Jagged edges on HD HTML5 videos

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For some reason, videos which have higher resolution than my monitor end up having jagged edges on HTML5 videos (on Vimeo, YouTube etc.). This does not seem to occur if the video is being played through flash player or if the video is being played on my media player.

One of the related topic on this matter was this. But that is not a solution for the client side of things. Also found this, but once again not a fix/solution

Is there a way to fix those jagged (aliased as in not anti-aliased) edges? This happens on both IE11 and Google Chrome (version 36.0.1985.125 m).

Take a look at this two images for clarification:

If you view both images at full resolution, you can notice the edges being too sharp.


The reason I play a higher than required resolution video is because my monitor is at 1600x900, so 720p videos look slightly out of focus or not that detailed compared to 1080p videos.


Update 1: Interestingly, this seems to be a problem with what codec a video is being played on. I tried the two following videos which played through two different encoders: Image 1, Image 2. The problem occurs in the first one and not the second. According to the encoding options here, I have a problem playing H.264/AVC videos (which has an itag of 248; mp4) and no problem playing VP8 videos (which has an itag of 137; WebM) through the YouTube HTML5 player.

Update 2: The problem seems to be in the DXVA Video Decoder. Disabling Hardware-Accelerated Video Decoder (chrome://flags/#disable-accelerated-video-decode) under chrome://flags fixes the issue. This issue is being worked on at the moment here. A revision has already been made to Chromium as noted here. This fix should be implemented into the regular Chrome release channel soon. (Thanks to omnoms for the update).

Update 3 (11/19/2014): The problem has been fixed on the Dev version of Google Chrome: 40.0.2214.10. I will mark this question as answered/fixed once it goes down to the Stable Channel in a couple of weeks.

Update 4 (12/18/2014): Fix issued in 39.0.2171.95m.

Afzal

Posted 2014-07-26T01:03:30.260

Reputation: 1 225

I have the issue and I hate it. Videos are full of aliasing. Did you happen to find a solution? – Sandro Antonucci – 2014-08-09T12:27:43.757

@SandroAntonucci No, I did not unfortunately, I switch browsers when using YouTube. Care to add a few more details on what browser you are having this issue with and computer specs. Upvote the question and perhaps it'll get a bit more attention. – Afzal – 2014-08-10T21:40:27.230

For me it happens with Chrome Version 37.0.2062.68 beta-m. I noticed it also happens when you playback something not in full screen but the player size is smaller that video's resolution. Basically upscaling is great, downscaling is horrible. It doesn't happen on latest Firefox beta. – Sandro Antonucci – 2014-08-11T22:40:44.450

I uninstalled the Chrome I had (stable channel) and switched to the Dev channel (Version 38.0.2114.2 dev-m (64-bit)). Still having the problem. Can you also verify if your case matches with what I mentioned in my Update (in bold, at the bottom of the question)? – Afzal – 2014-08-13T07:17:29.763

Answers

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The fix to this issue is now down to the stable channel release, and as of now is included with 39.0.2171.95 m version of Google Chrome.

Afzal

Posted 2014-07-26T01:03:30.260

Reputation: 1 225

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I know this is quite old, but refer to this link:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=351458

There's an upcoming bugfix for chrome with regards to aliasing in html5 players.

omnoms

Posted 2014-07-26T01:03:30.260

Reputation: 11

Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link, as the answer can become invalid if the linked page changes or the target site is unreachable/permanently offline. – DavidPostill – 2014-11-10T07:34:29.327

I have added the gist as an update to the original post. Thanks for the update! – Afzal – 2014-11-11T09:01:32.247