How to enable HEVC on AVD VDI

Question

Hello all,

I'm deploying Azure Virtual Desktop Personal VDI's of the Standard NV4ads V710 v5 type.

I'm trying to enable HEVC inside the vdi, but am stuck at AVC for the moment.

I've followed the complete guidance as stated in: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/graphics-enable-gpu-acceleration?tabs=group-policy#enable-gpu-accelerated-application-rendering-and-remote-frame-encoding

The intune policies are correctly applied; on the machine I can see following regkeys present:

HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services  

·         bEnumerateHWBeforeSW - DWord -      1

·         HEVCHardwareEncodePreferred -   DWord -     1

Also all other prerequisites are in place:

• Intune Policies set
• HEVC Video Extension installed on local machine as well as vdi
• No multimedia redirection components were installed on the machine. Out of the box these components don’t seem to be present and we didn’t deploy them
• We connect through the latest Windows App
• GPU Acceleration is working

Does anybody see what I'm missing?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I've checked all prerequisites and they all seem to be in place.

the one I'm not sure of is: Multimedia redirection must be disabled on the session host.

It doesn't really say how to disable it. As far as I can see, it is disabled out of the box and you have to install components to enable it. We didn't deploy these components so I assume that it is disabled.

Is there a way to be sure?

Answer 2

Theyssens Filip (Ext.)

Based on Microsoft’s if all prerequisites are met but the client device or session doesn’t fully satisfy HEVC decode requirements, Azure Virtual Desktop will automatically fall back to AVC/H.264.

For HEVC/H.265 to be used, all of the following must be true:

• The local client GPU must support HEVC (H.265) hardware decode (4K YUV 4:2:0).
• The Microsoft HEVC codec must be present on the client device (Store or Windows App–installed version).
• The session must be full‑screen, using a Desktop application group (RemoteApp isn’t supported).
• Multimedia redirection must be disabled on the session host.
• The session host must be using supported GPU drivers (Azure‑provided drivers only).

If any one of these is missing, AVC is expected and by design.

Please verify the active codec by opening Connection Information > Graphics details inside the session, or check Event ID 162 under RemoteDesktopServices‑RdpCoreCDV to confirm whether HevcProfile is negotiated.

Enable GPU acceleration for Azure Virtual Desktop - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/graphics-enable-gpu-acceleration?tabs=intune