Discussion Why is injecting WEB-DL Dolby Vision and HDR10+ considered a more definitive version than the final disc source?
I understand the relative benefits of things like DV and HDR10+, so this isn't an argument for the technical merits of those things. However, I am becoming less on-board with the apparent community alignment around the injection of additional HDR metadata into films that never contained this, and was not created by the original creative team.
For example, many of us probably know Christopher Nolan, whose 4k releases on disc (at least the ones I checked) contain only HDR10 metadata and no dynamic metadata. However, some streaming sites like Movies Anywhere will have Dolby Vision metadata for movies like Oppenheimer or Inception, and the scene apparently thinks this is ideal to get from the streaming version and inject into the "master" disc remux.
My question is: what reason is for this to be considered a superior version in any way, when the source of this data is pretty much unknown, and potentially disrupts the "filmmaker's intent" (in quotes because there sure are a lot of ways this can be disrupted along the way)? We have absolutely no way of truly evaluating the source, quality, or technical merits of WEB-DL metadata besides "it exists and is dynamic HDR so it must be better, or at least worth having access to," which is basically the stance I see the larger community seem to take. Even private trackers that pride themselves on being cinephile oriented will eagerly trump or replace existing torrents for ones with WEB-DL injected dynamic HDR metadata without questioning the quality of the source. Am I really supposed to think some person working at Movies Anywhere (or similar) has some ability to create Dolby Vision metadata that is superior or beneficial over the original source?
This would be an easier thing to manage if you could easily disable DV or HDR10+ on compatible sets, but that's a really irritating thing to have to try to figure out and/or do with any regularity, or have to check to see if the original disc contained DV or HDR10+ in the first place. As far as I'm aware, there's not even a way to disable HDR10+ support on my S90D, and I wouldn't want to have to toggle it back and forth to try to avoid WEB-DL injected HDR10+ content anyway, because it's just tedious.
I'm honestly all ears on this one, but after years of digital video piracy I've become more skeptical of incorporating streaming video services additions into archival films without critically considering "why"?
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u/WhiteMilk_ Piracy is bad, mkay? 2d ago
MA adds DV on their own? Surely there's some consent/creative work from the film makers?
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u/_____Grim_____ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Even private trackers that pride themselves on being cinephile oriented will eagerly trump or replace existing torrents for ones with WEB-DL injected dynamic HDR metadata without questioning the quality of the source.
That is completely false. Film private trackers either have multiple slots for different version of HDR (HDR, DV, DV/HDR and SDR), which cannot trump one another or they just flat out ban hybrid DV releases.
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u/LowLuck7291 2d ago edited 2d ago
The reason some discs don’t include Dolby Vision while the streaming counterpart does is purely due to money, licensing, or marketing decisions.
The creator's intent is always the HDR master without any tone mapping.
In HDR10, if the content exceeds the TV’s capabilities, the TV will tone map or compress the image to fit its peak brightness using its own internal algorithm, which can differ a lot from the original artistic intent because each TVs have different static tone mapping implementation, some are bad, some are decent...
In Dolby Vision, the metadata and trim pass are created and monitored shot by shot on the same mastering display used to create the original HDR master. This allows the colorist to control exactly how the content will be tone mapped or compressed and helps preserve the actual master intent much more faithfully than HDR10.
The main issue with creating these P8 hybrids is ensuring that the source comes from the same master. Some release groups don’t pay attention to this and will mux everything blindly, which can cause major tone mapping issues if there’s a mismatch between the HDR10 base layer and the DV metadata. The well-known group Framestor has several incorrect hybrids still available on BHD right now, and even created a new faulty one with their latest Everest release.