Best Xbox Series X Settings Explained: YCC 422, 8-Bit or 10-Bit, Standard vs PC RGB

in this video i'm going to explain and demonstrate many of the key video settings on the xbox series x including allow ycc 422 or not 8 bit versus 10 bit versus 12 bit color space standard versus pc pcrgb to help you optimize your xbox series x video settings for your own television [Music] hello everyone visit you from hdtvtest here this is an xbox series x that has been connected to an lg c10 or cx oled which has been adjusted according to my recommendations i put out in a video a few days ago and if you go into the 4k tv details settings if your lg cxo c10 or in fact any other tv with dolby vision support has been optimized then you should see all these ticks everywhere and what i'm going to do in this video is to try and explain all these different settings on the xbox series x so that you can understand them and then optimize them for your own display now the first two parameters are resolution and refresh rate and these are probably self-explanatory i've set it at 4k uhd 120hz and this is probably the primary reason why anyone would buy the xbox series x now one thing that i have discovered with the refresh rate is that let's say if you downgrade the refresh rate to 60 hertz so that you're only getting 4k at 60 hertz that will mean that the console in conjunction with the display will only be using a video pipeline that is limited to hdmi 2.0 so to clarify hdmi 2.0 and hdmi 2.1 uses different types of signaling method and if i can use the lg cx to pull up a easter egg menu you can see here that if i actually go down to 60 hertz the signaling method here tm tm stands for tmds it is short for transition minimized differential signaling that's a mouthful and if i switch to let's say 120 hertz then it will be using a different method which is called frl and that stands for fixed rate link and there are usually four lanes and you can see here that you know four l8 means that you know it is four lanes of eight gigabits per second giving us a total bandwidth use currently of 32 gigabits per second so the first thing to remember is that if you use a 60hz you will be limited to the hdmi 2.0 bandwidth of 18 gigabits per second and that is key to understanding a lot of the consequences here so if i can go into video modes and then you know we'll start and explore all these options so allow 50 hertz if we disable this and if we go to let's say blu-ray player i've put in a disk that we have custom ordered ourselves basically it is our own test disk that makes it much easier for reviewing televisions so if i can go down and go for 50hz motion then you will see that once i have disabled the 50 hertz checkbox then the output will always be at 60hz and therefore any 50hz content will display with some starter which hopefully will come across in this video which is film at 60hz so i've taken some of your advice on board you know rather than filming at 24hz i'm upgrading you know and trying to get more bandwidth into my camera and filming at 60hz so that you can see the stutter in a clearer fashion and if we go back out to the settings menu and allow 50 hertz then what this will do is to display 50hz content at 50 hertz which will remove these stuttering artifacts you can see that it is much smoother and at the bottom right corner you can see that you know it is refreshing at 50 hertz okay so that is that and what i'm going to do is to get out from here and show you all the other settings allow 24 hertz is critical for playing movies so let's disable it and i'll show you the effects and if i can go to the blu-ray player again and i'll pull up another test pattern and let's go for film grain because this is mastered at 24 hertz so this sentence scrolling across the screen you know it's at 24 hertz and without ticking the 24 hertz option you can see that the screen is refreshing at 60hz and therefore there is three to pull down our telescenic judder because you know the screen is refreshing at 60hz but the content is only 24hz so if we can go into the settings and allow 24 hertz yes and if we can get back to the menu you can see that it is much smoother because the console is outputting 24 hertz the tv is receiving it as 24hz and then it will be refreshing at 120hz for this particular tv the lg cx performing five five pull down to smooth out any telescopic judder so it will be much smoother because you are allowing for 24 hertz right after doing that what we are going to do is to go back to the settings menu and continue exploring allow auto low latency mode will basically enable allm for tvs that support this function and it will automatically switch the tv into game mode when you play a game allow variable refresh rate is self-explanatory basically it allows for say vrr or freezing support you know on the xbox series x together with a compatible television now allow ycc 402 is going to be quite tricky for me to explain but just bear with me for the moment to understand this you have to understand what is chroma subsampling and there are essentially three levels of chroma subsampling 420 402 and 444 or rgb basically yuv444 is similar to rgb it's just you know in terms of the domain how they are actually translated so there are three levels four two zero four two two and four for four and normally if you go up the chroma sampling level you will consume more bandwidth if you click on allow ycc422 basically it will enable photoshoot support so let's say if you have a tv that doesn't support a certain bandwidth and you ask the console to output 444 but you can't do 4x4 so it will drop to four to two normally but if you don't tick this checkbox it will just drop all the way to four to zero and there are other various factors at play as well because you know it will depend on the bit depth as well and bit depth is basically just how smooth the gradation is so let's say 8 bit to 10 bit and 12 bit i'll cover that later the easy way to think about bit depth is that you know if the bit depth is too low then the image will become pixelated because there is just not enough gradation to allow for a smooth gradient let's say how in japanese hentai the private parts are censored so that is a really low bit depth in terms of the pixelation and to demonstrate this what i'm going to do is to use the ultra hd blu-ray app on the xbox series x console because even if you say click on allow ycc 402 on this screen so let me just summon the easter egg menu again so you can see rgb 8 bit tmds so it is using 444 or rgb chroma if you click on allow ycc422 because there is enough bandwidth anyway it will still be stuck at rgb eight bit tmds and the only apps that i have found ycc photo 2 making a difference would be in the blu-ray app and maybe in some games as well just like you know what they are saying at the right side of the screen so let's uncheck allow ycc422 and i'm going to be putting in an ultra hd blu-ray a very rare one that outputs at 60 hertz so this is billy lynn's halftime walk i think that's what it's called i haven't actually even finished watching the movie because you know i was just really put off by the high frame rate look but for the purpose of this demonstration i'm going to be using this this because you know it is going to be requiring a higher bandwidth than let's say 4k at 24hz because it is being output at 4k at 60hz right let's go back to the start of the chapter so you can hopefully see here that it is still using tmds which means that it is basically capped to hdmi 2.0 because the refresh rate is 60hz so 60hz hdmi 2.0 so maximum bandwidth of 18 gigabits per second and it is being output at 10 bits and it has dropped all the way down to ycbcr420 because remember 444 chroma 10 bit 4k at 60 hertz will exceed the bandwidth of 18 gigabits per second and you know to understand this i would like to recommend you to this website on extron which has an hdmi bandwidth calculator i found it quite useful i'll put a link in the youtube description below so basically to calculate the total hdmi bandwidth required you need four parameters resolution frame rate bit depth and also chroma sampling and we have a resolution of 2160p we have a frame rate of 60. and if we wanted to output 10 bit 444 if you put these parameters on the extern hdmi signal calculator then you would see that it is requiring 20 gigabits per second exceeding the hdmi 2.0 threshold of 18 gigabits per second which is why the export series x is now downgrading the chroma sampling all the way down to four to zero because we didn't check allow ycc422 now see what happens when we actually go into the menu and allow ycc422 so once we allow ycc photo2 and get back into the app so you know this will apply only within the application let's say a game or the blu-ray player or maybe even the media player app you can see that you know it is now allowing for ycbcr 402 which is a higher chroma subsampling than 420 but as a result also because again i don't know whether there's a limitation in the console or just how they are actually processing these data it has actually dropped to 8 bit rather than 10 bit which is a slight shame because you know if it had stuck at 10 bit then i would be tempted to keep allow ycc photo to enable but because there is a drop to 8-bit you know i'm really not that keen you know on this if i'm honest with you ycc 402 is really quite immaterial in the age of hdmi 2.1 so as long as you send 4k at 120 hertz signal let me just get into the menu so as long as you send 4k 120hz signal then you will be avoiding the hdmi 2.0 cap of 18 gigabits per second and you don't need to worry about ycc422 at all because you know you'll be trying to output at rgb at all times because you have so much bandwidth 40 gigabits per second on the xbox series x and also on the lg cx or c10 to display with higher bit depth higher chroma sampling and higher resolution and frame rate so from that point of view i would generally leave allow ycc42 to disable next allow 4k and allow hdr10 you know they are self-explanatory one thing to note is that if you disable allow 4k then it will also disallow hdr10 even though it is still checked so if you wanted to let's say switch a game from hdr to sdr to change some in-game parameters then you can just uncheck allow 4k and this will kick the tv into sdr even though you are still checking allow hdr10 and then auto hdr will automatically upskill sdr games to hdr 10 on the xbox series x and i've seen some here and there and you know my mind is still not made up yet you know about how effective this is you know some games look quite good and some look so-so and with not very good effects so i'll need to do more investigation but if you want all your games to be output in hdr just check this box if you want to keep sdis sdi and hdrs hdr i'm talking only about games then you know leave this unchecked and allow dolby vision we know that the xbox series x doesn't have a 4k brewery player that can support dolby vision but dog vision is supported on streaming and also maybe in 2021 some games will be supporting dolby vision as well on the xbox series x so just leave this checked and then what we'll do is to go into the video fidelity and overscan section and this is probably the one that is going to be quite confusing remember when i said earlier that the hdmi bandwidth that is required is generated from four figures basically resolution refresh rate and then if you go here this allows you to control the color depth or bit depth and if i can once again call up this easter egg menu i wanted to say that it is random in terms of the positioning you can see just now it was here and then now it's here but it is actually in an anticlockwise manner you know i wanted to initially say that it was as random as the uk government's coronary virus policy but there is some order to the chaos so you can see that you know it is just going around the four corners in an anti-clockwise fashion so let me actually try and place it somewhere easier for you to see and then okay so in the comment section of my lg cx or c9 recommended expo series x settings video some of you asked me why do i get 8 bit here rather than the full 10 bit that i showed in my video and you can control that using this color daf here so currently you can see that it is outputting at rgb eight bit and the total bandwidth that is required is 32 gigabits per second hence eight kilobits at four lanes and this is in line with the extern hdmi bandwidth calculator so if we switch this to 10 bit then you can see that you know it will go up to 10 bit rgb 4k 820 hertz and this will require a total bandwidth of 40 gigabits per second and hence 10 gigs at four lanes now what happens if you go up to 12 bit if you go up to 12 bit you know it will just get a blackout screen on the lg cx or c10 some people claim that you know it is because the lg oh actually while blacking out you can still see the output you can see that the xbox is actually outputting at 12 bit but 4 2 0 with a total bandwidth of 24 gigabits per second and first let me explain why this is the reason is because the xbox itself is also using an hdmi 2.1 chipset that only supports a maximum of 40 gigabits per second and as you can see if we output uhd 120 hertz with 10 bit rgb which is 444 the full chroma we are already consuming the full 40 gigabits per second of hdmi 2.1 bandwidth therefore if we actually go up to 12 bit you know it will be degrading some of the other parameters and in this case it is actually degrading the chroma sampling down to four to zero and the total hdmi band we required is only 24 gigabits per second but for some reason the lg cx doesn't like this but it's okay because i think you know 12 bit 420 is going to be producing a worse result than let's say the 10 bit full 444 chroma anyway so i would keep it at 10 bit and even on the lg c9 you know i have an lg c9 lying around somewhere so i ran this test on it because there are some quarters who claim that you know the lg cx or c10 is handicapped because it is only 40 gigabits per second and that's why it can't support 12 bit from the xbox and that is not true at all because the xbox itself is only 40 gigabits per second anyway so let's say if i connected the xbox which has an hdmi 2.1 bandwidth of 40 gigabits per second to an lg c9 with the full hdmi 2.1 battery of 48 gigabits per second you can see that even though i selected 12 bit in the color depth section the console is automatically downgrading it all the way to 8 bit anyway because it is not capable of 12 bit 444 it's native hdmi 2.1 bandwidth of 40 gigabits per second doesn't support that so from that point of view you're not missing out anything lg cx or c10 owners you know keep it at 10 bit and even on c9 you know keep it at 10 bit because you know if you actually go up to 12 bit then what the console will be doing is that right you're asking me to do something that is impossible because my native chipset is not capable of 12 bit 444 at 4k 120hz so i'm going to downgrade it to 8bit which defeats the entire purpose of the exercise anyway so keep it at 10 bit you know i would recommend this and there is some argument that you know it is good to keep this even at 8-bit because what the console will be doing is to use 8-bit for sdr and then 10-bit for hdr it will automatically switch it and there is an argument that you know you can go with that and to check you know what are the ramifications you know on this lg cx or c10 i basically have to use an sdr gradient so let's say if i actually pull up a grayscale ramp and then if i can bring this up and so currently it is sitting at 8-bit you know there are some bands because this test pattern is an 8-bit sdr content and if i go to here and then switch it to 10 bit and this is the way for you to find out whether 8 bit or 10 bit is better for you basically displaying a grayscale ramp and seeing which one has less bending or posterization for eight bit content and if i'm honest with you you know they are very very close and you know i can't tell one from the other maybe eight bit might actually be better it depends on the interaction between the console and also how the display actually handles 8-bit to 10-bit because the panel is natively 10-bit anyway so maybe 8-bit is better maybe 10-bit better on your panel i don't think it makes a massive amount of difference unless you see massive posterization you can try switching to the other one and see whether the posterization actually disappears in sdr mode but in hdr mode it will always default to 10 bit you know because of the auto detect function which is switched on and then for color space standard is recommended and some people were confused because i and my colleague adam faircloth also known as evil boris online recommended pc mode for the lg cx or c10 to obtain full 444 chroma and they are also confused that the info screen here you know says rgb so doesn't that mean that you should be using pc rgb here the answer is no because you know the nomenclature that microsoft is using for the xbox series x is slightly confusing what standard and pc rgb basically means is that standard is the video or legal range and pc rgb is the pc range from 0 to 255 for an 8-bit sdr domain whereas with standard it is the video range of 16-235 for an 8-bit sdr domain so from that point of view i think you know standard is generally better if you are going to be watching movies playing games they will all come together quite nicely for standard and pc rgb doesn't mean that it coincides with pc mode or just this rgb output it just means that it is using the full range of 0 to 255 which may not be what your tv is doing and standard is generally recommended because most tvs are operating in the sort of legal range 16-235 so from that point of view i would just basically go over you know my recommended settings for the lg cx or c10 so standard and then this one you know i changed my mind you know here and there but you know 10 bit is generally the one you will be using for hdr anyway so i'll be tempted to go with 10 bit even though you know it will automatically switch to 10 bit even if you selected 8 bit but just for convenience purposes you know i would just probably leave it at 10 bit and i also would like to use up the full bandwidth of this big fat pipe here of 40 gigabytes per second but that's just me you know you can select 8-bit if you think that on your particular tv 10 bit created more posterization then you can just use 8 bit and in either case for hdr the tv or the console will be ultimately using 10 bit anyway and then with the video modes you know these are just my recommendation auto hdr you can choose to switch it on but you know i like to play sdr games as sdr and hdr games hdr i'm very particular about creative intent and you know until i see more evidence that the auto hdr is doing some great things you know i'll be sticking to sdr for playing sdr games not that i play many games anyway and yes another small tip that i want to show you on the xbox console especially for you oled owners out there is that under the idle options you can select to dim the screen quicker at two minutes to reduce the risk of permanent screen burn or oled burning so i hope you found this video useful if you would like to watch some of our other videos on hdmi 2.1 and next-gen consoles i've created a playlist here if you like to click on it and i will see you in the next video

Channel: HDTVTest

Views: 1,051,162

Keywords: xbox series x settings, xbox series x ycc 422, xbox series x 8 bit or 10 bit, xbox series x standard vs pc rgb, xbox series x 8 bit vs 10 bit, xbox series x standard or pc rgb

Id: vw4ia4-OmHE

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/redditweaver2019]

This is one of the BEST explanations of visual console settings for an xbox I've seen. It's totally legit, and very informative. Those with short attention spans may be offended...

[u/Reflex-Arc]

I love that Vincent shows the "why" and the "what" in his videos to go with his how-to recommendations. The fact that he shows his work is what makes his recommendations valid.

[u/Seanspeed]

It's insane how many people are just downvoting this.

The gaming community continues to be fucking garbage.

[u/ALennon25]

I really need to get a 4K 120hz TV but there's so much conflicting information around. I'll be upgrading from a Samsung KS7500 (8500 in the US). Pretty much between the LG BX or CX, or Samsung Q85T or Q90T (UK models). Sounds like all of those sets are having issues with VRR though?

[u/gpshift]

Dude used a comparison to Japanese Hentai to explain bit depth. lol. I do appreciate the detailed explanations, but I might have used a different example.

[u/DrawTheLine87]

I watched this earlier today before stumbling on this post, great video.

Not only does he show you which settings to use, but he shows you WHY and the differences in choosing other options. It is admittedly a long video, but most should leave with more knowledge than they did before watching.

[u/[deleted]]

sweet

[u/arischerbub]

so many stupid people in this thread...

[u/leftturney]

This is a really awesome walkthrough.