Microsoft is looking to improve browsers like Edge and Chrome by addressing annoying video playback issues for smoother browsing
Microsoft’s Edge and Google’s Chrome browsers could be getting improvements when it comes to media playback when it comes to embedded videos on websites, so that those clips won’t begin playing before they’re visible. Or, at least, that’s Microsoft’s goal based on work apparently underway in Chromium, the open-source engine that powers both Edge and Chrome (plus other web browsers).
Microsoft’s proposed change would cause media playback to pause while a video has not yet fully rendered on a given page. Currently, you can get a situation where a website is still loading – and an embedded video has not yet appeared – but it starts playing and you get audio without video.
Microsoft’s update pauses the video while the browser is still loading the web page and video clip, and only plays it once everything is finished (and the video is displayed on the screen). This is clearly a much better way to make things work, as it doesn’t just play audio out of nowhere for a short period of time before the embedded video clip actually appears in the browser.
Often this problem arises due to the way media is embedded in websites (or web apps). The most common way is through ‘iframes’. An iframe, short for inline frame, is a web page element that essentially loads another ‘page’ within the original web page. That content can be temporarily hidden while the parent website loads.
This sequence of events causes the audio of an embedded video to play before the image portion of the video is rendered. This can be confusing or disturbing. You might even think that there is a problem with your PC.
Microsoft Proposed Changes to Chromium
Microsoft’s proposal to achieve this is to introduce a new policy for Chromium to govern how iframe media playback works. Essentially, the policy will determine whether the embedded video (the iframe) has been rendered, and if it hasn’t, the video clip – both audio and visual – will be paused while the rendering process continues. Playback won’t begin until everything has fully rendered and the video clip has appeared in the browser.
This incoming change for Chromium was spotted by Windows LatestBut it’s still early days for this potential move by Microsoft. It may take some time for the feature to be developed and implemented in Edge and Chrome (or other web browsers), and it will also need to be tested before it makes it into the release versions of those browsers.
We may be able to test the feature in a few months, so fingers crossed. I imagine this could make browsing more enjoyable and less distracting, especially when multiple videos are embedded in a web page. The good news is that it’s not just Microsoft Edge users who will benefit, but also people using other Chromium-based browsers, as we mentioned.