Microsoft Edge can now use AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to scale web videos
NVIDIA video card owners already have the luxury of video upscaling in Chrome or Edge, but what if you have a AMD card? Microsoft thinks this can help. It is essay a video super resolution feature in Edge Canary that upscales and removes artifacts on web videos below 720p using GPUs powered by AMD and NVIDIA (sorry, Arc Intel fans). You’ll need at least a GeForce RTX 20 or Radeon RX5700 series, but it might help if you’re watching an old YouTube video or want to save bandwidth on a capped data plan.
There are certain conditions. This is only for Windows users, to begin with. You need to sign in if you’re using a laptop and the video can’t use a digital rights management (DRM) system like PlayReady or Widevine. Currently, you will also need to force Edge to use your dedicated GPU if your laptop has a hybrid graphics configuration. Automatic support for hybrid video is in development, according to Microsoft.
The technology is based on GPU-independent algorithms. Microsoft had to add a DirectX 12 pipeline to Google’s Chromium engine (which normally uses DirectX 11) so that its machine learning framework could interact with the browser. Compression helps keep the computational load relatively light.
Super resolution video is only available to a handful of Edge Canary users at the moment, but should hit more users in the “coming weeks,” the company adds. It also plans to expand the list of supported GPUs, so don’t be discouraged if your hardware isn’t initially compatible. Be patient if you are not ready to use experimental software – it will probably take some time before betas and enhanced versions support the feature.
