Introduction

One of the features of Thinwire+ is “build to lossless” for transient content. This means that content such as 3D or other moving imagery is initially displayed at low quality to improve frame rates and overall interactivity. Once user input has stopped, transient images are gradually sharpened to lossless.
Up to and including XenApp & XenDesktop 7.17, build to lossless has always been JPEG-based. The JPEG codec can produce distorted results when bandwidth is low, particularly for fine line content.

Feature Description

From XenApp and XenDesktop 7.18, Build to Lossless now prefers H.264 over JPEG. H.264 offers superior image quality than JPEG at the same bandwidth, especially in WAN conditions.
This feature is available on both Windows VDAs and Linux VDAs.

Configuration Considerations and Limitations

The H.264 build to lossless feature is enabled by policy in Studio:

1. Set Visual quality policy to Build to Lossless
2. Set Use Video Codec policy to Use when preferred (default) or For actively changing regions.

H.264 build to lossless is only possible if the client Receiver supports Selective H.264. Currently, this limits support of the H.264 build to lossless to Receiver for Windows and Receiver for Linux.
If the H.264 build to lossless feature has been enabled in Studio, but if the Receiver type does not support Selective H.264, then build to lossless will fallback to JPEG-based.
Admins can force JPEG-based build to lossless by setting the Use Video Codec policy to Do not use.

The selective H.264 feature supports hardware encoding, so it is possible to use hardware encoding for H.264 build to lossless too.