Best output color format in the nvidia control panel for 4K and HDR TV display?

[JohnnyShalos]

What is the best output color format in the nvidia control panel (RTX 2060) for 4K and HDR display ? I have my desktop connected with my TV (LG 43UM7450PLA) using HDMI 2.0. When i selected YCbCr420 can support 8bit and 12bit, RGB and YCbCr444 only 8bit and YCbCr422 8,10 and 12bit color depth. Now i selected the YCbCr420 and i believe is the best option for my TV because of the 12bit color depth am i right ?

[Constantin]

I have a 4k monitor IPS HDR and i have the same dilemma.

The options are 

RGB

YCBCr422

YCBCr444

I really don't know witch one to chose.

Some help here also would be appreciated. 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'd think YCbCr422 12bit would be better for HDR, but RGB will look better for SDR which quite frankly will be what you are using most of the time.

What's even more confusing is, are games even outputting 12bit in the first place?  There's few games with HDR support as it is, let alone knowing if they do 12bit or not.

[Brooksie359]

Honestly I don't know of many games that output past 10 bit required for HDR10.

[mariushm]

RGB is 8 bit per color, 16 million colors

YCbCr  is same thing as RGB, but instead of colors you have Y = Brightness (Luminance), Chroma Blue and Chroma Red (color information) ... a formula is used to determine red, green and blue from these 3.

4:4:4 means that for every pixel, the monitor receives red,green and blue , or ycbcr information .. 3 x 8 bits or 3 x 10 bits or 3 x 12 bits

4:2:2 and 4:2:0 means that the video cards makes groups of 4 pixels, sends the brightness information for each pixel untouched, but makes an average of the color information for those 4 pixels and sends only 1 or 2 values for the whole group... so instead of 4 Cb , only 1-2 Cb values are sent, or only 1-2 Cr values.

Human eyes are much more sensitive to light, but less sensitive to variations in color, so in most situations you wouldn't notice that averaging.

 

Bluray movies, Youtube content etc is compressed using YCbCr 4:2:0

Some professional recording equipment records in YCbCr 4:2:2 

 

So 12 bit > 10 bit > 8 bit   RGB = YCbCr 4:4:4  > YCbCr 4:2:2 > YCbCr 4:2:0

 

YCbCr 4:2:0 is acceptable for watching movies, sometimes ok for playing games (there's issues with tiny text and some colors like intense reds being affected by the conversion from 4:4:4 to 4:2:0)

 

If you can do 10 bit, I'd say try it out. I wouldn't bother with 12 bit ... few games are even aware and support it, and your tv is probably not calibrated well enough that having 12 bit would make a difference.

Your TV is probably 8bit+FRC anyway, making it a 10 bit panel.

 

edit :  

Read your original message again.  YCbCr 4:2:0 is the worst option, and it's not worth using it just for 12bit, because all the video content is 8 bit or 10 bit... you'd get no quality increase forcing 12 bit.

I'd suggest going with YCbCr 4:2:2 10 bit  or YCbCr 4:4:4 / RGB 8 bit.

 

Check the TV menus and see if there's some "PC mode" or "Raw Input" or whatever, which may allow you to configure YCbCr 4:4:4 10 bit, or RGB 10 bit. That would be the best.  It may be a hdmi 2.0 limitation here, not giving you that format.

[SolarNova]

Dont use chroma subsampling for PC use. text gets fuzzy.

 

In other words stick with YCbCr 444

 

if u lack the bandwidth its better to drop from 10bit to 8 bit so u can stick with 444 sampling.

[JohnnyShalos]

I dont have any problem with text gets fuzzy with any output color option because i have already the "PC mode" input enable in my TV and I'm surprised, i have better quality picture in windows 10 than before using the IPS 4K monitor (27UK650). I have try to play a game in HDR forcing enable the HDR in windows before launch the game (GreedFall) and only with 4:2:2 10bit option i can play the game with HDR. So i will try also other games if i can play hdr with 4:2:2 12bit, but for now i will stick with the option 4:2:2 10bit. Anyway thank you all for your help and mariushm for the background theory.

 

EDIT: I have restart my pc and try 4:2:2 12bit again and it works! Of course i didn't notice any difference from 10 bit but who cares... Anyway i will say it again the 4k hdr it looks much better with TV. Anyone who thinking about buying 4K monitor not worth it, i did it before and i regret it.

Why the PS4 pro doesn't support 4:2:2 ?