FFmpeg 6.0 Will Be Big With AV1 Hardware Decoding, Many Other Features

Well known multimedia developer and VideoLAN president Jean-Baptiste Kempf presented at FOSDEM 2023 this weekend on the upcoming FFmpeg 6.0 release as well as dav1d v1.1.

Following last winter's FFmpeg 5.0 release, the open-source developers involved with this widely-used multimedia library are working now towards FFmpeg 6.0 that will hopefully be out still this winter. Among the key changes to get excited about are AV1 hardware decoding across Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD GPUs. FFmpeg 6.0 will also bring multi-threading support to the FFmpeg command-line, RISC-V architecture optimizations, API changes, and more.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf also outlined the new decoders and filters coming, Android media enhancements, and then also the big undertaking around the FFmpeg CLI multi-threading.

The FFmpeg project remains focused on delivering one major release per year with ABI/API breakage and then one or two minor releases that follow. FFmpeg LTS releases remain positioned to happen every two years with the next one being FFmpeg 7.1 in 2024.

Coming up meanwhile with dav1d 1.1 for that open-source AV1 decoder are many fixes, more AVX2 and AVX-512 work, Arm NEON additions, and other improvements.

Those interested in learning more about the latest development work around FFmpeg 6.0 and these VideoLAN projects can see Jean-Baptiste Kempf's slides (PDF) from his FOSDEM 2023 presentation. The video recording should also be available soon.