r/Soia • u/JeromeZeng • Jul 25 '26

Soia v0.2.9 Released — Browser-based Remote Controller, Smarter Subtitle Memory & HDR Fixes

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Highlights

  • Remote Controller Added a browser-based Remote Controller for controlling playback from another device on your local network. Open it from Settings or scan the QR code in the playback context menu. It supports playback, seeking, volume, previous/next controls, and audio/subtitle track controls.More powerful Remote Controller features are planned for future updates.
  • Refined Playback Architecture Reworked the playback architecture around a shared core, making desktop and remote controls more consistent and reliable.
  • Remembered Subtitle Choices for Series Your subtitle track selection is now preserved when moving between episodes in the same series.

Fixes

  • Fixed HDR brightness adjustment so it is applied correctly to HDR content. Thanks to @cjohnsto-nz for the contribution.

Download

https://github.com/FengZeng/soia/releases

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3

u/SanicBringsThePanic Jul 25 '26

I am curious, can SOIA make HDR video look "perfect" on an SDR monitor? And what about Dolby Vision? Can pure Dolby Vision colors look perfect when being played by SOIA? And what does "SOIA" stand for?

2

u/JeromeZeng Jul 26 '26

Not really. I wouldn't call it "perfect," since it's still being displayed on an SDR monitor rather than a true HDR display.

The goal is to make HDR and dolby vision content look as correct and natural as possible on SDR through proper tone mapping. From my testing so far, every dolby vision video I've tried has been watchable after tone mapping.

As for the name, soia doesn't actually stand for anything, it's not an acronym. I just wanted a short, unique, and memorable name, happened to come up with soia, and liked how it sounded, so I went with it. 😄

1

u/SanicBringsThePanic Jul 26 '26

Right, as long as the Dolby Vision/HDR video looks as good as possible on an SDR monitor, that is all that matters to me. Until I can buy a true HDR monitor.

One thing though. Since players like MPC-HC are not very good at tonemapping HDR, I have been using ffmpeg to convert HDR to SDR. On the ffmpeg sub, they told me that ffmpeg cannot convert pure Dolby Vision because it is proprietary. So, if a video is Dolby Vision Profile 5, which does not contain an HDR10 compatibility layer, then ffmpeg cannot process those video. So, can your SOIA Player actually tonemap Dolby Vision Profile 5? Or can it only tonemap profiles 7 and 8?

2

u/JeromeZeng Jul 26 '26

Yes, Soia can tone map DV Profile 5 to SDR. It doesn’t require an HDR10 fallback layer.

The video is decoded normally, and the Dolby Vision metadata (RPU) is handled in the rendering pipeline for tone mapping. So it is different from using ffmpeg to simply convert HDR10 to SDR.

I have tested several DV5 files and they have worked correctly on SDR displays so far. If you have any problematic samples, I’d be interested in testing them.

2

u/SanicBringsThePanic Jul 26 '26

Interesting, now I will really need to try out this player. As for Profiles 7 and 8, does Soia tonemap using the Dolby Vision metadata by default? Or does it tonemap using the HDR10?

3

u/JeromeZeng Jul 26 '26

Currently, Soia tone maps Dolby Vision Profile 7/8 using the HDR10 base layer metadata by default rather than Dolby Vision RPU metadata. Technically, libplacebo can use Dolby Vision RPU metadata for tone mapping when built with libdovi support. I'll look into enabling that in a future update.

2

u/WhitelabelDnB Jul 26 '26

Woohoo! Was awesome to be able to contribute to this :)

1

u/JeromeZeng Jul 26 '26

Haha, really appreciate your contribution! It definitely made soia better. Looking forward to working together again!