Windows 10 – High Efficiency Video Encoding

High Efficiency Video Encoding is also known as the H.265 or x265 video compression standard. The x265 standard is a successor of the x264 standard, both of which are MPEG video coding standards.

Since the new HEVC encoded videos (and even images in the case of Apple’s HEIF format since iOS version 11) are becoming more and more the standard, it was a nuisance to see Microsoft remove the HEVC Video Codec from Windows 10 end of 2017. Licensing issues were the cause of this.

Of course it is possible to use a third party application to convert the HEIF files (extension .heic) to a different image format, and play HEVC videos (VLC comes to mind), but would it not also be nice to have direct support for these modern image and video formats in Windows 10?

Well, it is possible, for a price… The Windows Store has the HEVC Video Extensions available at $0.99. This will give you the support for .heic files (an extension for only .heif files is free) as well as H.265 video.

But why not try to get a free Windows 10 extension for HEVC support? If you search for HEVC Video Extensions you might not find it, but here is a direct link to the HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer. This is intended for OEMs that have already licensed the codec, but from the link it should install on any system running the latest version of Windows 10 (with compatible hardware of course). Another option is to download the HEVC Video Extension from free-codecs.

Try it out, and add support for playing 4K (UHD) content directly on your Windows 10 system. If you have an Apple device, you can now also open the image files with .heic extensions!

Note on the screenshots: I checked the Windows 10 Store on an older Windows 10 version, hence the grayed out Bet and Buy buttons.