Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Multimedia Powerhouse FFmpeg Hits 3.0

Posted by timothy on from the foundational-support dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The milestone release FFmpeg 3.0 "Einstein" has been unleashed. For those who need a reminder, FFmpeg comprises several libraries and command-line tools (the main command-line tool being "ffmpeg") that encode, decode, transcode, and stream audio/visual data, etc. FFmpeg supports a multitude of codecs, filters, and container formats too numerous to mention here. FFmpeg is used by MPlayer, VLC, HandBrake, Chrome, and many other projects. Changes from 2.x to 3.0 include: a much better native AAC encoder, better hardware acceleration, and some API/ABI breakage. See this, this, this, this, and the changelog for much better descriptions of the improvements.

8 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Not on Mint by HalAtWork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's not in the default repos on Mint, I learned this was replaced by libav. I used it to crop some videos for use in OpenShot* by commandline and the parameters seem compatible with FFmpeg. Any reason for the fork? I'm currently reading this to suss it out, hopefully it's good in the long run, and at least I can do what I need to do in the meantime.

    *(love it for editing home videos but lacking soundtrack support, added that by commandline too w/libav)

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
  2. Cool, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder how much sooner we would have gotten this release if not for all of the HEVC patent/licensing fee shenanigans of late?

  3. Stability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My initial reaction:

    Multimedia Powerhouse FFmpeg Hits 3.0

    That's nice, but does it have a stable ABI yet?

    and some API/ABI breakage

    Welp.

    1. Re:Stability by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is a major release. Some breakage is expected. As long as you stay on the same major it should be stable.

      Hah. Good luck with that. FFmpeg is an amazing collection of codecs wrapped in a horrible and ever-changing API. I have used it on a number of projects and it seems every time I upgrade something breaks.

  4. fast encoding? by ooloorie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How fast can ffmpeg do encoding on modern hardware? Is there functional GPU support to get high compression rates in real time?

  5. Re:"For those who need a reminder..." by timothy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You're not right :)

    I added a link to the news at the ffmpeg.org site re: the actual release, might have fixed some punctuation or some other trivial stuff, but the submission that became this post came in pretty much as-is.

    Apologies for not noting this release a few days sooner, too; the things that FFmpeg make possible are deeply appreciated by naive end-users like me.

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  6. list of known FFmpeg license violators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Like stealing from a Girl Scout

    https://trac.ffmpeg.org/query?...

  7. Re:Have an nvidia or Intel GPU? by Shinobi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    On a lot of motherboards you can get around it by enabling both PCI-E and iGPU in BIOS or EFI/UEFI, and then in your OS you add another, virtual, display that is linked to the Intel GPU. Even works with some of the cheaper Sandy Bridge era mobos(and pretty much all the expensive ones from the time) running Windows 7.