FFmpeg 7.1 Added VVC decoder, Vulkan H.264/HEVC Encoder [Ubuntu PPA]

The popular FFmpeg media library released new version 7.1 a few days ago. Here are the new features and Ubuntu PPA for Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04 users.

The new release of FFmpeg library added official VVC decoder support. Versatile Video Coding (VVC in short), also known as H.266, has about 50% better compression rate for the same quality compared to HEVC (aka H.265). It supports resolutions ranging from very low up to 4K, 16K, and 360° videos, as well as YCbCr 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 with 8–10 bits per component, HDR, variable and fractional frame rates from 0 to 120 Hz, and more.

FFmpeg added experimental VVC decoding support since the last 7.0 version. Now, the decoder goes official and it’s compatible with DVB test content. The release also supports for decoding VVC with Intel Quick Sync Video acceleration. As well, it supports encoding VVC using libvvenc library.

Besides VVC, FFmpeg 7.1 also added support for decoding xHE-AAC audio codec, and MV-HEVC (the multiview extension of HEVC). There are as well MediaCodec AAC/AMR-NB/AMR-WB/MP3 decoding, both decoding and encoding support for LC3/LC3plus through external library liblc3 with version 1.1.0 or higher.

The new release as well added D3D12VA accelerated HEVC encoder, Vulkan accelerated H.264 and H.265 (HEVC) encoder, as well as qsv_params option for QSV encoders.

According to the release note, FFmpeg 7.1 also fixed a more than 10 years old issue about the color range:

“Previously, color range data had two paths, no negotiation, and was unreliably forwarded to filters, encoders, muxers. Work on cleaning the system up started more than 10 years ago, however this stalled due to how fragile the system was, and that breaking behaviour would be unacceptable. The new system fixes this, so now color range is forwarded correctly and consistently everywhere needed, and also laid the path for more advanced forms of negotiation.”

Other changes in the release include:

pad_vaapi, drawbox_vaapi filters
LCEVC filter
ffmpeg CLI filtergraph chaining
LC3/LC3plus demuxer and muxer
Cropping metadata parsing and writing in Matroska and MP4/MOV de/muxers
deprecated vf_scale2ref
removed DEC Alpha DSP and support code
See here for more.

How to Install FFmpeg 7.1 in Ubuntu

The source code for the new release is available to download via the link below:

Download FFmpeg

For Ubuntu users, besides building from the source tarball, I’ve uploaded it into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04.

Either run the 3 commands below one by one to add PPA and install FFmpeg 7.1, or see this step by step guide.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg7

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ffmpeg

NOTE: Install non-system version of FFmpeg MAY run into dependency issue and even break your system! You MUST know what you’re going to do, and know how to restore!!!