Game-Changing News: Chromebooks Phasing Out Support for Two Major Video Formats!

Chromebooks are capable of playing most video and audio files without the need for an external player like VLC Media Player. However, Google has decided to remove two video formats from their supported list, considering them to be outdated and uncommon.

Recently, Google introduced a new experimental feature in the codebase for Chromium, the foundation for Google Chrome, Chrome OS, and other related projects. The code commit includes a description stating that a new switch called chrome://flags/#cros-legacy-media-formats has been added, allowing users to control the support for MPEG4+AVI content. This flag will remain active until M126, the upcoming LTS release, as long as no significant issues arise. After that, both the flag and its supporting code will be removed.

Support for MPEG4 video streams and AVI has been removed from Chrome OS, including both in-browser video and the basic video player in the Files app. AVI, a proprietary video container format, was created by Microsoft in 1992 and is not commonly encountered nowadays. MPEG4, a video codec commonly used in .MP4, .MOV, and .AVI files, was largely replaced by H.264 in the mid-2000s. It is unclear whether Google is referring to older MPEG4 video specifically, and there is no public information on the tracking issue for this change.

This is not the first time Google has dropped support for media formats on Chromebooks. According to a support article, the AMR audio codec and GSM audio files have been removed previously, although they are less commonly used compared to AVI or MPEG4. Chrome OS can still open most 3GP, MOV, MP4, M4V, M4A, MP3, MKV, OGV, OGM, OGG, OGA, WebM, and WAV media files, depending on the video and audio codec. However, dropping support for MPEG4 video encoding will result in MP4, MOV, and 3GP files not working.

Most Chromebook owners will likely not notice the change, and if you encounter a media file that cannot be opened, it will likely still be compatible with VLC Media Player. Google's plan is to completely eliminate support for the formats in Chrome OS 126, which is scheduled to be launched in 2024.