Microsoft is currently testing out a new feature in the Edge Canary channel dubbed Video Super Resolution. The feature is powered by AI technology from Microsoft research and is designed to upscale videos with low resolutions in Edge. It makes use of machine learning to enhance the quality of these videos.
The company highlighted that “one out of three videos are played at 480p or a lower resolution in Microsoft Edge.” There are a couple of reasons why the video quality might be low. First up, the media provider served a low-resolution video, low network bandwidth, or the video itself might be of low quality.
It is very apparent that watching poor-quality videos isn’t an enjoyable experience, especially if you are doing that on a device that ships with high-resolution capabilities and is connected to a stable internet connection. It just doesn’t cut it. Poor-quality videos are blurry and make it impossible for users to follow fast-moving objects.
Video Super Resolution essentially cleans up low-quality videos by getting rid of compression artifacts and then upscaling the video resolution. However, this new capability will be limited to certain devices because of the computation power required to upscale these videos.
The device must have either an Nvidia RTX 20/30/40 series or an AMD RX5700-RX7800 series GPU. Additionally, the video being upscaled must be less than 720p resolution. What’s more, the video’s height and width must be greater than 192 pixels. The device must also be connected to AC power.
Another condition that must be met is that the video shouldn’t be protected using Digital Rights Management technologies like PlayReady or Widevine. This is because it restricts the use of frames which are required during the upscaling process.
Microsoft has indicated that it is also working on automatic Hybrid GPU support for laptops with multiple GPUs. In the meantime, it recommends the use of VSR by changing Windows settings, which will force Edge to run on your discrete GPU.
At the moment, this feature is available to 50% of users that are part of Edge’s Canary Channel and they should be able to access the feature as long as their devices meet the set requirements highlighted above.
If the feature is available for you, you’ll see an HD icon in your address bar. You can click on it to upscale videos with low quality on Edge, and click on it once more to disable it. Alternatively, you can enable the feature manually by toggling on the edge://flags/#edge-video-super-resolution flag.
Have you accessed this feature? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section.