One of several codecs coming to Edge
Microsoft this week announced that it's planning to support the open source VP9 codec first developed by Google and the WebM container in its Edge browser for Windows 10. Initial support will roll out to Windows Insider Preview builds sometime "soon," and we suspect general availability won't be far behind.
"Our implementation of VP9 will support software decoding and, when supported by the device, hardware decoding. Since decoding video is computationally complex, the best experience with the software decoder will be seen on more powerful desktop and laptop computers," Microsoft stated in a blog post.
Since this is a sort of rolling test, VP9 will at first be implemented behind an experimental flag in Edge as Microsoft works with industry partners to broaden support for hardware decoding. There will be a setting in Edge to enable or disable VP9 support, and users will also be able to change its default behavior via about:flags in the browser.
VP9 is a royalty-free alternative to the H.265 codec. Both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox already support VP9, so adding Edge to the mix will ensure that it receives widespread attention on the web.
At the outset, Edge will tap the VP9 codec for streaming video in combination with MP4/AAC and other audio codecs already supported by Microsoft. In the future, Microsoft will add VP9 support for media tags and local playback.
The timing of the announcement comes less than a week after Microsoft became a founding member of the newly formed Alliance for Open Media. In addition to targeting VP9, Microsoft is also considering support for other open source audio and video formats like OGG, Opus, and Vorbis.
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