New uAPI for color management proposal and feedback request

[Ville Syrjälä]

On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 12:34:05PM +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> On Wed, 12 May 2021 16:04:16 +0300
> Ville Syrjälä <ville.syrjala at linux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 02:06:56PM +0200, Werner Sembach wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > In addition to the existing "max bpc", and "Broadcast RGB/output_csc" drm properties I propose 4 new properties:
> > > "preferred pixel encoding", "active color depth", "active color range", and "active pixel encoding"
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Motivation:
> > > 
> > > Current monitors have a variety pixel encodings available: RGB, YCbCr 4:4:4, YCbCr 4:2:2, YCbCr 4:2:0.
> > > 
> > > In addition they might be full or limited RGB range and the monitors accept different bit depths.
> > > 
> > > Currently the kernel driver for AMD and Intel GPUs automatically configure the color settings automatically with little
> > > to no influence of the user. However there are several real world scenarios where the user might disagree with the
> > > default chosen by the drivers and wants to set his or her own preference.
> > > 
> > > Some examples:
> > > 
> > > 1. While RGB and YCbCr 4:4:4 in theory carry the same amount of color information, some screens might look better on one
> > > than the other because of bad internal conversion. The driver currently however has a fixed default that is chosen if
> > > available (RGB for Intel and YCbCr 4:4:4 for AMD). The only way to change this currently is by editing and overloading
> > > the edid reported by the monitor to the kernel.
> > > 
> > > 2. RGB and YCbCr 4:4:4 need a higher port clock then YCbCr 4:2:0. Some hardware might report that it supports the higher
> > > port clock, but because of bad shielding on the PC, the cable, or the monitor the screen cuts out every few seconds when
> > > RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4 encoding is used, while YCbCr 4:2:0 might just work fine without changing hardware. The drivers
> > > currently however always default to the "best available" option even if it might be broken.
> > > 
> > > 3. Some screens natively only supporting 8-bit color, simulate 10-Bit color by rapidly switching between 2 adjacent
> > > colors. They advertise themselves to the kernel as 10-bit monitors but the user might not like the "fake" 10-bit effect
> > > and prefer running at the native 8-bit per color.
> > > 
> > > 4. Some screens are falsely classified as full RGB range wile they actually use limited RGB range. This results in
> > > washed out colors in dark and bright scenes. A user override can be helpful to manually fix this issue when it occurs.
> > > 
> > > There already exist several requests, discussion, and patches regarding the thematic:
> > > 
> > > - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/476
> > > 
> > > - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1548
> > > 
> > > - https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/5/7/695
> > > 
> > > - https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/5/11/416
> > > 
> 
> ...
> 
> > > Adoption:
> > > 
> > > A KDE dev wants to implement the settings in the KDE settings GUI:
> > > https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/476#note_912370
> > > 
> > > Tuxedo Computers (my employer) wants to implement the settings desktop environment agnostic in Tuxedo Control Center. I
> > > will start work on this in parallel to implementing the new kernel code.  
> > 
> > I suspect everyone would be happier to accept new uapi if we had
> > multiple compositors signed up to implement it.
> 
> I think having Weston support for these would be good, but for now it
> won't be much of an UI: just weston.ini to set, and the log to see what
> happened.
> 
> However, knowing what happened is going to be important for color
> calibration auditing:
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston/-/issues/467
> 
> Yes, please, very much for read-only properties for the feedback part.
> Properties that both userspace and kernel will write are hard to deal
> with in general.
> 
> Btw. "max bpc" I can kind of guess that conversion from framebuffer
> format to the wire bpc happens automatically and only as the final
> step,

Well, there could be dithering and whatnot also involved. So it's
not super well specified atm either.

> but "Broadcast RGB" is more complicated: is the output from the
> abstract pixel pipeline sent as-is and "Broadcast RGB" is just another
> inforframe bit to the monitor, or does "Broadcast RGB" setting actually
> change what happens in the pixel pipeline *and* set infoframe bits?

It does indeed compress the actual pixel data. There was once a patch
porposed to introduce a new enum value that only sets the infoframe and
thus would allow userspace to pass through already limited range data.
Shouldn't be hard to resurrect that if needed.

> 
> My vague recollection is that framebuffer was always assumed to be in
> full range, and then if "Broadcast RGB" was set to limited range, the
> driver would mangle the pixel pipeline to convert from full to limited
> range. This means that it would be impossible to have limited range
> data in a framebuffer, or there might be a double-conversion by
> userspace programming a LUT for limited->full and then the driver
> adding full->limited. I'm also confused how full/limited works when
> framebuffer is in RGB/YCbCr and the monitor wire format is in RGB/YCbCr
> and there may be RGB->YCbCR or YCbCR->RGB conversions going on - or
> maybe even FB YCbCR -> RGB -> DEGAMMA -> CTM -> GAMMA -> YCbCR.
> 
> I wish someone drew a picture of the KMS abstract pixel pipeline with
> all the existing KMS properties in it. :-)

Here's an ugly one for i915:

    (input RGB vs. YCbCr?)
[FB] -> [YCbCr?] -> [YCbCr->RGB conversion     ] -> [plane blending] -> ...
      |             [YCbCr color range/encoding] |
      \ [RGB?] ----------------------------------/

                                           (output RGB limited vs. RGB full vs. YCbCr?)
... -> [DEGAMMA_LUT] -> [CTM] -> [GAMMA_LUT] -> [YCbCr?] -> [RGB->YCbCr conversion      ] -> [to port]
                                              |             [always BT.709/limited range]
                                              \ [RGB?] -> ...

... -> [RGB passthrough             ] -> [to port]
     | [Broadcast RGB=full or       ]
     | [Broadcast RGB=auto + IT mode]
     |
     \ [RGB full->limited conversion] -> [to port]
       [Broadcast RGB=limited or    ]
       [Broadcast RGB=auto + CE mode]

I guess having something like that in the docs would be nice. Not sure
if there's a way to make something that looks decent for html/etc.

-- 
Ville Syrjälä
Intel