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Youtube no longer in HDR
- Thread starter Alicia1
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No it is not. I have been running Monterey since it first came out as beta and it was playing HDR fine up to now. Yes its attributed to how Google YouTube server farm runs browser identification you are connected to. Generally a site should not be set to offer different capabilities because of the browser identification.
But apparently something YouTube programers did changed/broke HDR playback with Safari.
Back when we first getting this to work with Big Sur, Google was having issues of it working then it wasn't.
Only viable theory for the change today is they disabled HDR for the Safari/MacOS user-agent is because of the crashing. We'll see if Monterey/Safari or YouTube is at fault, but my money's on Monterey/Safari given changing the user agent or using Chrome works fine.
It shows HDR in video quality but it’s not actually, just check the stats for nerds or compare it with an HDR device like the iPad Pro 12.9 2021.
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If you change user agent HDR on YouTube works on Safari.
Safari -> Preference -> Advanced ->Show Develop menu in menu bar ->Develop main menu -> chrome WORKS
Safari -> Preference -> Advanced ->Show Develop menu in menu bar ->Develop main menu -> chrome WORKS
I think even if HDR is shown in video quality selection we need to verify if it’s really displaying in HDR. It may still be SDR.
Just tried this again this morning. User Agent "Google Chrome - Windows" gives me HDR. Default is setting is SDR. It's strange how widely this behavior varies among users. But I have to be plugged in to power. Unplugged = SDR no matter what User Agent setting I use.
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It probably depends on if your laptop decodes VP9 in software or hardware. Try enabling the developer menu in Safari and enabling "VP9 SW decode on battery" on Develop -> Experimental Features.
On my 2021 14" MBP I get HDR on battery (once I set the user agent to Chrome/Windows).
Yeah, it's YouTube detects your browser agent and switch to whichever format for the video. Google did change something. When you switch to anything but Safari or macOS, YouTube thinks you're on Windows or Chrome browser.
The first part seems to work the same for everyone: the Windows agents aren't affected.
It's possible that some are misinterpreting vivid, bright scenes in SDR with HDR for the other differences. I like this test: set screen brightness to below 50% and watch this video to 5 seconds in, and it should be obvious whether you have HDR - the logo will be twice as bright as anything else on your screen. With SDR it's not. Try it with the Windows agent in one tab and the Mac agent in another if you want to be sure.
Don't base on by the look, by experience you can tell yes. But open the Nerd stats on the youtube of the video.
HDR should have colour space BT2020. BT709 is SDR.
Problem with web detection should use codec 337 instead 313. This is YouTube thing how they feed the stream.
That's Control (^) + click to get the stats window, for those who want to try it that way.
Wow. I have went back and watched the HDR videos I though were HDR and everyone is showing BT709. And I was wondering why the video didn't look any better than my XPS 15. I can't get any videos to play HDR content.
HDR is non functional in Safari, Firefox or Chrome on my system wether plugged in or on battery. running Monterey 12.1 Beta2
EDIT: HDR is functional at 720p and below. 1080 and above returns to BT709.
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Yes. It’s pretty easy to think it’s HDR until you actually see it. I created an HDR edit and uploaded to YouTube so I had something to compare it with.