Hi Milos, You might have already seen this, but FFmpeg 8.1 has been released and has some useful news for us it seems:
March 16th, 2026, FFmpeg 8.1 "Hoare"
A new minor release, FFmpeg 8.1 "Hoare" <https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#release_8.1>, 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 <https://www.khronos.org/blog/video-encoding-and-decoding-with-vulkan-compute-shaders-in-ffmpeg>, featuring technical details on the implementations and future plans.
We recommend users, distributors, and system integrators to upgrade unless they use current git master.
https://ffmpeg.org/index.html#pr8.1 See also https://www.khronos.org/blog/video-encoding-and-decoding-with-vulkan-compute... -- Xavier Whitebox.aero <https://whitebox.aero/>