Microsoft Edge Releases Video Upscaler for Improved Blurry Old Videos
Tags: microsoftgraph, microsftedge, ai
Published: 2023-03-13 06:49:57


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Microsoft Edge releases video upscaler to enhance blurry videos. Microsoft has revealed Video Super Resolution (VSR), a beta video-upscaling feature for Edge that uses machine learning to increase the resolution of low-quality videos. The announcement was made on Edge Insiders blog. Microsoft's VSR technology can remove blocky compression artifacts, and improve text clarity on videos on platforms like YouTube. This feature is still in development and is only available to the Canary channel of Edge within Microsoft's Insider program.

You can try it out for yourself by following these guidelines: Microsoft VSR cannot work with video resolutions below 720p (if the video has a width of more than 192 pixels in height and width), and the video can't be protected using digital rights management (DRM). This technology, PlayReady or Widevine renders frames unusable for processing by the browser.

The majority of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max use DRM technology to copyright protect their content. This restriction could have an effect on what type of content can be upscaled using the function.

Microsoft VSR management devices must have an Nvidia RTX20-/ 30-/40-series graphics card, or an AMD Radeon series series GPU (RX5700 to RX7800). This support is also available for gaming laptops with discrete versions. However, the device must be powered from an external source and users will need to manually configure Windows settings to allow Edge to use the discrete GPU. Microsoft has yet to mention if VSR is capable of boosting 720p resolutions up to full HD 1080p.

Edge users have not been the only ones to benefit from this video scaling feature. Microsoft released Clarity Boost spatial scaling for Xbox Cloud Gaming in June 2013. This was designed to enhance the clarity and sharpness of Xbox games broadcast from the Edge browser.

Microsoft Edge Releasing Video Upscaler helps improve blurry videos. It's not a new feature. Since 2019, Nvidia has offered an early version RTX Super Resolution, the company's AI-upscaling engine on Shield TV devices. Intel is also developing a video-upscaling capability to support Chromium-based browsers. RTX Super Resolution is only available for computers with GeForce RTX40- or 30-series GPUs. However, it was recently added to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers.

According to Nvidia, Super Resolution can cause a slight loss of performance when used in conjunction with games or creative software that relies on the GPU. Microsoft has not mentioned any adverse effects on VSR performance.

Microsoft Edge's VSR feature has been launched on Canary channel for approximately 50 percent of users. To enable or disable the feature, users can tap the "HD" icon in the address bar.

Microsoft Edge released a new version last month that includes an integrated secure network VPN service. According to the inbuilt VPN, the web browser offers 1GB per month free VPN traffic and 15GB free data.

**ONNX Runtime & DirectML**

VSR in Microsoft Edge is built on top of ONNX and DirectML, making it portable across GPU vendors. This allows VSR to be made available to more people. Future support will be provided for additional graphics cards that support these technologies and have enough computing power. Over the years, the DirectML and ONNX Runtime teams have refined their technology. VSR makes the most of your graphics card's performance and capabilities. ONNX Runtime loads ML models as.onnx files. DirectML optimizes and evaluates the ML workload using the available GPU capabilities, such as native ML Tensor Processing. This allows for maximum execution throughput at high frame rates.

**Storing Machine Learning Modells**

VSR does not require any components or models to be added to your device. This is done in order to save disk space. Edge Canary detects a component called "Edge Video Super Resolution" by visiting edge://components/. This is an indication that your GPU supports the video super resolution feature. We can ship multiple models and specific models using this component-based approach, depending on the device's capability and performance.

**DirectX 11 Interop - DirectML**

We have created a DX12 presentation pipeline for Microsoft Edge to support VSR. Microsoft Edge, built on Chromium, uses DX11 to video decode/rasterization. DX11 textures are generated after video decode. DirectML, on the other side, only works with DX12 buffers. We built a flexible DX12 pipeline that supports VSR into the Chromium engine embedded in Microsoft Edge. Our pipeline converts DX11 textures to DirectML buffers/tensors that can be used with ONNX Runtime.

Thank You!