HDR content on Youtube - Chrome vs Safari

[Simer Sahni]

I just got new M1 Max MacBook and also using MacOs Monterey for the first time.

First thing I wanted to check was HDR content and fired up the Bulgaria 8K HDR. The colours on Chrome were totally washed out but safari is showing HDR content amazingly well and display is also treating it as HDR by increasing brightness.

Does any one know if this is issue in chrome and if it needs to be updated or if anything I am doing wrong.

Chrome

Safari (had to take pic as screenshot was not showing HDR)

 

[Southernboyj]

I just got new M1 Max MacBook and also using MacOs Monterey for the first time.

First thing I wanted to check was HDR content and fired up the Bulgaria 8K HDR. The colours on Chrome were totally washed out but safari is showing HDR content amazingly well and display is also treating it as HDR by increasing brightness.

Does any one know if this is issue in chrome and if it needs to be updated or if anything I am doing wrong.

Chrome

View attachment 1880227

Safari (had to take pic as screenshot was not showing HDR)

View attachment 1880230

Looks perfect in Edge which is Chromium based. Weird.

 

[Chancha]

I find Chrome playing HDR videos fine, on an external monitor via DP1.4 cable, but on the internal 14" screen it is blindingly bright, not sure if it is clipping or simply the 1600 peak nits kicking in.

On a related note, is Safari still incapable of showing the absolute max spec of certain YouTube uploads? For instance, some 8k 60p HDR videos can be watched via Chrome but on Safari it caps at 4k60, on my 14" base, regardless if it is AV1 or VP9.

 

[jasoncarle]

That video looks amazing on my LG Ultrafine 4k screen and M1 Mini.

 

[Simer Sahni]

I find Chrome playing HDR videos fine, on an external monitor via DP1.4 cable, but on the internal 14" screen it is blindingly bright, not sure if it is clipping or simply the 1600 peak nits kicking in.

On a related note, is Safari still incapable of showing the absolute max spec of certain YouTube uploads? For instance, some 8k 60p HDR videos can be watched via Chrome but on Safari it caps at 4k60, on my 14" base, regardless if it is AV1 or VP9.

I think so. Never seen 8K on safari yet. I am switching to Safari till this thing is fixed in chrome. I don't even know when was the last time I used safari other than Netflix.

 

[x302]

I think so. Never seen 8K on safari yet. I am switching to Safari till this thing is fixed in chrome. I don't even know when was the last time I used safari other than Netflix.

Try this video -

shows options for 8K on MBP 14" and 27" 2019 iMac
For some reason viewing in Safari at 8K on 14" MBP it shutters, but no issues on the iMac.

 

[Paul Anderegg]

Go into display settings and select HDR 2084 instead of XDR. This will LOCK your display into HDR mode with fixed brightness, SDR tone mapped to reference level (200 nit peak white?) and all HDR content following the HDR10 luminance curve. Then watch this video I shot...graded to 1000 nit. The flames were blown out in camwera due to their brighness, so your display bis not clipping.

 

[Chancha]

I think so. Never seen 8K on safari yet. I am switching to Safari till this thing is fixed in chrome. I don't even know when was the last time I used safari other than Netflix.

I kind of need to use Safari as I am too used to its UI and also rely on iCloud tabs among my other Apple devices.

That said I still keep Chrome around, exclusively for YT watching and sometimes Google web apps. Also Chrome with uBlock Origin seems to do a much better job at YT ad blocking than anything on Safari.

I really hope Safari can improve to a point where I don't need to launch Chrome at all. Battery life really suffers when I have both opened.

 

[Simer Sahni]

Try this video -

shows options for 8K on MBP 14" and 27" 2019 iMac
For some reason viewing in Safari at 8K on 14" MBP it shutters, but no issues on the iMac.

Amazing. 8k working fine on my M1 Max Mac in Safari with minimal lag.

 

[Simer Sahni]

I kind of need to use Safari as I am too used to its UI and also rely on iCloud tabs among my other Apple devices.

That said I still keep Chrome around, exclusively for YT watching and sometimes Google web apps. Also Chrome with uBlock Origin seems to do a much better job at YT ad blocking than anything on Safari.

I really hope Safari can improve to a point where I don't need to launch Chrome at all. Battery life really suffers when I have both opened.

I think Safari is fine now for youtube now from what I am seeing. First thing I tried to see whether Safari has speed dial or not. It's very important for me as I have all my sites just a click away but couldn't find anything.

 

[altaic]

For instance, some 8k 60p HDR videos can be watched via Chrome but on Safari it caps at 4k60, on my 14" base, regardless if it is AV1 or VP9.

Try this video - shows options for 8K on MBP 14"…

I’m curious, what do you all expect from an 8k60 stream vs 4k60 on your built in 14” <4k display? Is there an extreme pixel peeping sport that I’ve never heard of?

 

[white7561]

I just got new M1 Max MacBook and also using MacOs Monterey for the first time.

First thing I wanted to check was HDR content and fired up the Bulgaria 8K HDR. The colours on Chrome were totally washed out but safari is showing HDR content amazingly well and display is also treating it as HDR by increasing brightness.

Does any one know if this is issue in chrome and if it needs to be updated or if anything I am doing wrong.

Chrome

View attachment 1880227

Safari (had to take pic as screenshot was not showing HDR)

View attachment 1880230

Isn't it working fine in older MacBooks? I think you should try to report this to Google Chrome. Hopefully they will fix it ASAP haven't had mine yet so I can't check

 

[matrix07]

First thing I tried to see whether Safari has speed dial or not. It's very important for me as I have all my sites just a click away but couldn't find anything.

Are you talking about Favorites sites in Safari?

 

[Simer Sahni]

Are you talking about Favorites sites in Safari?

I thought favourites would work but when I imported my bookmarks from chrome everything went into favourites. I want to separate favourites from bookmarks. I will try that today and it will be great if it works.

 

[Chancha]

I thought favourites would work but when I imported my bookmarks from chrome everything went into favourites. I want to separate favourites from bookmarks. I will try that today and it will be great if it works.

Favs is just a special folder in the root of the bookmarks directory. Just move your speed dial back into the Favs top.
That said, if you want active on-going sync between Safari and other browsers, I am not sure how that will work.

 

[Chancha]

I’m curious, what do you all expect from an 8k60 stream vs 4k60 on your built in 14” <4k display? Is there an extreme pixel peeping sport that I’ve never heard of?

Well at home my MBP docks to a 4k60 HDR monitor, and at work I have access to OLED TV that accepts 4k120Hz.

But as far as this thread is concerned, we are more focused on benchmarking the CPU capabilities of the new M1 Pro / Max chips since they are supposedly faster than M1, and also have hardware decode acceleration. The question is to find out if these are readily assessable via 3rd party apps like Chrome or do they need special treatment to realize.

 

[altaic]

Well at home my MBP docks to a 4k60 HDR monitor, and at work I have access to OLED TV that accepts 4k120Hz.

But as far as this thread is concerned, we are more focused on benchmarking the CPU capabilities of the new M1 Pro / Max chips since they are supposedly faster than M1, and also have hardware decode acceleration. The question is to find out if these are readily assessable via 3rd party apps like Chrome or do they need special treatment to realize.

Ah, I see. I think that some special developer attention will be necessary to utilize the full potential of this architecture.

That said, perhaps some other useful data points would be revealed by enabling the developer menu in safari and switching the user agent around. YouTube is known to restrict certain browser user agents. Maybe fake the user agent in chrome or Firefox as well ?‍♂️

Seems like an interesting investigation.

 

[vigyan]

YouTube HDR works great on Mac mini with as well in Mac OS 12 but strangely it logs out once as I enable HDR in display settings. once log in second time everything works.

 

[altaic]

YouTube HDR works great on Mac mini with as well in Mac OS 12 but strangely it logs out once as I enable HDR in display settings. once log in second time everything works.

Cognitive dissonance is alive and well in google.

 

[Jofernandez]

YouTube in HDR don’t work for me in safari, I really tried everything in the internet. But for some reason don’t work until I change user profile in the development option. Maybe should I reinstall Mac OS Monterey again?

 

[white7561]

It was working fine. It's disabled now for apple devices. For safari chrome etc. It's YouTube. It's probably because of the Monterey bug which sometimes crash the system on the new MBPs when you're watching HDR content on YouTube

 

[Jofernandez]

Damm, hope they fix it soon, but because apple is apple probably in 2023, Netflix HDR works well. What about Disney plus HDR? Does it work? Cause I don't see that pop like in Netflix.

 

[white7561]

Damm, hope they fix it soon, but because apple is apple probably in 2023, Netflix HDR works well. What about Disney plus HDR? Does it work? Cause I don't see that pop like in Netflix.

That idk . But for YouTube it's prob because of the HDR crash bug which is prob gonna be fixed on 12.1 stable

 

[city_17]

Did you ever find a solution for this? I'm having the same problem, but on both browsers it's blown out if I compared to your second picture.

I do notice that if I lower the brightness, the blown out effect gets bigger, but even on max brightness I still have a bit of blow out compared to your second image.

 

[Paul Anderegg]

Did you ever find a solution for this? I'm having the same problem, but on both browsers it's blown out if I compared to your second picture.

I do notice that if I lower the brightness, the blown out effect gets bigger, but even on max brightness I still have a bit of blow out compared to your second image.

Right click stats for nerds, check if the blown out video in question is HLG