BTW, Special K technically works w/ VLC to retrofit HDR video playback now It has a few quirks, but I’ve been chipping away at this for several months.
The challenges on adding HDR to video are a little different than games, but SK’s pretty uniquely qualified to do this because I set out from the very start of SK’s HDR stuff with an emphasis on doing color processing that stays in the original SDR gamut.
For games, many engines are not even attempting to do HDR processing accurately and have added color saturation sliders. That’s the LAST THING you want changing when you’re trying to play back a pre-recorded video. Luminance can change, but if the image gets more saturated than it started out, that’s a big problem.
Luckily I came to the conclusion a long time ago that wide color gamuts are stupid (since the degree to which displays actually cover them varies widely), and because of this all my HDR stuff works without over-saturating games or videos
I’m not sure how much work I plan to dedicate to HDR on video playback, if I had a way of injecting directly into YouTube or something I might do more research and development. As it stands now, HDR upconversion in VLC is a neat toy some may wish to play with – you should whitelist vlc.exe in SKIF and configure VLC to use the D3D11 renderer for best results.
Oh, and whether or not I ever officially support SK HDR for video, one good thing has come of all this. I will be introducing a few alternate tonemap models that can do luminance level controls in an even more strict colorspace to remove perceptual shift in color tone when luminance increases.
It’s weird how the human eye can see something that’s yellow at one brightness shift toward purple as luminance increases, but it’s mathematically modeled and can be worked around in a shader rather than hiring a color grader to do it like Hollywood does
Seems like HDR only kicks in on first boot up of VLC, i have to replace the SpecialK.ini everytime before starting VLC again, or i get a dim image. What spawchain settings should i use? I’m getting like 1fps right now, lol.
I’ve basically copied my ROTTR SpecialK.ini config over to the VLC profile folder, and i have CEGUI disabled. I have to keep replacing the file everytime i want HDR to work again. Letting SK make a fresh config for VLC doesn’t do the job either, and i can only access SK’s control panel on fresh boot-up with newly replaced config for some reason.
As for swapchain tweaks… don’t use them. Swapchains in video software work dramatically different, video usually buffers 10-15 frames ahead and any overrides in Special K have nowhere to go but down for performance of the software
Just reset the config for vlc.exe after using this version (always use global injection for VLC). The newest build ships with a few HDR profiles already, for VLC the 4th profile (Unmodified, Unmodified) works best.
The only necessary override may be enabling flip model, but that build should automatically do that when you turn on scRGB in the HDR widget.
Ack, crap. Ignore my last post. I forgot I was typing this from my tablet, lol. I’ll link an updated version sometime tomorrow I think. Don’t feel like booting up my primary dev. machine right now.
Are you using the version of VLC from VLC’s actual site, or the version available on the Windows Store? I don’t use that Windows Store version, and conceivably is the only reason you’d be getting that error (unless you use local injection).
I actually wasn’t sure if i was even using the 64 bit version, so i ended up uninstalling and downloading again but same results, and yeah i was using global injection.
I live on a canal connected to the ocean… I would appreciate it if you would please turn your computer off when it’s not in use That canal already overflows and puts ocean water in my pool from time to time, it’s only going to get worse as global warming progresses.
Wait, does anyone actually leave their desktops on when they are out or even when they sleep? I never do, personally, even if those Windows updates scare me.
I uh turn off my pc at night everytime I go to sleep. Never really leave it on. lol. In Florida weather is pretty unpredictable and storms cut off power a lot. Not even using Backup Power supply or whatever they are called seemed to help. They always tend to die very quickly on me.
Edit:
Well it seems once again Amazon amazes me pretty damn good. The USB Soundcard / DAC / Amp seems to be coming to my house today. Already out for Delivery. They actually make due on one day delivery. Man can’t beat that lol. Not even 24 hrs from purchase to delivery to house.
If plug-in widgets had been a thing in game bar when I began writing Special K, there’s a very good chance that Special K wouldn’t even exist. So many of the things that I built from scratch in Special K are part of the game bar.
Special K would probably have been a game bar widget, it’s incredible how much overlap there is in functionality. Features I had to create myself because they didn’t exist on Windows at the time mysteriously became part of that software 1-2 years after I created them
I basically never turn my off. It draws something like 30 Watt per hour or so when idle, so it’s not really that much extra in terms of power draw per month.
I also, though, have it in a separate room so it doesn’t bother my sleep.
The Windows 10 updates aren’t an issue any longer as you basically need to delay them for weeks before they get force-installed on the night, so they prompt me as usual during the day for me to either install them then, schedule a time where they can be automatically installed, or defer them further.
Regarding an UPS, I really need to pick one of those up for my server and NAS — they’ve already experienced like 3 sudden power losses during the last few years, of which one damaged a whole HDD and the last one caused 8 broken sectors in another drive.
Living here in Florida, it’s impossible to not have one. We are the “lightning capital of the world.”
I have 5 or 6 at last count, I’ve got them protecting my AV equipment and computers, so that basically means I’ve gotta have them in every room because my house is full of nothing but TVs and computers
It has a few quirks, but I’ve been chipping away at this for several months.
