We are just a few weeks out from seeing the release of the FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library with many new features and improvements for this widely-used open-source software.
Michael Niedermayer announced that he will soon begin relase preparations on FFmpeg 8.0. The FFmpeg 8.0 code should be branched in the next week or two and to then create the FFmpeg 8.0 release one or two weeks after that. So roughly by the end of August FFmpeg 8.0 should be christened.
FFmpeg 8.0 is introducing new decoders for RealVideo 6.0, ADPCM IMA Xbox, G.728, Sanyo LD-ADPCM, and APV for Samsung’s Advanced Professional Video. On the encoder side there is also encode support for APV, animated JPEG-XL encoding, and libx265 alpha layer encoding capabilities. There is also OpenHarmony encode and decode support.
For the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) there is VVC/H.266 support wired up. On the VVC side there is also VVC handling within Matroska containers.
FFmpeg’s Flash Video FLV v2 support also now supports more modern codecs plus can handle multi-track audio and video. FFmpeg 8.0’s MP4 muxer has also added CENC AV1 support.
Plus with FFmpeg 8.0 there are new AVX-512 optimizations, FFV1 improvements, a WHIP muxer for sub-second latency streaming, AV1 RTP packetizer/depacketizer, AMD AMF decoder, Vulkan Video enhancements, better HDR video support, and many other changes.
One feature that is not yet merged for FFmpeg 8.0 but could potentially make it in time is this recent work on adding OpenAI Whisper audio filter support to FFmpeg. This could provide AI-driven live subtitles/transcription support with FFmpeg.
Look for FFmpeg 8.0 to be released next month.
