#1033207 vlc : HDR to SDR tone mapping does not work

Package:
vlc
Source:
vlc
Description:
multimedia player and streamer
Submitter:
Julien-Benjamin
Date:
2025-09-28 12:23:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1033207#5
Date:
2023-03-19 18:43:34 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
Using VLC with HDR content.
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?
Using VLC for HDR content playback does not work properly ; on the other hand, MPV does work properly.
   * What was the outcome of this action?
Content is not displayed properly in VLC.
   * What outcome did you expect instead?
Same as with MPV.


VLC was used in software decoding mode.

From what I could gather on official VLC channels, it could be due to a problem in the build with libplacebo.

Cheers,

JB
#1033207#10
Date:
2023-03-19 19:04:38 UTC
From:
To:
Please find the log vlc -vvv attached.
#1033207#15
Date:
2024-02-12 11:36:42 UTC
From:
To:
I can confirm this is still an issue. HDR video looks very dark. Tried
to play around with OpenGL output module as suggested on the forums but
it does not work.

MPV works fine and VLC is supposed to have this working so it does seem
like a packaging bug as suggested.
#1033207#20
Date:
2025-09-28 09:06:10 UTC
From:
To:
Control: tags -1 upstream
Control: retitle -1 vlc: lacking support for recent libplacebo versions

No, it's upstream vlc that is not compatible with recent libplacebo. So
libplacebo support had to be disabled.

See https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/commit/9134e2079b5a14ce852ceaf84515c8e4ae35580f

Cheers
#1033207#29
Date:
2025-09-28 11:18:06 UTC
From:
To:
Le sunnuntai 28. syyskuuta 2025, 12.06.10 Itä-Euroopan kesäaika Sebastian
Ramacher a écrit :

It works fine upstream. VLC 3.0.x recommends placebo version 0.2.1. Given that
newer versions have radically different APIs & ABIs by choice of the placebo's
main developer, they may as well be different libraries. It was also their
assessment that using newer placebo versions in stable VLC 3.0.x was
unreasonable.

I can understand if keeping two versions of placebo is against the policies of
Debian and or the multimedia team. But the distinction between different
versions of one library and different competing libraries is mostly arbitrary.
In the end, this is a self-inflicted bug within Debian.

Call it wontfix if you want, but I fail to see how this is an upstream bug.
#1033207#34
Date:
2025-09-28 12:21:57 UTC
From:
To:
It depends on a completly unsupported libplacebo version which does not
build anymore in Debian (at least due to changes in vulkan headers). But
tag it as you want, there is no chance of this bug being fixed without
magical vlc 4.0 release or 3.0 gaining support for a recent libplacebo.

Cheers