PSA: How to fix muted colour issue on 4k PS5 recordings.
Before/After Comparison
Recording in 4k on PS5 requires using the .webm file format instead of the more standard .mp4. The issue I ran into (and have now solved) is that the PS5 webm file format uses a
BT.2020 colour space (basically HDR or high dynamic range). My video editing software doesn't know how to interpret this so the colours look very muted (poor contrast). We need to convert to
BT.709 colour space (SDR or standard dynamic range).
Here's the best solution I've found:
- Download ffmpeg
- Open a command window in the same folder as ffmpeg and your video you want to edit.
- Run the following command (replace "test.webm" with your input video file name, and "test.mp4" with your desired output file name):ffmpeg -i test.webm -vf zscale=tin=smpte2084:min=bt2020nc
in=bt2020:rin=tv:t=smpte2084:m=bt2020nc
=bt2020:r=tv,zscale=t=linear:npl=100,format=gbrpf32le,zscale=p=bt709,tonemap=tonemap=hable:desat=0,zscale=t=bt709:m=bt709:r=tv,format=yuv420p -c:v libx264 -crf 15 -preset slower test.mp4
- This converts the 4K HDR video (test.webm) to a 4K SDR video (test.mp4).
I modified this command from similar work from EraYaN on this
github conversation.
Note: If this is too CPU intensive for your PC (or taking too long), you can tweak the "-crf 15" to "-crf 23" and "-preset slower" to "-preset fast" without losing too much quality in your video. Basically increasing the crf number and changing the preset to be faster will reduce the file size and CPU usage, but will also reduce the video quality (but not by that much).
EDIT: corrected a typo based on
u/boris_006 feedback below.