FFmpeg 0.5 released !

After a long time a new FFmpeg version has been released. Today FFmpeg stands at v0.5 and is codenamed “half-way to world domination A.K.A. the belligerent blue bike shed” to give an idea where it stands in the grand scheme of things. In case you don’t know what FFmpeg is and why this release is so important, read this.

FFmpeg is the most widely used audio and video codec library. FFmpeg is what makes some open source multimedia apps (like MPlayer, Xine, VLC and Kdenlive) so versatile. It is the reason why all those open-source apps can play all kinds of video and audio files.

This can only mean one thing, better software and more compatibility with more files and more fixes !

Coming directly from the FFmpeg team,

It has been a very long time since we last made a release and many did not think we would make one again but, back by popular demand, we are proud to announce a new release: FFmpeg 0.5. Check out the release notes and changelog.

This release includes a very extensive number of changes, but some of the highlights are:

• Significant work to support at least decoding of all widespread mainstream proprietary codecs, such as:
  • decoders and encoders
    • ALAC
    • Flash Screen Video
    • WMAv2 decoder fixed, WMAv1/v2 encoder
  • decoders
    • Atrac3
    • MLP/TrueHD
    • On2 VP3 improvements and VP5/VP6 support
    • RealAudio Cooker and fixes for 14.4 and 28.8
    • RealVideo RV30/40
    • WMV3/WMV9/VC-1 and IntraX8 frame support for WMV2/VC-1
• Broad coverage of widespread non-proprietary codecs, including:
  • decoders and encoders
    • DNxHD
    • DVCPRO50 (a.k.a. DV50)
    • Floating point PCM
    • GSM-MS
    • Theora (and encoding via libtheora)
    • Vorbis
  • decoders
    • AAC with ADTS support and >2x the speed of FAAD! (no HE AAC support yet)
    • AC-3 that is faster than liba52 in 5.1, up to 2x faster in stereo and also supports E-AC-3! Hence liba52 is now obsolete.
    • DCA
    • DVCPRO HD (a.k.a. DV100)
    • H.264 PAFF and CQM support, plus slice-based multithreaded decoding
    • Monkey’s Audio
    • MPEG-2 video support for intra VLC and 4:2:2
    • Musepack
    • QCELP
    • Shorten
    • True Audio (TTA)
    • Wavpack including hybrid mode support
• Highlights among the newly supported container formats:
  • demuxers and muxers
    • GXF
    • MXF
  • demuxers
    • NullSoft Video (NSV)
  • muxers
    • iPhone/iPod compatibility for MP4/MOV
    • Matroska
    • NUT
    • Ogg (FLAC, Theora and Vorbis only)
    • ShockWave Flash (SWF)
• libavdevice
• ffserver is working again.
• a shiny, new, completely revamped, non-recursive build system
• cleaner, more consistent code
• an all new metadata API
• and so much more!

Here are the release notes

Release Notes
=============

* 0.5 "Bike Shed" March 3, 2009

General notes
-------------

It has been so long since the last release that this should be considered the
first FFmpeg release of recent times. Because of the way things have unfolded to
date, the notes for this version cannot be entirely conventional.

See the Changelog file for a list of significant changes.

Please note that our policy on bug reports has not changed. We still only accept
bug reports against HEAD of the FFmpeg trunk repository. If you are experiencing
any issues with any formally released version of FFmpeg, please try a current
version of the development code to check if the issue still exists. If it does,
make your report against the development code following the usual bug reporting
guidelines.

API notes
---------

In the next release, it is intended to remove a number of deprecated APIs. We
decided to put out a release that includes said APIs for the benefit of third
party software.

As such, this release:
- provides a sync point for said APIs
- increases awareness of API changes
- allows the next release to detail how to transition from the old to the new

The deprecated APIs to be removed are:
- imgconvert (to be replaced by libswscale)
- vhook (to be replaced by libavfilter)

If at all possible, do not use the deprecated APIs. All notes on API changes
should appear in doc/APIchanges.

Check out the changelog it is huge !

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