I’ve noticed on my new ATV 4K that videos played back via Infuse are somewhat darker than the same thing played back in an app that uses Apple’s native player like Plex or Emby. This is in both SDR and HDR modes. Shadow details especially are being lost.
Is there a black level or colorspace issue I need to figure out?
If you have any examples of this we’d be happy to look further into what’s going on here.
Samples can be uploaded here.
Hi James, thanks for the support but I think I’ve narrowed it down.
First of all, I’ve installed the latest update of Infuse and then did side by side comparisons leaving the video running in both Plex (native player) and Infuse and using the task switcher. What I was saying was lack of shadow detail and interpreting as black levels being off is not quite right. It seems to be a sharpening or upscaling issue.
I’m using a 1080p BD rip as the source and the ATK 4K is in 4K SDR mode.
Colors and black scale do seem correct. But Infuse is not as sharp as the native player and that is what was noticeable to me. Perhaps the native player uses a different upscaling algorithm? What does Infuse use for upscaling 1080pto 4K? Or does it not upscale at all and leaves it to the ATV or what exactly?
Thanks for the feedback.
We’re currently in the process of migrating from OpenGL to Metal (in order to add HDR support) and will look further into this once this has been completed. It’s possible this transition alone may clear up any differences you are seeing, but obviously we’ll do everything we can to get this addressed.
Thanks for the reply.
If it helps, on my old 1080p ATV 4 this was not an issue so I really do think it has to do with upscaling quality where the native players is doing really pretty good upscaling to 4K while Infuse is not yet.
This migrating to Metal is for HDR support only? What is with iOS version? This generally has an improvement for normal video files without HDR and video decoding or quality??
At this point we’re doing it out of necessity for HDR, but it could prove to have other side benefits. Long term, it’s probably a good idea anyway since Apple is putting much more effort into improving Metal compared to OpenGL.
This transition will be for both iOS and tvOS.
Metal 2 for the migration?
Most likely yes, though not all devices support Metal 2.
Which devices not supports this? I think all devices the not supports iOS 11?
This device use old OpenGL? Or this new Infuse version is for iOS 11 only? Dropped ios 10,9 support etc…?
We’ll have more info as we get further along with the migration. In essence, we plan to provide an excellent experience on all devices running iOS 9 or later.
I’ve tested this again with the latest release and there is still a noticeably better PQ with the native player in Plex direct streaming than in Infuse. I’ve done side by side comparisons of the same film/scene. It appears the native player is using a better upscaling/sharpening algorithm compared to Infuse.
Hey James ?
I have done a Test with a SD-Resolution Video:
Infuse vs ITunes Homesharing…
I must confirm iTunes really make a much scharper and not pixelated Upscaling compared to Infuse!
Infuse Upscaling is in comparison very blurred and pixelated…
Could you take a try?
Are you only seeing this with upscaling?
IE 480p video on a 1080p TV, or 1080p video on a 4K TV?
It’s 1080p video on a 4K Apple TV and LG 4K OLED.
Yes with Upscaling only! ?
In my case 576p to 1080p (AppleTV 4K)…
With native resolution files (1080p), everything looks good ??
Thanks. We’ll look into this.
Good work with the testing!
More and more people gets UHD TVs now. However, most of their content is 1080p or less, witch means there is a lot of upscaling going on. In other words, this is a highly critical fix.
Otherwise it would be better with some kind of passthrough option that would allow the TV or receiver to take care of the upscaling.
I do confirm Native Player is much punchy and brighter than Infuse player.
Is the reason for not using the native player that it would prevent support for some video and audio formats?