We will support HEVC playback via Media Foundation transform (MFT).
HEVC playback will be supported via the Media Foundation Transform (MFT) and WMF decoder module will check if there is any avaliable MFT which can be used for HEVC then reports the support information.
HEVC playback can only be support on (1) users have purchased paid HEVC extension on their computer (SW decoding) (2) HEVC hardware decoding is available on users’ computer
For now, I’d like to only enable HEVC for the media engine playback, but keep the HEVC default off on the MFT. Because the media engine is an experimental feature, which is off by default, it’s fine to enable HEVC for that.
HEVC playback needs hardware decoding, and it currently only support on Windows. HEVC playback check would be run when the task is in the mda-gpu, which has the ability for hardware decoding. On other platforms, HEVC should not be supported.
This is not a good announcement. Why would they do this?
Windows users have been asking for HEVC support for years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332136
7 years ago, this was the answer:
Mozilla currently has no plans to support H.265. Our focus will be on AV1.
The reason we won’t support H265 has nothing to do with the difficulty in finding a decoder, or that a decoder source code is released under GPL. Those are trivial matters.
We will not support h265 video while its patent encumbered.
BTW, even today vp9 provides better results than H265.
The conversation changed to, “Firefox could at least do hardware decode support without worrying about patents, right?”
My guess is they’re doing this because Chrome added HEVC hardware decoding support last year.
So fuck users that do don’t use Windows right? Firefox contributing to the fragmentation of the web and pushing users to surveillance software is the exact opposite of what it should be doing.
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