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Are there any web browsers out there that can playback the H.265 / MPEG-4 HEVC codec in a html5 video element? On what platform or hardware?

I heard rumours about HEVC support in Edge when hardware decoding is available. With current GPUs and CPUs shipping with HEVC hardware decoding I wonder which other browser vendors are following. Firefox already works like this for H.264

Duvrai
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    As this ranks #1 on Google: Any news here 3 1/2 years later ? – Sliq Dec 04 '19 at 17:48
  • @Sliq Seems to work on Safari as caniuser claims, https://stackoverflow.com/a/51812229/3852918 sums upon which devices. – Remy Jan 14 '20 at 15:43
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    @Sliq Better bet on VP8/VP9 which is supported by all modern browsers, and fallback to H.264 for legacy ones. – Franklin Yu Apr 12 '20 at 03:25
  • For anyone coming after all these years, check this [caniuse](https://caniuse.com/hevc). – yqlim Feb 11 '22 at 02:28

4 Answers4

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No, no browser supports H.265. And wide support is not likely to be added in the near future.

EDIT:

I updated the question because there are reports of it working in Edge when hardware decoding is available.

This is a good point.

In this case, the browser still does not support it. It is offloading decoding to the OS (Windows), and the OS is offloading to the hardware. But the result is the same as having browser support. This becomes cheaper, because the license was paid for by the chip company.

Background:

H.265 licensing has historically been extremely expensive. In some cases orders of magnitude more expensive than H.264. MPEG-LA and HEVC Advance patent pools expected companies like apple and Microsoft to pay for it. But they got too greedy (specifically HEVC Advance) by eliminating price caps, so Microsoft would have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for H.265, where H.264 caps out in the low millions. HEVC Advance has changed the licensing policy, but it may be too late, as google Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Cisco, Mozilla and others are developing a royalty free alternative (under the name Alliance for Open Media) so online video can never be held hostage again.

Ivan Beldad
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szatmary
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  • I updated the question because there are [reports](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-developer/suggestions/10311075-hevc-support) of it working in Edge when hardware decoding is available. – Duvrai Apr 03 '16 at 21:30
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    This is an awesome answer, I was wondering what was "taking" so long, but the hostage situation makes sense. I hope the Alliance can create something better than webm was, though. – degenerate May 11 '16 at 21:50
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    It looks like Apple resolved the licensing problem. HEVC support is coming to macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and iOS 11. – Duvrai Jun 05 '17 at 20:06
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    We'll see. It may be too little to late for HEVC. There was a third patent pool announced on March 31, 2017. So well see how that goes for companies that don't have a quarter trillion cash on hand. And encoding.com has reported that their demand for HEVC has fallen from 6%, to 3%. While apples support is interesting, My money is still on VP9/AV1 – szatmary Jun 06 '17 at 00:53
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It works in IE and Edge but only if there is hardware support. It's also reported to work in Android browser and Chrome for Android on some devices that have hardware support.

Source: https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc

n.b. If you strive to use h.265 to embed better quality video in your web content you should also consider transcoding and including webm: http://caniuse.com/webm/embed/. Support is flaky as well, but will absolutely improve rapidly as chip manufacturers are increasingly including hardware acceleration for both standards (HEVC and VP9)

Jurriaan Roelofs
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    HEVC will be supported in Safari 11 on both macOS and iOS. It should be noted that it will not be supported on macOS 10.12 or below (Safari will be backported). On iOS it will be limited to devices with A9 or newer CPU: iPhone 6s, "iPad" (5th Gen) and iPad Pro. – Duvrai Jun 07 '17 at 20:08
  • webm doesnt allow x265 + opus, which the most bandwidth efficient. i were able to contain that pair only inside mkv – Offenso Aug 07 '17 at 11:07
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    @Offenso the point of using webm is to use VP9 *instead of* H.265 – forresthopkinsa Feb 21 '19 at 00:20
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Chromium can support h.265 when compiled with the aforementioned codec enabled during compilation.

Check it out - https://github.com/henrypp/chromium/releases

Those are all 64 bit releases, so make sure you install them on 64 Bit Windows only.

Community
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GokuSenpai
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Edge on Windows 10 supports HEVC if the appropriate app is installed from the Microsoft Store.

Paid: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/hevc-video-extensions/9nmzlz57r3t7?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

Free: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/hevc-video-extensions-from-device-manufacturer/9n4wgh0z6vhq?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

Satyen
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