Prefer HDR Mode in macOS 10.15.4 Beta  

I was testing out Usb-C to displayport 1.4 adapters a week ago, partly for a dongle to take in my work bag, but also to see how HDR behaved on an external display connected directly to the Radeon 5500M in my MBPro16.  In MacOS 10.15.3, behavior was the same as using the Radeon VII, always starts in SDR mode, occasionally randomly switches to HDR mode if I change the resolution or refresh rate. 

I was having problems with artifacting on my CRG9, so I borrowed a 2018 iPad Pro, and used the same adapter to see if the artifacting was caused by my mac or the adapter.  Had the same artifacting problems, but the display consistently initialized in HDR mode.  I went into the settings app and under display, there was an external display setting that let you specify turning HDR or not, so looks like this functionality is being ported to MacOS.  I probably won't be installing the beta just for this but looking forward to this feature in the release version.  Curious to see if the TV app in 10.15.4 can output iTunes movies/TV Shows in HDR now.

If anyone cares the adapter that had issues with the CRG9 was:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F17ZHJY/

I replaced it, had the same issues with the replacement, spoke to Cable Matters support who were friendly and had me send it back to them for testing.

I ended up buying this one which works perfectly:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZT12Q41/

@ningauble77,  That says a lot about Apple's priorities these days. I checked with the 2019 13-in MacBook Pro Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 iGPU and it has HDR support too with compatible monitors.

Am looking forward to this

What version of HDR is supported?

I updated to 10.15.4. Beta 3 [] today and the HDR option has a small revision in System Preferences.

@itsage, this looks really exciting!

Does the monitor recognises it and how does it look?

If we are lucky next week we have the final as typically there is no beta 4

@massimo_franzese, Yes it seems more polished. Output quality would depend on the panels themselves. My Samsung CHG90 looks washed out in HDR mode while the Acer Predator XB3 looks amazing. Not to ignore your earlier question about HDR version but I'm not sure how to check for that besides the manufacturer specs. 

If it shows as HDR it recognises HLG otherwise only HDR-10

@itsage, The HDR option is only available if the display is HDR? My HP Z31x is not HDR but has a magnificent IPS Pro panel, the same of the Eizo CG319x. It would surely profit from some increased dynamic range, but it has no HDR certification per se.

Posted by: @itsage

@massimo_franzese, Yes it seems more polished. Output quality would depend on the panels themselves. My Samsung CHG90 looks washed out in HDR mode while the Acer Predator XB3 looks amazing. Not to ignore your earlier question about HDR version but I'm not sure how to check for that besides the manufacturer specs. 

 

No experience yet with HDR support in MacOS, but my CRG9 has similar issues in Windows with HDR content.  Some games look great/normal (No Man's Sky, Forza Horizon 4), others look washed out (Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice).  Can't make Netflix work in HDR mode, but youtube HDR content looks great in windows.  People have been complaining about this to Samsung since the CRG9 first came out but no real answers have been forthcoming.  When I plugged an iPad Pro into it, everything was washed out.  

@ningauble77, there are two parts to it one is color gamut and the other is HDR, the washed out colour happen because of a mismatch between the screen and the game color gamut

@itsage,

Today they delivered beta 4 it seems so yet another beta 

Any changes from you guys?

Just installed 10.15.4 final.  HDR option is only available when I select 100hz refresh (which also enables 10-bit color).  Entire desktop goes dim and washed out, just like in Windows 10, and playing back movies in TV app looks washed out and dim too.  Not unexpected but a little disappointed.

@ningauble77, I have tried 3 different HDR monitors with 10.15.4 and only the Acer Predator XB3 produces good results with the box [High Dynamic Range] checked. The other ones are washed out and not something I could tolerate. 

A new observation in the final build of 10.15.4 is the Refresh Rate drop-down item. I have not seen this prior to now. By default it's set at native resolution and 59.88 Hz. I selected 165 Hz on this monitor and the Resulotion radio button switched to Scaled. HDR was still checked but I didn't like the output with it on.

I have the LG - 27UK600-W 27" IPS LED 4K UHD FreeSync Monitor and HDR works great with Windows games like Destiny 2 (back when I could use my eGPU with Windows). Never did get on a MacOS beta, so I installed the new 10.15.4. HDR looks really washed out and is always on. Turned it off and restarted. Still washed out. I have my Mac mini attached to a Core X with a Vega 64 and a display port cable from the Vega 64 to my LG monitor. 

HDR works fine it is important to let OSX manage the display any utility managing an ICC profile results in washed out picture

If your monitor has a new display profile you will see it when you click open

It is HDR-10 and works fine with final cut pro

No new profiles, just the same old ones with the name of my monitor.  

I have an Acer XV273K display (garbage HDR-400). HDR mode is set. Display is running DisplayPort 1.4, not dual cable 4K144Hz mode (which doesn't work in macOS and doesn't allow HDR). Contrast and brightness is greatly reduced in the Finder when High Dynamic Range is enabled in Displays preferences panel. Where's a good place to get test HDR content?

The Color tab in Displays preferences panel has like 20 profiles for every display I have connected - it seems like a new profile is created every time a display is connected... Is there a utility to compare profiles so I can delete duplicates?

Posted by: @joevt

I have an Acer XV273K display (garbage HDR-400). HDR mode is set. Display is running DisplayPort 1.4, not dual cable 4K144Hz mode (which doesn't work in macOS and doesn't allow HDR). Contrast and brightness is greatly reduced in the Finder when High Dynamic Range is enabled in Displays preferences panel. Where's a good place to get test HDR content?

The Color tab in Displays preferences panel has like 20 profiles for every display I have connected - it seems like a new profile is created every time a display is connected... Is there a utility to compare profiles so I can delete duplicates?

If you select show only supported there will be less then you can see the date of update and find the recent one

Probably they are in a folder and can be deleted but I would avoid

It is important to let mac os manage the display for HDR, also Netflix is supported on mac still have to check the Tv app

@joevt, I don't like how macOS keeps those display profiles either. It's understandable if it's a new monitors that has not connected to the system before. The issue is there are many duplicates. It seems every time I switch inputs there's a new profile for the same monitor!

@itsage, I made a script to delete duplicates (it ignores the first 128 bytes which is a header containing creation date). I still have multiple profiles for the same display - maybe a display has multiple inputs (DisplayPort, HDMI...) which get different profiles? Or maybe new macOS versions will have new tags?

[[ -d /tmp/profiles ]] || mkdir /tmp/profiles
IFS=$'\n'
for thefile in $(find /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays -name '*.icc'); do
	outfile="/tmp/profiles/$(basename $thefile)"
	dd if="$thefile" of="$outfile" bs=1 iseek=128 2> /dev/null
	echo $(md5 -q "$outfile") "$thefile"
	rm "$outfile"
done | sort > /tmp/profiles/profiles.txt
sort /tmp/profiles/profiles.txt -u -k1,1 > /tmp/profiles/uniqueprofiles.txt
grep -Fvx -f /tmp/profiles/uniqueprofiles.txt /tmp/profiles/profiles.txt > /tmp/profiles/duplicateprofiles.txt
sed -nE '/^[0-9a-f]{32} (.*)/s//sudo rm "\1" /p' /tmp/profiles/duplicateprofiles.txt > /tmp/profiles/cmds.sh
# Uncomment the following line to delete duplicates:
# source /tmp/profiles/cmds.sh

@joevt, Thank you for sharing this script to remove duplicated monitor profiles. On my Samsung CHG90 monitor for example, there are three preset buttons besides the four inputs. I observed changing either monitor inputs or presets would result in a new profile. I typically switch from eGPU monitor input to iGPU/dGPU input during macOS system updates once every few weeks. You can imagine it gets out of control rather quickly.

I removed prefer HDR option since my LG 27" HDR (I think 27UK600) looks like washed crap.

@itsage, does the color information in the EDID change for each preset? Download, make, and install edid-decode. Use the script at https://gist.github.com/joevt/32e5efffe3459958759fb702579b9529 . Follow the instructions. Execute loadagdc after each preset change, then when done, execute listedids, decodeall. List the resulting files with "ls -l". Compare the results of *_decode-edid.txt if there is more than one.