dirkvdb
[Bug] Thumbnails look wrong for HDR videos
Description
I use ffmpegthumbnailer as the video thumbnailer on my Fedora system, and I usually view those thumbnails via Nautilus. I noticed the thumbnails look wrong for HDR videos (at least for dvhe.05.03 and dvhe.08.03/HDR10 videos).
Steps to Reproduce
Test files:
ffmpegthumbnailer -t 00:00:00 -s 0 \
-i dvhe.05.03.mp4 \
-o dvhe.05.03.thumbnail.jpeg
ffmpegthumbnailer -t 00:00:00 -s 0 \
-i dvhe.08.03-HDR10-compatible.mp4 \
-o dvhe.08.03-HDR10-compatible.thumbnail.jpeg
Expected Behavior
Thumbnails for HDR videos should show the correct colors.
Actual Behavior
The thumbnails either look too dark (dvhe.08.03) or have a heavy green & purple tint (dvhe.05.03). The problem occurs on both the JPEG and PNG output formats.
Thumbnail Comparison Table
dvhe.05.03.mp4
| ffmpegthumbnailer | mpv screenshot (how it should look like) |
|---|---|
dvhe.08.03-HDR10-compatible.mp4
| ffmpegthumbnailer | mpv screenshot (how it should look like) |
|---|---|
Software information
- OS: Fedora 40
- fmpegthumbnailer version: 2.2.3 (tested both on the RPM available on RPM Fusion and a self-built binary)
- update 2025-12-08: also tested on 2.2.4 (self-built) against FFmpeg 7.1.2; same issue
How did you manage mpv to play dvhe.05.03.mp4 correctly? I've tried many players (ffplay, mpv, vlc ... on fedora, tumbleweed, archlinux, windows ...) and always I get purple/greenish colors.
I even spin up a virtualbox with fedora 40, installed mpv and ffmpeg from RPMfusion, and no luck.
@wahibre Mpv has Dolby Vision support as long as it's built with libdovi, which is the case with the RPM available from Fedora's official repository. However, DV is not supported in mpv's default video output driver (gpu), so you also have to configure vo=gpu-next either via a command line option or the configuration file. This driver is not yet as stable as the default one, but it should be fine most of the time.