Enabling HEVC/H.265 Playback for Forum Videos

How-Tos & Esk8 mechanics How-Tos
#1

There has been some inaccurate information spreading on the forums that playback of HEVC videos is exclusive to Apple devices. This is not the case at all. The native Movies & TV app, VLC, and many other dedicated media players can play these files on any operating system. Most browsers currently refuse to support HEVC because of the high licensing fees associated with it. This, for once, has nothing to do with Apple, and everything to do with the MPEG-LA. This post shows how to enable playback in Movies & TV and a custom version of Chromium capable of in browser playback.

HEVC playback in the Movies & TV app in Windows 10 can be enabled for free by installing a codec package from the Windows Store, linked below. Note that this package is not accessible via search.

ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq

However, this is not an optimal solution for viewing videos on the forum, as one must download each video they want to view individually and open another app to view them. Browser playback would be much more useful. During the time when Microsoft Edge was its own app and not a skinned version of Chromium, browser playback when the above package installed was possible. It is not clear why this was removed when Edge switched to using Chromium.

Update: @Sta has released compiled builds of Chromium for Windows, Mac, and Linux that support hardware decoding and HDR support for HEVC straight out of the box. The binaries are available on their GitHub page:

Thank you so much for making these releases available!

Old approach (software decoding and only available for Windows):

After some research, I’ve found a that version of Chromium for Windows that is compiled with HEVC support does exist, and is linked below.

https://chromium.woolyss.com/#windows-64-bit

When downloading, use the version compiled by Marmaduke and I suggest either using the installer exe or the archive.

chromium
chromium1840Ă—474 88 KB

Once Chromium is installed or unarchived, navigate to chrome://flags/#enable-clear-hevc-for-testing and enable this flag. Relaunch Chromium and browser playback for HEVC videos will be enabled, confirmed by me to work on videos posted here. Note that I also have the codec pack installed and I am unsure whether this is necessary for playback to function.

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#2

I would assume that this Chromium alternative would not update with the latest Chrome security updates and whatnot?

Would it work with existing extensions? If not, it’s a cool solution but definitely one I won’t use

What is Chromium anyway? I know it’s the background software that runs a lot of browsers, but is it a browser itself? I exclusively use Chrome for day to day stuff

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#3

Updates are manual, unfortunately, but tend to be released about a day after the Chromium project releases them.

It will work with existing Chrome extensions, as long as they don’t depend on Google software.

Chromium is the open-source backend to Chrome and many other browsers. It is a browser itself, identical in looks to Chrome and extremely similar in functionality. However, you cannot download it in compiled form directly from the project, you must compile it yourself.

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#4

Hmm… I see. So it’s kind of a solution, but not quite

So dumb that default chrome doesn’t just support this already

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#5

I agree. Unfortunately, both Google and Mozilla have labeled HEVC support wontfix on their bug trackers, so it doesn’t look like it’s something that’s gonna change. Google in particular has their own VP9 codec that is a direct competitor to HEVC, so I can see why they won’t add support. Edge seemed to be on the right track for a while, but eventually dropped all initial support.

If I find a more elegant solution for enabling support in Chromium/Chrome, or any other browser, I’ll definitely post an update.

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#6

H.265 is patented, that’s why most browsers don’t support it afaik. At least that’s the case with mozilla/firefox. Focus is instead set on AV1.

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#7

I thought my apple gif might trigger someone :blush:

Good findings. I read about the extension and ffmpeg method some a while back but it seems like a workaround.

Someone using apples default high efficiency setting has been the culprit 100% of the time for users that I’ve seen asking about it here. Unless you’re shooting 4k higher frame video regularly, that seems to be the easiest “fix” if you will.

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#8

So still no solution for my main devices: a Chromebook and an Android

#9

You can download every video and watch it :upside_down_face:

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#10

Correct, no in browser playback, though it appears that HEVC software decoding capability is present in Android 5.0 and up and in ChromeOS. Hardware decoding is device-dependent. Seems like another case of Google pushing its own VP9 and AV1 codecs, whose progress would be hurt by enabling HEVC playback in the browser.

On both devices, VLC should be capable of playing videos outside the browser.

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#11

Some food for thought: in Windows, Android, and ChromeOS, HEVC content can be played as long as it’s DRM protected :upside_down_face:

Most major streaming services provide high resolution content exclusively in HEVC. Microsoft Edge on Windows, devices like the Nvidia Shield, and the Chromecast can all play 4K HEVC content from Netflix, for example, on their respective OSes.

I can think of no good reason these features aren’t usable by the general public.

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#12

Hey I have 2 of these!

#13

hey ! you can try this: githubcom/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-decoding/releases

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#14

thank you so much for this! your solution is much more elegant than the one I found because it uses hardware decoding whenever possible and even supports HDR on Windows and Mac. added to the original post!