14 DAY TRIAL // The open-source and cross-platform FFmpeg multimedia framework has been updated to version 4.0, a major release that introduces numerous new features and improvements.
Coming six months after the 3.x series, FFMpeg 4.0 introduces bitstream filters for editing metadata in H.264, MPEG-2, and HEVC streams, an experimental MagicYUV encoder, Nvidia NVDEC-accelerated H.264, MPEG-1/2/4, HEVC, VC1, VP8/9, and MJPE hwaccel decoding, and Intel QSV-accelerated MJPEG encoding.
New native aptX, aptX HD, and SBC encoders and decoders were implemented as well, along with VAAPI MJPEG and VP8 decoding support, a TiVo ty/ty+ demuxer, VideoToolbox HEVC encoder and hwaccel, E-AC-3 dependent frames support, as well as AMD AMF HEVC and H.264 encoders.
Support for LibreSSL, an open-source implementation of the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocols, was implemented via the libtls library, codec2 encoding and decoding support via the libcodec2 library, AV1 support through the libaom library, and Haivision SRT protocol support via the libsrt library.
FFmpeg 4.0 drops support for Microsoft's deprecated Windows XP operating system as the minimum supported version is now Windows Vista. This release also removes the ffserver program, as well as the ffmdec and ffmenc demuxer and muxer. More details are available in the release notes.
New filters and updated components
Lots of new filters have been added in this major FFmpeg release, among which we can mention the drmeter audio filter, hapqa_extract bitstream filter, vfrdet filter, filter_units bitstream filter, aiir audio filter, entropy video filter, video setrange filter, deconvolve video filter, video mix filter, and mcompand audio filter.
Additionally, there's the video fillborders filter, audio lv2 wrapper filter, acontrast audio filter, video normalize filter, OpenCL overlay filter, Intel QSV-accelerated overlay filter, VAAPI-accelerated ProcAmp (color balance), denoise and sharpness filters, a bitstream filter for extracting E-AC-3 core, as well as hilbert audio filter source.
The FFmpeg 4.0 release was cut from master on 2018-04-16 and officially released on April 20, 2018. It consists of the libavutil 56. 14.100, libavcodec 58. 18.100, libavformat 58. 12.100, libavdevice 58. 3.100, libavfilter 7. 16.100, libswscale 5.1.100, libswresample 3.1.100, and libpostproc 55.1.100 libraries.
It is highly recommended that you upgrade your operating system to the FFmpeg 4.0 series as soon as possible, unless you're already using the current git master. You can download the FFmpeg 4.0 source tarball right now through our web portal if you want to manually compile and optimize it for your system.