by 
FFmpeg 6.1 open-source multimedia framework has been released today as a major update that brings new features, new decoders, new filters, and many other changes.
Coming more than eight months after FFmpeg 6.0 “Von Neumann”, the FFmpeg 6.1 release is dubbed “Heaviside” and introduces multi-threaded Vulkan-powered hardware accelerated decoding supporting H264, HEVC, and AV1 codecs, as well as a VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) AV1 encoder.
It also adds support for HEVC, VP9, and AV1 codecs in enhanced FLV and RTMP formats, a Playdate video decoder and demuxer, an OSQ demuxer and decoder, Essential Video Coding parser, muxer, demuxer, and frame merge bsf, Raw AC-4 muxer and demuxer, and Raw VVC bitstream parser, muxer, and demuxer.
Support for the P_SKIP hinting to speed up libx264 encoding has been added as well in FFmpeg 6.1, which also introduces a vMix video decoder, a RivaTuner video decoder, a libaribcaption decoder, a Microsoft RLE video encoder, a CRI USM demuxer, and extends VAAPI support for libva-win32 on Windows.
As expected, new filters are present in this release, including afireqsrc audio source filter, arls filter, zoneplate video source filter, color_vulkan filter, bwdif_vulkan filter, nlmeans_vulkan filter, xfade_vulkan filter, bwdif_cuda filter, scale_vt and transpose_vt filters for VideoToolbox, as well as apsnr and asisdr audio filters.
In addition, FFmpeg 6.1 adds bitstream filters for editing metadata in VVC streams and for converting VVC from MP4 to Annex B. Also, command support has been added in the setpts and asetpts filters
Among other noteworthy changes, FFmpeg 6.1 deprecates the -top command-line option in favor of the setfield filter, changes the ffprobe XML output schema to account for multiple variable-fields elements within the same parent element, adds a new -readrate_initial_burst command-line option, and makes the ffprobe -output_format option an alias of -of.
FFmpeg 6.1 is available for download right now from the official website and includes several updated components like libavutil 58.29.100, libavcodec 60.31.102, libavformat 60.16.100, libavdevice 60.3.100, libavfilter 9.12.100, libswscale 7.5.100, libswresample 4.12.100, and libpostproc 57.3.100.
The next major FFmpeg release will be version 7.0, which is scheduled for release in February 2024.
Last updated 6 months ago
