Q. How do I disable multimedia redirection for RDP connections?

A. RDP is as efficient as possible with the available network bandwidth while giving the best user experience possible. One mechanism it uses to perform this is multimedia redirection, which allows raw multimedia data to be sent from the remote server to the RDP client and then rendered locally, instead of rendering on the remote session and sending the bitmap updates (which would use more bandwidth).

Multimedia redirection is enabled by default based on the capabilities of the client. You can disable it by editing the RDP file you use for the connection. Find the line videoplaybackmode:i:1 and change it to videoplaybackmode:i:0 and save the change. Multimedia redirection will now be disabled, so all rendering will be performed on the remote session.