FFmpeg 8.1 Nears Release with Vulkan Acceleration and JPEG-XS Support

FFmpeg 8.1 is preparing for release with major Vulkan improvements, JPEG-XS support, and new hardware acceleration features.

The FFmpeg development team has created the release/8.1 branch and is finalizing commits ahead of the upcoming release. This version continues to expand FFmpeg's hardware acceleration capabilities while adding support for emerging video formats.

Vulkan Acceleration Improvements

FFmpeg 8.1 brings substantial Vulkan-related enhancements:

• Apple ProRes Vulkan acceleration using shaders for improved playback performance
• ProRes Vulkan-accelerated video encoding for faster ProRes exports
• Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) Vulkan hardware acceleration for professional film workflows
• Vulkan compute codec optimizations to improve encoding/decoding efficiency
• Vulkan software scale (swscale) support for GPU-accelerated video scaling

These improvements target professional video production workflows where ProRes and DPX formats are commonly used, providing significant performance gains for both playback and encoding operations.

JPEG-XS Support

A major addition in FFmpeg 8.1 is initial JPEG-XS support, including:

• JPEG-XS parser for analyzing files
• JPEG-XS encoding and decoding via the SVT-JPEG-XS project using libsvtjpegxs library
• JPEG-XS bitstream muxing and demuxing capabilities

JPEG-XS is a royalty-free video coding standard designed for professional video production, offering visually lossless compression with low latency. This makes it particularly valuable for live production, video editing, and other professional workflows where quality and speed are critical.

Additional Hardware Acceleration

Beyond Vulkan improvements, FFmpeg 8.1 adds:

• Direct3D 12 AV1 encoder support for Windows users
• Rockchip H.264/HEVC hardware encoder support for ARM-based systems
• Direct3D 12 H.264 encoder and AV1 encoder
• ProRes Vulkan hardware acceleration
• DPX Vulkan hardware acceleration

New Features and Format Support

FFmpeg 8.1 introduces several new capabilities:

• EXIF metadata parsing for better image file handling
• Tiled HEIF support from the FFmpeg CLI
• IAMF Projection mode Ambisonic Audio Elements muxing and demuxing for 3D audio workflows
• Experimental xHE-AAC MPS212 decoding support for enhanced audio playback
• hxvs demuxer for HXVS/HXVT IP camera format
• MPEG-H 3D Audio decoding via mpeghdec
• drawvg filter via libcairo for vector graphics processing

CLI and Tool Improvements

The release includes several command-line interface enhancements:

• ffprobe -codec option for better codec analysis
• ffmpeg CLI tiled HEIF support for working with modern image formats
• vf_scale_d3d12 filter for Direct3D 12-based scaling
• vf_mestimate_d3d12 filter for motion estimation on Windows
• vf_deinterlace_d3d12 filter for Direct3D 12 deinterlacing
• gfxcapture using Windows.Graphics.Capture for window/monitor capture on Windows

Infrastructure Changes

FFmpeg 8.1 also includes some cleanup and optimization:

• Removal of the old HLS protocol handler in favor of newer implementations
• LCEVC metadata bitstream filter and LCEVC parser for Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding
• LCEVC enhancement layer exporting in MPEG-TS
• ffprobe improvements to only show refs field in stream section when reading frames

Testing and Availability

The FFmpeg 8.1 development state is available for testing via git.ffmpeg.org for those wanting to help validate the new features before the official release. With the release/8.1 branch created, the development team is in the final stages of preparation for what appears to be a substantial update to the popular multimedia framework.