Tip!: HDR to SDR tone mapping support is currently available as a Plex Pass preview and requires an active Plex Pass subscription for the main Plex Media Server account.
This feature allows Plex Media Server to maintain high visual fidelity of content, by applying tone mapping to convert HDR (high dynamic range) color content to SDR (standard dynamic range) colors. This allows you to view the content on an SDR display without the colors being “washed out”, for instance.
Requirements
This feature requires Plex Media Server v1.21.0 or newer in general. Some specific platform and hardware combinations may require newer versions of Plex Media Server, as noted below. The following platform support is currently available:
| Platform | Software (CPU) | Hardware (Intel) | Hardware (NVIDIA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | • | • 6 | • 5 |
| macOS | • | N/A | |
| Linux | • | • 1, 2 | • 1, 3 |
| FreeBSD | • | ||
| Docker | • | • 1, 2 | • 1, 3 |
| NAS | • | • 1, 2 | • 1, 4 |
| NVIDIA SHIELD | • | N/A |
Notes on requirements for the above:
- 1 Requires Plex Media Server v1.29.2 or newer.
- 2 Requires an Intel “Kaby Lake” or newer processor.
- 3 Requires NVIDIA GPU driver 470.141.03 or higher.
- 4 Requires NVIDIA GPU driver provided by the NAS vendor.
- 5 Only valid for the 64-bit release of Plex Media Server, v1.29.2 or newer. It does not work in the 32-bit release.
- 6 For Intel Tigerlake or newer. Options will be available for saturation, contrast, and brightness. See below for more info.
- If using Plex Media Server on Unraid with Docker and you wish to use NVIDIA hardware transcoding and tone mapping, you will need to be running Unraid OS version 6.9.0 beta 35 or newer, and have the NVIDIA GPU configured for your Plex Docker container.
- Plex Media Servers using Intel Coffee Lake or newer processors on Ubuntu require version 20.04 or later.
Tip!: Hardware-accelerated streaming is a premium feature and requires an active Plex Pass subscription.
This feature supports all video produced in HDR10, or in other formats that are backwards-compatible with HDR10 (including HDR10+ and DoVi content).
It’s worth noting that most HDR content will be in 4K resolution. If your platform has to use software transcoding to perform the tone mapping, then it may well struggle convert 4K content in real-time, unless you’re running on a very powerful system.
Related Page: Using Hardware-Accelerated Streaming
Limitations
Transcodes that involve burnt-in subtitles may require more CPU resources, which could reduce performance.
Tone Mapping Algorithm
Most operating systems running Plex Media Server have the ability to select which tone mapping algorithm is used (except on windows intel) to convert from HDR to SDR. The option can be found in the transcoder settings of the Plex Media Server version 1.41.0 or newer.
- linear: Stretch the entire reference gamut to a linear multiple of the display.
- gamma: Fit a logarithmic transfer between the tone curves.
- clip: Hard-clip any out-of-range values. Use it for perfect color accuracy for in-range values, while distorting out-of-range values.
- reinhard: Preserve overall image brightness with a simple curve, using nonlinear contrast, which results in flattening details and degrading color accuracy.
- hable: Preserve both dark and bright details better than reinhard, at the cost of slightly darkening everything. Use it when detail preservation is more important than color and brightness accuracy.
- mobius: Smoothly map out-of-range values, while retaining contrast and colors for in-range material as much as possible. Use it when color accuracy is more important than detail preservation.
Additional Tone Mapping options for Windows with Intel Tigerlake or newer
For Intel devices Tiger Lake and newer tone mapping will be preformed on HW, however the result can end up dark. There are new preferences to tweak Saturation, Contrast, and Brightness.
All of these have to be true for these options to be available
- Use hardware acceleration when available enabled
- Enable HDR Tone Mapping enabled
- Server has Intel Tigerlake or newer selected as the Transcoding Device
- Plex Media Server 1.41.0 or newer
Investigating Issues with Tone Mapping
First, keep in mind that real-time tone mapping will not be as good as professionally produced and color graded content. Still, you can expect that Plex’s tone mapping support should generally be able to produce good color mapping and help avoid the “washed out” colors that occur when converting HDR content without tone mapping.
Note that tone mapping will not work if you have Disable video stream transcoding enabled since the transcoder does the tone mapping of the video
If you do run into what you think is a legitimate issue with the tone mapping functionality, please help us investigate this. To do so:
- Post specific details in the appropriate Plex Media Server forum
- In the forum topic, attach full server logs of a single problematic playback attempt
- In the topic, also link to a small sample file that can be used to reproduce the issue
Related Page: Reporting issues with Plex Media Server
Related Page: Generating Sample Files from Media
If you encounter issues and need to temporarily disable the tone mapping, you can do so using the Enable HDR tone mapping preference in the transcoder settings page for your Plex Media Server. You can find it under Settings > Server > Transcoder in the Plex Web App.
Related Page: Transcoder