Screen capture + HDR = dim recordings

[jinxpad]

So I finally turned on HDR on my PG329Q because they apparently released a firmware update which fixed the auto dimming issues. I was actually pleasantly surprised, despite only being an HDR 600 rated monitor, it actually made a marked the visual quality of my games, at least to me anyway.

Now the only problem that I'm facing is that anytime I do any screen capture either via. AMD relive or even OBS, the videos are extremely dim. I was wondering if there is any setting that I need to change? Or will I just have to up the brightness in post?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Dim... As in washed out looking? Lacking in colour?

If so, I think that's (part) nature of the beast of HDR. If you're not capturing through something that can capture HDR as well, it does it in a funny way where the extra HDR details is "lost" (as it's supposed to be attached to a different part of the video stream), and only the pixels of the screen and movement is recorded. Hence the washed out look.

If it's screen shots, that should work normally though. Can you confirm it's just video steams suffering this issue?

 

[jinxpad]

Dim... As in washed out looking? Lacking in colour?

If so, I think that's (part) nature of the beast of HDR. If you're not capturing through something that can capture HDR as well, it does it in a funny way where the extra HDR details is "lost" (as it's supposed to be attached to a different part of the video stream), and only the pixels of the screen and movement is recorded. Hence the washed out look.

If it's screen shots, that should work normally though. Can you confirm it's just video steams suffering this issue?

Here's a quick capture:

Lost Ark - auto HDR

Recorded using AMD ReLive

youtu.be

Even on my SDR monitor the image of the video looks the same, very dim. Compared to captures made when HDR is off:

Lost Ark - Performance issues - 7900xtx + 5900X @ 1440p

Lost Ark performance seems well below what I would expect it to be.

youtu.be

 

[no_1_dave]

Even on my SDR monitor the image of the video looks the same, very dim. Compared to captures made when HDR is off:

That's because HDR is not SDR + extra colours.
HDR replaces the whole scene so to speak, so recording with something that does not support HDR will only display the colours that fell within SDR spec.

It will always look dim and washed out unless you record with something that fully supports HDR recording & playback.
Even then, playing back will look horrible on an SDR monitor unless you use MadVR codec or one similar which will tonemap HDR to SDR

 

[jinxpad]

Thankful for the very useful information. So I guess the non painless way would just be to stick with SDR mode with a calibrated profile for when I want to record gaming or anything like that.

 

[Grim5]

As above, to correctly capture HDR video you'll need software and hardware that supports both HDR video capture and encoding it into a file format that stores that data.

Alternatively, you'd need software that can do automatic HDR to SDR tone mapping while recording or you would use hardware to record in HDR and then conversion software to tonemap to SDR, I'm not sure if such exists, Windows by itself certainly does not do it so when you try to take screenshots in Windows while HDR is turned on it always comes out messed up.

Windows is not alone in these issues; game consoles which for years now have handled HDR much better than PCs have the same problem, I remember on my PS4 PRO I could not record video or take screenshots of games with HDR on because it would mess them up. I'm not sure if the PS5 managed to fix that with software or if they have the same limitation where video and screenshots are just capturing SDR colorspace data from the HDR source resulting in either a very dark image or a very bright blown out image

 

[jinxpad]

Yeah, I've never tried to record anything in HDR because my usual settings on windows with always based on a calibrated SDR colour profile.

It's so strange that this is an issue on the software side given the rise of good HDR monitors and the increase usage of TVs as PC monitors such as the LG panels and more recently with the OLED and it's variants in the actual monitor space. I guess if I plan on doing any recording I could just switch back to SDR for that particular content.

It's just a shame that I won't be able to properly capture the HDR content when I use stuff like instant replay Which is sometimes when you get the juiciest gameplay content because it's unexpected.