FFmpeg 8.1 is out today as the newest stable release of this widely-used, open-source multimedia library.
We’ve known this release was on approach and since earlier this month have been looking out for it with its many exciting improvements. FFmpeg 8.1 brings Apple ProRes Vulkan acceleration using compute shaders, Apple ProRes Vulkan-accelerated video encoding, Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) Vulkan hardware acceleration, Vulkan compute codec optimizations, Vulkan software scale “swscale” support, among other Vulkan-related improvements. FFmpeg 8.1 also introduces initial JPEG-XS support with a JPEG-XS parser as well as JPEG-XS encoding and decoding via the SVT-JPEG-XS project with its libsvtjpegxs library. There is also JPEG-XS bitstream muxing and demuxing included.
Other FFmpeg 8.1 changes include Direct3D 12 AV1 encoder support, EXIF metadata parsing, tiled HEIF support from the FFmpeg CLI, IAMF Projection mode Ambisonic Audio Elements muxing and demuxing, and experimental xHE-AAC MPS212 decoding support.
Plus bug fixes and other enhancements also make up FFmpeg 8.1. Downloads and more details on FFmpeg 8.1 can be found via FFmpeg.org.
Posted today on the Khronos Blog is also more information on FFmpeg’s Vulkan video encoding/decoding support with compute shaders for codecs not covered by the Vulkan Video extensions.
