FFmpeg 5.0 (opens in new tab)

In 2003 or 2004 I had a job doing video installations with Linux systems in a variety of museums. That was the first time I learned about FFMpeg. Used it for everything, still one of the first things I install on any system, and whenever I need to do anything with video conversion or resizing or taking a slice out, I use FFMpeg. It is awesome.

Although, after all these years I still have to look up every single incantation except for the most basic things.

Cutting releases of such a huge project with so many moving pieces, sub-projects, and dependencies, must be quite an effort!

This "5.0 release" thread in the official mailing list shows that they are trying to establish a "feature freeze" process in order to have a clear cut point where a release branch is made:

http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2022-January/290665...

(yes that's the beginning of the thread... I guess the conversation drifted naturally from some previous patch discussion, until the point someone decided to change the email subject)

What are the highlights that made this a new major release? The changelog just mentions which codecs, muxers etc. got added and I'd appreciate if someone can explain what the important additions are

Blog post about the release: http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2022/FFmpeg-5.0

See "Big API changes and deprecations" to know more about the major version bump.

I use ffmpeg to slice up and convert video.

I just looked at the new features for 5.0.

Does anyone have a more detailed description on what these are?

Why is ffmpeg still using Trac for bug reports? Switching to Gitlab would make it a lot more pleasant to deal with.

So... what is so much different about it from 4.x?