#AVpres Newsletter 2026-03-23

The FFmpeg Package
Call for Papers
Software Used by Archives

1. The FFmpeg Package

1.1. FFmpeg 8.1 Released

The version 8.1 of FFmpeg has been released on 2026-03-16. It was named “Hoare”, in homage of C. A. R. Hoare (1934-2026). On a side note, Edsger W. Dijkstra and C. A. R. Hoare strongly influenced Reto’s path in computer science.

Jérôme Martinez (“Monsieur MediaInfo”) posted the following note about this release on the CELLAR mailing list:

For your information, FFmpeg 8.1 has been released and contains improvements to the GPU acceleration of FFV1 for both decoding and encoding.

We also worked on accelerating DPX-to-FFV1 encoding by managing DPX directly in the GPU (which reduces pressure on system RAM), and we began supporting Apple machines. The use of the GPU by Vulkan-related code provides an overall boost of 50%. We’ll soon provide a build of FFmpeg for macOS with this support, and RAWcooked will have the support of this GPU acceleration.

The main FFmpeg Vulkan developer [Lynne] wrote a post about this on the Khronos Group (Vulkan API maintainer) blog.

1.2. Current Release Plan

The current work is primarily funded by the Sovereign Tech Fund:

FFmpeg 9.0 is planned at the beginning of summer, possibly in June 2026;
FFmpeg 9.1 is planned at the beginning of autumn, possibly in September 2026.

It will also include the management of raw data generated by Bayer sensors. Reto has presented this topic on numerous occasions, most extensively probably at the No Time to Wait conference in 2022.

1.3. Training

Finally, we could held both the German and the French intermediate FFmpeg courses we organised for Memoriav.

We are working on a one-day advanced FFmpeg course for the autumn. This will possibly be held in English by Michal and Reto, and probably have webcast. It could take place at Lichtspiel in Bern, at Park Innovaare in Villigen, at Technion in Haifa, or exclusively online.

2. Call for Papers

FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2026: 6–9 October 2026 at Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo, Brazil
“Screen Memories in Dialogue: Learning from Diversity”
https://fiatifta.org/world-conference/
The deadline for submissions is 24 March 2026 – tomorrow!
No Time to Wait 10: 14–16 October 2026 at Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny (FINA) in Warsaw, Poland
https://mediaarea.net/NoTimeToWait10
There is no deadline for submissions.
Disclaimer: AV Preservation by reto.ch is the main recurring sponsor of this annual open-source conference.
IASA–BAAC Joint Conference 2026: 19–22 October 2026 at Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania in Vilnius
“Archives in Times of Peace and War: Safeguarding Audiovisual Memory, Identity, and Authenticity”
https://2025.iasa-web.org
The deadline for submissions is 13 April 2026.
Disclaimer: AV Preservation by reto.ch is a sponsor of IASA.

3. Software Used by Archives

CLI = command-line interface
GUI = graphical user interface
web = web interface

Aaru Data Preservation Suite (CLI): “All-in-one solution for digital media preservation and archival.”
Version 5.4.2 LTS has has been released on 2026-02-14:
https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru
The developer, Natalia Portillo, has released the Alpha 19 of a new version 6.0.0 on 2026-03-11.
AEO-Light (GUI): Extraction of optical sound tracks form image digitisations with sufficient overscanning.
Version 2.4 has has been released on 2025-07-23:
https://github.com/usc-imi/aeo-light
Audacity (GUI): Recording and editing sounds.
Version 3.7.7 has been released on 2025-11-25:
https://www.audacityteam.org/
Bash: Command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input, a string or a script file.
Version 5.3.9 has been released on 2025-12-10:
https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
This is the shell we use daily.
DCP-o-matic (GUI): “Get any content cinema-ready.”
Version 2.18.37 has been released on 2026-02-10:
https://dcpomatic.com/
FFmpeg (CLI): The FFmpeg package consists of the three commands ffmpeg (a media transcoder), ffprobe (a media metadata extractor) and ffplay (a media player), as well as seven librairies including libavformat (a container collection), libavcodec (a codec collection) and libavfilter (a filter collection).
Version 8.1 has been released on 2026-03-16:
https://ffmpeg.org/
fq (CLI): “Tool, language and decoders for working with binary data.”
Version 0.17.0 has been released on 2026-03-15:
https://github.com/wader/fq
HandBrake (GUI): A video transcoder.
Version 1.11.0 has been released on 2026-03-08:
https://handbrake.fr/
MediaConch (GUI, CLI and web): “Implementation checker, policy checker, reporter, and fixer that targets preservation-level audiovisual files.”
Version 25.04 has been released on 2025-05-05:
https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch
https://mediaarea.net/MediaConchOnline/
MediaInfo (GUI, CLI and web): The most popular metadata extractor.
Version 26.01 has been released on 2026-02-02:
https://mediaarea.net/MediaInfo
MKVToolNix (GUI): Create, alter and inspect Matroska files.
Version 97.0 has been released on 2026-01-02:
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
mpv (CLI and GUI): “A free, open source, and cross-platform media player.”
Version 0.41.0 has been released on 2025-12-21:
https://mpv.io
This is our preferred media player, which we use with our own FFmpeg distribution.
Nano (CLI): A small and friendly text editor. This is not a word processing software.
Version 8.7.1 has been released on 2026-02-04:
https://www.nano-editor.org/
This is our preferred text editor.
OpenEXR: The reference implementation of the OpenEXR file format (and video codec).
Version 3.4.7 has been released on 2026-03-15:
https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr
QCTools (GUI): Analyse and understand digitised video files through use of audiovisual analytics and filtering.
Version 1.4.1 has been released possibly on 2025-05-19:
https://mediaarea.net/QCTools
https://github.com/bavc/qctools
We don’t know when exactly the last version has been released, but we know that since 2026-01-13 it’s finally available for all operating systems.
RAWcooked (CLI): “Encode and decode audio-visual RAW data with Matroska, FFV1 and FLAC.”
A bridge between uncompressed still images and lossless compressed video stream formats.
Version 25.12 has been released on 2025-12-30:
https://mediaarea.net/RAWcooked
Disclaimer: We have supported this project since its inception, and Reto co-owns the copyright.
Shutter Encoder (GUI): A media transcoder.
Version 19.9 has been released on 2026-02-08:
https://github.com/paulpacifico/shutter-encoder
The Cable Bible: A valuable resource by Ethan Gates.
Version 2025-11-20 is online:
https://github.com/amiaopensource/cable-bible
VLC (GUI): A very popular media player.
Version 3.0.23 has been released on 2025-12-19:
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
vrecord (CLI/GUI): Open-source software for capturing a video signal and turning it into a digital file.
Version 2026-03-03 has been released:
https://github.com/amiaopensource/vrecord
yt-dlp (CLI): A feature-rich command-line media downloader.
Version 2026.03.17 has been released:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Best regards from Joshua, Michal and Reto

2026-03-22