FFmpeg 9.0 Ships With Vulkan-Accelerated APV Decoding, Animated WebP Support, and Expanded AMD AMF Hardware Encoding
FFmpeg 9.0 lands August 4 with Vulkan-accelerated APV decoding, animated WebP support, and expanded AMD, NVIDIA, and Apple hardware acceleration filters.
Editor's Note ·
- Correction:
- The article quotes Linuxiac as tying HE-AAC 960 decoding to "DAB+ digital radio compatibility." Linuxiac's actual text reads: "the release adds HE-AAC 960 decoding for DAB+ content... some digital radio services use 960-sample frames, and the new support improves compatibility with those broadcasts." The underlying fact (HE-AAC 960 decoding aids DAB+ digital radio compatibility) is accurate, but the quoted phrase is a paraphrase, not Linuxiac's verbatim wording.
- Correction:
- The article quotes Linuxiac as writing "binary distribution depends on individual Linux distributions." Linuxiac's actual text reads: "Binary availability will rely on individual Linux distributions and third-party package providers, with rolling-release distributions likely to receive the update first." The substance is accurate, but the quoted wording is a paraphrase, not verbatim.
Overview
FFmpeg, the open-source multimedia framework that underpins a vast share of the software industry’s audio and video tooling, released version 9.0 on August 4, 2026, according to the project’s official download page. The 9.0 release branch was cut from FFmpeg’s master branch on June 26, 2026, FFmpeg.org states. The update, code-named “Lei” according to Linuxiac, pushes FFmpeg’s core libraries into new major versions, with libavcodec and libavformat both advancing to the 63.x series, per the release’s library version table.
What We Know
Vulkan acceleration expands. FFmpeg 9.0 adds Vulkan-accelerated APV video decoding, Vulkan-accelerated decoding of Apple ProRes RAW footage, and a new v360_vulkan filter for GPU-accelerated 360-degree video processing, according to the official FFmpeg changelog and Linuxiac. Phoronix described the release as containing “more Vulkan API acceleration work.”
Animated WebP support arrives. The release adds a native animated WebP decoder and a matching demuxer, according to the FFmpeg changelog and Linuxiac.
AMD, NVIDIA, and Apple hardware paths get new filters. On AMD hardware, 9.0 extends the AMF color converter’s HDR capabilities and adds a new AMF Frame Rate Converter filter, an AMF Video Quality Enhancer filter, and AMF hardware memory-mapping support, according to the official changelog. For NVIDIA hardware, the release adds a transpose_cuda filter that performs frame rotation on the GPU via CUDA, according to Linuxiac. For Apple hardware, FFmpeg 9.0 adds VideoToolbox-accelerated hardware decoding of ProRes RAW footage, according to the changelog.
Audio and metadata additions. The release adds HE-AAC 960 decoding, which Linuxiac ties to “DAB+ digital radio compatibility.” It also adds SMPTE 2094-50 dynamic metadata support and passthrough, LCEVC track muxing in the MP4 muxer, and a new video encoder and muxer for the Playdate handheld console, according to the official changelog.
Removals. FFmpeg 9.0 drops standalone CELT decoding support and Ogg/CELT parsing — a change the changelog notes “doesn’t affect Opus CELT” — along with deprecated NVENC options and support for NVIDIA Video Codec SDK versions predating 11.1, according to the official changelog and Linuxiac.
Machine-learning inference gets a GPU path. The release also updates FFmpeg’s ONNX Runtime DNN backend to support GPU execution providers, according to the official changelog and Linuxiac.
What We Don’t Know
FFmpeg’s download page notes that the project “only provides source code” for 9.0, according to FFmpeg.org, and precompiled builds depend on third parties — Linux distribution repositories, gyan.dev and BtbN’s builds for Windows, and evermeet.cx for macOS. Linuxiac likewise notes that “binary distribution depends on individual Linux distributions,” meaning it may take additional time before 9.0 reaches package managers and the many downstream applications that bundle FFmpeg.