After ten months of hard work focused on the development of the new version of the popular multimedia package "FFmpeg 4.3" its developers announced its launch and availability to the general public.
This new version of FFmpeg 4.3 includes a lot of changes, of which maybe the most important of all is the added support for Vulkan graphical API, which comes with many new features.
For those unaware of ffmpeg, you should know that this it is a multimedia package widely known and used by a large number of applications, since includes a suite of applications and a collection of libraries for operations in various multimedia formats (recording, conversion and decoding of audio and video formats).
The package is distributed under the LGPL and GPL licenses, and the development of FFmpeg is carried out together with the MPlayer project.
Main new features of FFmpeg 4.3
As mentioned at the beginning, the main novelty of this new version is the added support for the Vulkan graphical API, but that also comes accompanied with other changes of which it is mentioned in the announcement that, for Linux, an encoder using AMD AMF / VCE engines is implemented for acceleration as well as options for typical filters avgblur_vulkan, overlay_vulkan, scale_vulkan, and chromaber_vulkan.
The VDPAU (Video Decoding and Presentation) API can be used for hardware acceleration of VP9 video processing.
Besides that added the ability to encode AV1 video using the librav1e library, written in Rust and developed by the Xiph and Mozilla communities.
Continuing with the improvements for Linux, it is also highlighted that a transition was made from the frame server for non-linear editing of video streams AvxSynth, which has been in an abandoned state for 5 years, to the current branch AviSynth +.
While generally for mp4 media containers, support for multi-channel audio codec True HD lossless and a codec for three-dimensional MPEG-H 3D sound.
In addition, we can find new decoders added, which are: PFM, IMM5, Sipro ACELP.KELVIN, mvdv, mvha, mv30, NotchLC, Argonaut Games ADPCM, Rayman 2 ADPCM, Simon & Schuster Interactive ADPCM, High Voltage Software ADPCM, ADPCM IMA MTF, CDToons, Siren, DERF DF and CRI HCA.
The streamhash (muxer) media container package has been added and the ability to pack pcm and pgs into m2ts containers has been implemented.
Media container decoders added (demuxer): AV1 with extensions from App B, Argonaut Games ASF, Real War KVAG, Rayman 2 APM, LEGO Racers ALP (.tun and .pcm), FWSE, DERF, CRI HCA, Pro Pinball Series Soundbank.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Added support for ZeroMQ and RabbitMQ protocols (AMQP 0-9-1).
- The structure includes an image analyzer in WebP format.
- MJPEG and VP9 decoders were implemented, using the Intel QSV (Quick Sync Video) hardware acceleration mechanism, as well as the Intel QSV-based VP9 encoder.
- Extended support for 3GPP timed text subtitle subtitle styles.
- Added encoder binding on Microsoft Media Foundation API.
- Added ADPCM encoder for audio data used in games by Simon & Schuster Interactive.
Of the new filters added, the following stand out:
- v360 - Convert 360 degree videos to various formats.
- scroll: scrolls the video horizontally or vertically at a certain speed;
- arnndn - a speech noise suppression filter using a recurrent neural network;
- maskedmin and maskedmax - merge two video streams based on the differences from the third stream;
- median - A noise suppression filter that selects the middle pixel of a rectangle that fits the specified radius.
Finally for those interested in knowing more about it about this new release, you can check the full changelog this link.
While for those who want to install or update from FFmpeg you should know that this package is found in most Linux distributions or if you prefer you can download its source code for compilation from the link below.