March 16th, 2026, FFmpeg 8.1 "Hoare"

A new minor release, FFmpeg 8.1 "Hoare", is now available for download. Here are some of the highlights:

Decoders: xHE-AAC Mps212 (experimental) MPEG-H decoding via libmpeghdec

EXIF Metadata Parsing

LCEVC: support for parsing and forwarding metadata

Vulkan compute-based codecs: ProRes encoding and decoding, DPX decoding

D3D12: D3D12 H.264/AV1 encoding, scale_d3d12, mestimate_d3d12, deinterlace_d3d12 filters

Rockchip H.264/HEVC hardware encoding

IAMF: Projection mode Ambisonic Audio Elements muxing and demuxing

Formats: hxvs demuxer

Filters: drawvg, vpp_amf

This release features a lot of internal changes and bugfixes. The groundwork for the upcoming swscale rewrite is progressing. The Vulkan compute-based codecs, and a few filters, no longer depend on runtime GLSL compilation, which speeds up their initialization.

A companion post about the Vulkan Compute-based codec implementations has been published on the Khronos blog, featuring technical details on the implementations and future plans.

We recommend users, distributors, and system integrators to upgrade unless they use current git master.