AV Linux 25 for content creators and the new MX Moksha 25 ship with Enlightenment and Moksha desktops, Liquorix kernels, and expanded Thunar actions.

FFmpeg, the popular multimedia library released new version 8.0.1 in last week. Here’s the PPA contains the .deb packages for all current Ubuntu users.

As a maintenance update, the release includes only minor new features, some improvements, and bug-fixes. And, the FFmpeg website does not even provide an official release note for it.

The new release updated the RealVideo 6.0 decoder that was introduced in last 8.0 release, with upper bound check for qp (Quantization Parameter) which is useful to prevent excessive quality loss, and avoid artifacts like blocking, banding, or blurring.

For mac and iOS, it updated the VideoToolbox encoder with global_quality support without qscale (quantizer scale), low latency RC with HEVC (H.265) video codec, which is perfect for live, interactive, or RC video applications, and fix for precision loss when calculating quality.

It also updated the MPEG‑5 LCEVC decoding with support for LCEVCdec version 4, which features new CPU pipeline with multithreading updates, new default and recommended pipeline, and new Vulkan pipeline with experimental GPU support for decoding. For more about LCEVCdec v4, see its github releases page.

For the libavfilter library, the release fixed some issues for af_whisper, the built-in Whisper audio filter for speech-to-text transcription. They include fixes for srt index, int64 printf format, srt file format, and broken output for multibyte character. And, it updated the drawtext video filter with explanation for bbox text separator, fix for incorrect text length and call GET_UTF8 with invalid argument.

As well, it updated the libavformat with rtp_ctx->streams access fix for WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol, and ability to handle IPv6 Zone ID in hostname with built-in HTTP protocol handler.

For the libutil utility library, it re-introduced the block offset state for aes_ctr, the implementation of AES encryption in Counter mode, and added support casting GET_BYTE/GET_16BIT returned value.

Other changes in FFmpeg 8.0.1 include:

• Fix 32bit sample overflow for the output stream queue.
• Ensure the display_rotation option is honored for ffmpeg_demux module.
• Use tile dimensions in pxr24 UINT case for OpenEXR image format decoder.
• Fix memory leak with D3D11 input surfaces for Media Foundation encoder wrapper
• Fix incorrect ebur128 peak calculation.
• And various other changes. For details, see the CHANGELOG.

Install FFmpeg 8.0.1

The source tarball for the new release and optional installer packages are available to download in FFmpeg website via the link below:

For Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04 and 25.04, I’ve uploaded v8.0.1 packages into this unofficial PPA for Intel/AMD and ARM platforms.

NOTE: FFmpeg is an important library that many apps and even graphics drivers depend on it. Upgrade FFmpeg may break compatibility! Install it at your own risk.

To add the PPA and install FFmpeg 8.0.1, run commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg8

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ffmpeg -t "o=LP-PPA-ubuntuhandbook1-ffmpeg8"

GStreamer 1.26.8 multimedia framework refines HDR video playback, enhances AV1 and EAC3 parsing, and delivers performance and stability fixes.

LibreELEC 12.2.1 open-source media center brings Kodi 21.3 Omega and Linux kernel 6.16, dropping old NVIDIA 340.xx driver support.

Kodi 21.3, an open-source media player, refines HDR playback, resolves Blu-ray issues on Linux, and improves audio and subtitle handling.

Jellyfin 10.11 open-source media server introduces a massive backend overhaul, EF Core database migration, and major speed improvements.

The PipeWire 1.6 Linux multimedia framework is coming soon—expect smarter link negotiation, refined audio handling, and faster response times.

GStreamer 1.26.7 multimedia framework fixes CUDA 13 runtime errors, improves RTSP keepalive handling, and enhances overall stability.

PipeWire 1.4.9 multimedia framework fixes an audio regression, improves ALSA recovery, and refines SOF card handling for smoother playback.

After a year’s gap, VLC 3.0.22 RC1 media player introduces Qt6 build support, Windows ARM64 compatibility, and improved playback reliability.

FFmpeg, the popular free open-source multimedia library, released new major 8.0 version almost a year since the last 7.1.

The new FFmpeg 8.0, codename “Huffman”, added native decoding support for Samsung’s Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, Apple’s ProRes RAW, Sanyo LD-ADPCM, RealVideo 6.0, G.728, and ADPCM IMA Xbox.

It also added encoding support for APV (via libopenapv wrapper), libx265 alpha layer, and animated JPEG XL images (through libjxl).

FFmpeg 8.0 also introduced new decoders and encoders based on pure Vulkan compute implementation. It’s a cross-platform, open standard APIs, allowing programs to use GPU hardware accelerated rendering, calculating, and decoding, which can provide very significant speedups on some hardware.

So far, the Vulkan compute-based codecs only supports FFv1 (encoding and decoding) and ProRes RAW (decode only), while ProRes (encode + decode) and VC-2 (encode + decode) will be available in next minor release.

The release as well improved some codecs support by introducing hardware accelerated decoding support for VP9 (Vulkan), VVC (VAAPI), and hardware accelerated encoding support for AV1 (Vulkan). And, both decoding and encoding (hardware accelerated) for the OpenHarmony H264/5 video codecs.

Other changes include improved VVC (aka H.266) support via all content of SCC (Screen Content Coding), including IBC (Inter Block Copy), Palette Mode and ACT (Adaptive Color Transform), and following more:

• New filters: colordetect, pad_cuda, scale_d3d11, Whisper, and others.
• APV parser
• APV in MP4/ISOBMFF muxing and demuxing
• VVC in Matroska,
• CENC AV1 support in MP4 muxer.
• Enhanced FLV v2: Multitrack audio/video, modern codec support.
• set default prediction method to PAETH for pngenc.

In addition, FFmpeg 8.0 also dropped OpenSSL < 1.1.0, removed yasm support (users need to use nasm), and deprecated OpenMAX encoders. For more, see the official release note.

Get FFmpeg 8.0

FFmpeg only provides the source tarball which is available to download at its website via the link below:

For Linux, besides waiting for your Distro to update the FFmpeg package, Deb Multimedia repository has built the 8.0 release for Debian experimental.

UPDATE: For Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 25.04, FFmpeg 8.0 is available via this unofficial PPA.

NOTE: The PPA contains many updated libraries that may break dependencies! And, the packages are NOT well tested. Use at your own risk!

To add the PPA and install FFmpeg 8.0, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg8
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -t "o=LP-PPA-ubuntuhandbook1-ffmpeg8" ffmpeg