#AVpres Newsletter 2026-06-29

SMPTE Standards are now free to access for everyone!
FFmpeg
Training
Call for Papers
Software Used by Archives

1. SMPTE Standards are now free to access for everyone!

The big news of this Newsletter is that now all published SMPTE Standards, Recommended Practices, Engineering Guidelines and Registered Disclosure Documents, as well as all future releases are freely accessible for everyone. This was a long road of persuasion, finally crowned with success. And of course, we very much hope that also ISO will follow suit in the future.

During the next weeks, we will add the links to our glossary, which is available in German.

2. FFmpeg

2.1. Imminent release FFmpeg 9.0

The new release branch 9.0 has been cut from the development branch three days ago and should be released in the next week or so.

2.2. FFmpeg 8.1.2 has been released

Two weeks ago, on the 17^th of June 2026, was published the maintenance release 8.1.2 of the FFmpeg package. And of course, after thoroughly testing it, we promptly updated our own configurable Homebrew distribution the same day.

2.3. Old release branches discontinued

Maintenance for four very old release branches has been officially discontinued:

4.3 (“4:3”) was cut from the main development branch on 2020-06-08;
4.2 (“Ada”) was cut from the main development branch on 2019-07-21;
3.4 (“Cantor”) was cut from the main development branch on 2017-10-11;
2.8 (“Feynman”) was cut from the main development branch on 2015-09-05.

In addition, most probably the maintenance for the following release branch will be also discontinued soon, because it is not used by any current Linux distribution:

7.0 (“Dijkstra”) was cut from the main development branch on 2024-03-27.

3. Training

3.1. Manufacturing of Archive Film Scanners

On one hand, we are so happy that our Summer School can be held! On the other hand, we regret that we were unable to consider the applications of all interested people. This seminar will also be a good occasion to give away to the participants the equipment we no longer need, in preparation of the company’s closing in almost exactly one year time.

3.2. Chemical Treatments and Alchemy of Last Resort

We are still receiving inscriptions for our Autunm School. Please note that places are not allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. We will only allocate places after the registration deadline. Yet we have brought forward the registration deadline to 10 September 2026, in order to allow people coming from afar to better organise their travels.

4. Call for Papers

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, but we advise to submit soon.
Disclaimer: AV Preservation by reto.ch is the main recurring sponsor of this annual open-source conference.

5. Software Used by Archives

Updates since the last newsletter are highlighted in bold. This time there are many.

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
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 3.7.8 has been released on 2026-06-11:
https://www.audacityteam.org/
Bash (CLI): Command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input, a string or a script file.
Version 5.3.15 has been released on 2026-06-09:
https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
This is the shell we use daily.
DCP-o-matic (GUI): “Get any content cinema-ready.”
Version 2.18.43 has been released on 2026-06-02:
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 8.1.2 has been released on 2026-06-17:
https://ffmpeg.org/
We use our own FFmpeg distribution.
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 1.11.2 has been released on 2026-06-07:
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 26.05 has been released on 2026-05-12:
https://mediaarea.net/MediaInfo
MKVToolNix (GUI): Create, alter and inspect Matroska files.
Version 99.0 has been released on 2026-05-24:
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 9.1 has been released on 2026-06-23:
https://www.nano-editor.org/
This is our preferred text editor.
OpenEXR: The reference implementation of the OpenEXR file format (and video codec).
Version 3.4.13 has been released on 2026-06-19:
https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr
QCTools (GUI): Analyse and understand digitised video files through use of audiovisual analytics and filtering.
Version 1.4 or 1.4.1 has been released possibly on 2025-05-19:
https://mediaarea.net/QCTools
https://github.com/bavc/qctools
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 the development of the original idea, and Reto co-owns the copyright.
Shutter Encoder (GUI): A media transcoder.
Version 20.2 has been released on 2026-06-28:
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 2026.06.09 has been released:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Best regards from Joshua, Michal and Reto

2026-07-02