Microsoft’s Edge Canary now features a Video Super Resolution option that upscales web videos under 720p and removes artifacts using AMD- and NVIDIA-powered GPUs. This feature helps users with an AMD board since NVIDIA video card owners already have this luxury in Chrome or Edge. However, the user must have at least a GeForce RTX 20 series or Radeon RX5700 for this to work. This is only available for Windows users, and the video cannot use digital rights management (DRM) systems such as PlayReady or Widevine. Presently, users with hybrid graphics setups on their laptops will have to force Edge to use their dedicated GPU, although automatic hybrid video support is in development.
The new technology relies on GPU-agnostic algorithms, and Microsoft has had to add a DirectX 12 pipeline to Google’s Chromium engine to enable its machine-learning framework to interact with the browser. It is relatively light on computational load, thanks to compression.
At the moment, Video Super Resolution is only available to a select group of Edge Canary users. However, Microsoft has announced that it will come to more users in the “coming weeks,” and plans to expand its list of supported GPUs. It is worth noting that users who don’t want to use experimental software may have to wait a while before betas and polished versions support the feature.
