Microsoft Edge will support Google’s WebM video format this summer

With the arrival of the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10 this summer, Microsoft’s Edge browser will receive support for Google’s open source WebM container format. The recent Windows 10 Insider Build already has support built in.

Starting with build 14291 of Windows 10, which is currently available to test users in the fast ring, Edge can handle WebM and therefore the VP9 video codec and the Opus audio codec, Microsoft reports. Sometime this summer, Microsoft will bring the functionality, along with many other additions, to the operating system with the Anniversary Update.

Microsoft states to build in the support to make building interoperable websites easier and to offer an alternative format for compressing 4k video content. The company calls VP9 and Opus efficient codecs, but states that there is still little support for hardware decoding for VP9, ​​unlike for h264.

At the same time, Microsoft shows that software decoding at a higher resolution can lead to a significant decrease in battery life. VP9 support is therefore still experimental and will be enabled automatically when hardware acceleration support is detected. Also, VP9 is not yet supported on Windows 10 Mobile.