FFmpeg 6.1 Drops a Heaviside Dose of Codec Magic

FFmpeg 6.1's codename is a tribute to the great 19th century mathematician Oliver Heaviside. This version includes support for multi-threaded hardware-accelerated video decoding of H.264, HEVC, and AV1 video using the cross-platform Vulkan API, the next-gen replacement for OpenGL, which was added to the codebase in May. The Register adds: The pace of development of FFmpeg has been speeding up slightly in recent years, given that it took 13 years to get to version 2.0. We can't help but wonder if that's connected with the departure of the former project lead in 2015. The developers are planning to release version 7.0 in about February next year. Even so, the "Heaviside" release, which has been refactored to support even more formats and introduce new methods for faster performance or reduced processor utilization, is smaller than previous releases.

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