FFmpeg, the popular multimedia library released new version 8.0.1 in last week. Here’s the PPA contains the .deb packages for all current Ubuntu users.

As a maintenance update, the release includes only minor new features, some improvements, and bug-fixes. And, the FFmpeg website does not even provide an official release note for it.

The new release updated the RealVideo 6.0 decoder that was introduced in last 8.0 release, with upper bound check for qp (Quantization Parameter) which is useful to prevent excessive quality loss, and avoid artifacts like blocking, banding, or blurring.

For mac and iOS, it updated the VideoToolbox encoder with global_quality support without qscale (quantizer scale), low latency RC with HEVC (H.265) video codec, which is perfect for live, interactive, or RC video applications, and fix for precision loss when calculating quality.

It also updated the MPEG‑5 LCEVC decoding with support for LCEVCdec version 4, which features new CPU pipeline with multithreading updates, new default and recommended pipeline, and new Vulkan pipeline with experimental GPU support for decoding. For more about LCEVCdec v4, see its github releases page.

For the libavfilter library, the release fixed some issues for af_whisper, the built-in Whisper audio filter for speech-to-text transcription. They include fixes for srt index, int64 printf format, srt file format, and broken output for multibyte character. And, it updated the drawtext video filter with explanation for bbox text separator, fix for incorrect text length and call GET_UTF8 with invalid argument.

As well, it updated the libavformat with rtp_ctx->streams access fix for WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol, and ability to handle IPv6 Zone ID in hostname with built-in HTTP protocol handler.

For the libutil utility library, it re-introduced the block offset state for aes_ctr, the implementation of AES encryption in Counter mode, and added support casting GET_BYTE/GET_16BIT returned value.

Other changes in FFmpeg 8.0.1 include:

• Fix 32bit sample overflow for the output stream queue.
• Ensure the display_rotation option is honored for ffmpeg_demux module.
• Use tile dimensions in pxr24 UINT case for OpenEXR image format decoder.
• Fix memory leak with D3D11 input surfaces for Media Foundation encoder wrapper
• Fix incorrect ebur128 peak calculation.
• And various other changes. For details, see the CHANGELOG.

Install FFmpeg 8.0.1

The source tarball for the new release and optional installer packages are available to download in FFmpeg website via the link below:

For Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04 and 25.04, I’ve uploaded v8.0.1 packages into this unofficial PPA for Intel/AMD and ARM platforms.

NOTE: FFmpeg is an important library that many apps and even graphics drivers depend on it. Upgrade FFmpeg may break compatibility! Install it at your own risk.

To add the PPA and install FFmpeg 8.0.1, run commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg8

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ffmpeg -t "o=LP-PPA-ubuntuhandbook1-ffmpeg8"