Forum Discussion

MELERIX's avatar
MELERIX
Brass Contributor
Feb 17, 2020

Why the new Edge does not support HEVC or HEIC content from websites ?

currently in the new Edge its not possible to play videos in HEVC format, neither watch pictures in HEIC format. NOTE: I have both extensions (for HEVC and for HEIC) from store already installed but...
Rohit Yadav's avatar
Rohit Yadav
Bronze Contributor
Feb 22, 2020

HotCakeX those links on the sites are direct download links I suppose.

I made a HTML file that just runs that downloaded file, & the browser actually played the video. Check the snip below:

 

HotCakeX's avatar
HotCakeX
MVP
Feb 22, 2020
Of course they are direct links.
Direct or not shouldn't matter. Edge plays direct links of HEVC in MP4 format but Fails to play MKV.

  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Feb 25, 2020

    HotCakeX, MELERIX  and Rohit Yadav -- to give you all an update: our media team is actively investigating this right now. Thank you again for letting us know about this, it was helpful! We'll let you know if/when there are more updates.

     

    Fawkes (they/them)
    Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

    • shaileshr1290's avatar
      shaileshr1290
      Copper Contributor
      Apr 07, 2020
      legacy edge is capable of playing 4K Netflix since it has H.265 support while the new edge chromium restricts the playback to 1080p due to the lack of H.265/HEVC support
    • HotCakeX's avatar
      HotCakeX
      MVP
      Feb 25, 2020

      Deleted 

       

      By the way I was just talking to one of my friends in Mozilla community, I brought up the topic about MKV and HVEC/H.265 support. he said that the reason why Mozilla Firefox is not supporting HVEC is because of the license cost that is expensive.

      Firefox is using OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc. H.265 is not open source so they are not supporting it.

       

      he said that he doesn't know why Firefox is not supporting MKV, it costs nothing to add support for it.

      there is even a bug tracking it in Bugzilla but that's just it.

       

       

      however Microsoft's story is different, because Edge already supports H.265 which is a big advantage, all the puzzle pieces are already present. only needs the free open source MKV support to be complete 🙂

       

    • Rohit Yadav's avatar
      Rohit Yadav
      Bronze Contributor
      Feb 25, 2020

      Deleted I just had one more query related to YouTube, if you could answer that...

      In the legacy Edge, if I navigated to youtube.com/testtube , it listed one option to switch codecs between AV1 & VP9 for higher quality playbacks, but in the new Edge, this option is not listed. I don't knwo the behavior for other browsers, since I have only Edge on my PCs. Can you please throw some light on this, if you can? 

      • HotCakeX's avatar
        HotCakeX
        MVP
        Feb 25, 2020

        Rohit Yadav 

        Rohit Yadav wrote:

        Deleted I just had one more query related to YouTube, if you could answer that...

        In the legacy Edge, if I navigated to youtube.com/testtube , it listed one option to switch codecs between AV1 & VP9 for higher quality playbacks, but in the new Edge, this option is not listed. I don't knwo the behavior for other browsers, since I have only Edge on my PCs. Can you please throw some light on this, if you can? 

         

        about other browsers, he is how it looks like on Firefox nightly 75

        https://www.youtube.com/account_playback

         

         

        and on Edge canary 82

         

         

        I also have a question, is AV1 better than VP9 in terms of video quality? because I know VP9 beats AV1 when it comes to file size in the same resolution and frame rate but not sure about quality.

         

         

Resources