not right. Is there either a CMD line for x264 which I am familiar with, or some simplified GUI I can use to do this, or can I just try Handbrake and will I need to see some kind of colourspace setting? Thank you!

[davexnet]

I ran into this issue. You need to use BT709 colour space.

or can I just try Handbrake and will I need to see some kind of colourspace setting? Thank you!

It's on the Filters Tab, bottom left

[Lathe]

I ran into this issue. You need to use BT709 colour space.

or can I just try Handbrake and will I need to see some kind of colourspace setting? Thank you!

It's on the Filters Tab, bottom left

Yessir! I did find it I did a preview, and let me tell you, it looked a HELL of a lot better than my encode did through BDRB! This is slightly along the same lines, but what I would LIKE to do when I use Handbrake to do this, I can't seem to see a way to set a predetermined output size. The reason being is that say I'm taking a 6 Gig MKV file and I have an HD audio track. So, to be able to play it on my old OPPO player, I would LIKE to be able to set the encoding so that it fills almost the whole Blu-ray to preserve as much quality as possible. I would leave room of course for the MKV to BDMV folder overhead and for remuxing in the HD audio track. But, other than just setting the 'Quality' (say CRF=16) and setting the preset to Fast, etc., or giving a specific bitrate, I don't see where I can set it simply to output say a 16 Gig MKV file. Is there a way to do that with Handbrake? If so, I believe I'm set!

[davexnet]

If you want to do that, switch to Vidcoder (it's almost the same as Handbrake) -
IT has "target size" on the video encoding tab

[Lathe]

If you want to do that, switch to Vidcoder (it's almost the same as Handbrake) -
IT has "target size" on the video encoding tab

Good to know, thanks mate!

[sophisticles]

@OP:

You need to tone map the HDR to SDR in order for it to look right.

[Lathe]

@OP:

You need to tone map the HDR to SDR in order for it to look right.

Thank you!