Curated media codec news: encoder releases, browser support changes, research papers and notable posts.https://mediacodec.dev/https://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rs/releases/tag/v0.7.1https://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rs/releases/tag/v0.7.1jxl-rs v0.7.1 reduces binary size by about 100 kB by moving static data behind `LazyLock` into a `Box`. For JPEG XL tooling, smaller binaries make integration and distribution easier, especially where footprint and startup matter. (GitHub)Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.55.7https://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.55.7Mediabunny v1.55.7 ships a targeted fix for sample iterators not terminating when exceptions were thrown. That kind of iterator edge case can quietly stall long-running media jobs, so these patch releases are worth taking quickly. (GitHub)Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.55.5https://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.55.5Mediabunny v1.55.5 is out as a patch release. Keeping close to these point updates is practical if you depend on browser media pipelines, because they are where regression fixes and compatibility polish usually land first. (GitHub)Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-NVIDIA-RTX-FRUChttps://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-NVIDIA-RTX-FRUCNVIDIA's frame-rate up-conversion (FRUC) work being merged into FFmpeg's Vulkan stack is notable because it pushes interpolation workflows closer to mainline tooling. When this kind of vendor capability lands upstream, it is much easier to test and compare in ordinary FFmpeg-based pipelines. (Phoronix)Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-ANV-HuC-H265-Vulkan-Videohttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-ANV-HuC-H265-Vulkan-VideoIntel's ANV Vulkan driver picked up HuC support for Vulkan Video H.265 decoding, closing one of the practical gaps in Linux-side hardware decode. For media tooling that leans on Vulkan paths, this is the kind of plumbing work that turns feature checkboxes into something that actually runs on user machines. (Phoronix)Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://code.ffmpeg.org/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/issues/24290https://code.ffmpeg.org/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/issues/24290A new FFmpeg issue reports a division-by-zero crash found by fuzzing. Bugs in decoder edge paths are exactly what media projects need surfaced early, because they harden the code paths that touch untrusted files in the real world. (FFmpeg issue tracker)Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/3YMV4MS34KA/m/iqfJV5cXEQAJhttps://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/3YMV4MS34KA/m/iqfJV5cXEQAJMozilla opened an intent-to-ship to enable JPEG XL by default in Firefox 157 across platforms. That moves JXL from an opt-in Labs toggle toward baseline browser behavior, which matters for anyone shipping high-density images where JXL's quality-per-byte and decode speed are the point. (Mozilla dev-platform)Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1vutc9d/interview_of_jeanbaptiste_kempf_videolanvlc/https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1vutc9d/interview_of_jeanbaptiste_kempf_videolanvlc/Kempf has spent two decades shipping VLC into a legal environment that wanted him to stop, so when he talks about software patents he is not speaking in the abstract. The interview covers why he sees AV1 as the first codec where the royalty-free promise is credible rather than aspirational, and where the remaining patent risk actually sits. Worth reading alongside the AV2 progress if you are trying to understand why the open-codec pipeline that feeds this whole ecosystem exists at all. (r/AV1)Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rs/releases/tag/v0.6.0https://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rs/releases/tag/v0.6.0The Rust decoder sitting behind Chrome's JPEG XL flag can now use more than one core, after a run of commits reworking the render pipeline to be thread-safe. Decode speed is one of the arguments a format has to win before a browser turns it on by default, so this is the unglamorous work that matters more than any announcement. The same release ports libjxl's blue noise dithering for 8-bit output, which is what keeps gradients from banding on ordinary displays. (GitHub)Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Faster-HEVC-Encodehttps://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Faster-HEVC-EncodeVulkan encoding is how FFmpeg reaches your GPU's encode block without a vendor-specific path, and its H.265 side had been trailing its own H.264 for no good reason. Tuning the session flags and CU sizes closed it: at 1080p the commit reports 289 to 358 fps against H.264's 288 to 359, which is parity within noise. Merged to master rather than released, so it lands for most people in FFmpeg 9.1. (Phoronix)Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.55.0https://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.55.0DTS is the audio you get off a Blu-ray, and it is not a codec browsers have ever cared about, which makes reading and writing it from JavaScript a genuinely odd capability to acquire. Mediabunny now handles it in ISOBMFF, Matroska and MPEG-TS, with a separate `@mediabunny/dts` package supplying a decoder and an encoder polyfill since no browser will do it for you. Useful if you have ever tried to get a disc rip into something a browser will play and found the audio, not the video, was the wall. (GitHub)Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.54.0https://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.54.0One addition, and a useful one: `computeFrameRateMetrics()` reports what a video track's frame timing actually looks like rather than what its header claims. Declared frame rates lie routinely, through variable-rate phone capture, screen recordings that drop frames when nothing moves, and remuxes that inherit a number from somewhere else. Anything that has to make a decision from frame rate, ours included, has until now been trusting a field instead of measuring the packets. (GitHub)Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/releases/tag/n9.0.1https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/releases/tag/n9.0.1Twenty-eight commits behind 9.0, and almost none of them are features: bounds checks in the bwdif filter, overflow rejection in the MPEG and HEVC muxers, zero-channel tracks refused, error recovery in the Dolby E parser. Point releases are where this work lands, and it matters most if you run FFmpeg over files you did not create, which is every upload pipeline. Nothing here changes a command you already run; it changes what happens when someone feeds you a malformed one. (FFmpeg)Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.53.0https://github.com/Vanilagy/mediabunny/releases/tag/v1.53.0The library behind every lab on this site, and this release lands a fix we have a direct stake in: encodability checks no longer throw on Safari in some cases. That check is what decides whether a codec appears greyed out or usable in the quantizer lab, the transcode lab and the encoder benchmark, so a throw there is the difference between a working page and a broken one for Safari visitors. Elsewhere: HLS single-file mode now writes segment files that are independently playable, and several fMP4 fragment bugs are gone for anyone writing sparse multi-track output. (GitHub)Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rshttps://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rsMemory safety was Chrome's stated condition for readmitting JPEG XL, and this pure-Rust decoder is the answer: vendored into Chromium in December 2025 and shipping behind Chrome's flag since 145. Daily commits and a public issue tracker make this repo the closest thing to a live feed on JPEG XL's browser future. (GitHub)Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1vff0uw/i_encoded_an_av2_video_and_built_a_player_that/https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1vff0uw/i_encoded_an_av2_video_and_built_a_player_that/The spec went final ten weeks ago and hobbyists are already encoding AV2 and writing players for it, years before any browser or chip will oblige. The gap between "standard frozen" and "files exist in the wild" has never been this short, and it is the clearest sign of how much open tooling has changed since AV1 walked this same road. (r/AV1)Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-9.0-Releasedhttps://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-9.0-ReleasedThe "Lei" release leans hard into the GPU: broader Vulkan acceleration, GPU-side AI filters through ONNX Runtime, animated WebP decoding and Apple ProRes RAW support. Every core library steps a major version (libavcodec and libavformat cross into 63), so pinned build scripts will need attention. The everyday flags our how-to pages teach are unchanged. (FFmpeg)Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rs/releases/tag/v0.5.1https://github.com/libjxl/jxl-rs/releases/tag/v0.5.1The Rust decoder Chrome vendored is now cutting tagged releases, two in one day no less. Versioned releases are how a vendored experiment turns into a dependable dependency, and each one is a small signal that the JPEG XL bet is being maintained, which is precisely the condition Chrome set for turning it on by default. (GitHub)Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1v97bjg/aomedia_announces_libaom_v314_with_improvements/https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1v97bjg/aomedia_announces_libaom_v314_with_improvements/The reference AV1 implementation turns its attention to still images: v3.14 improves layered and progressive AVIF encoding. Progressive rendering is the one trick old JPEG had that AVIF lacked, an image that sharpens as it loads rather than arriving in a wipe, so encoder support here matters for how AVIF pages feel on slow connections. (r/AV1)Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1v86vb3/avif_officially_reached_baseline_widely_available/https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/1v86vb3/avif_officially_reached_baseline_widely_available/Thirty months in every major engine is the bar for Baseline Widely Available, and AVIF just cleared it. For cautious teams this is the formal permission slip to ship AVIF without agonising over fallbacks, though a JPEG fallback in a picture element still costs one line, and our format comparison shows what each choice buys. (r/AV1)Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/AARomanov1985/Audio-Cassette-Simulationhttps://github.com/AARomanov1985/Audio-Cassette-SimulationA lighter one: a project that recreates cassette-deck character, frequency response, saturation, hiss, entirely with FFmpeg filter graphs. A good reminder that the filter engine is a full audio DSP playground, and a fine source of incantations to steal for less nostalgic work. (Hacker News)Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-153-Downloadshttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-153-DownloadsTwo stories in one release. Vulkan video decoding gives Linux hardware decode a path that does not depend on VA-API, which NVIDIA users will feel first. And JPEG XL becomes an opt-in experiment in Firefox Labs, meaning both major open engines now carry a JXL decoder that is one switch away from default, Chrome behind its flag and Firefox behind Labs. (Phoronix)Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/releases/v4.2.0https://gitlab.com/AOMediaCodec/SVT-AV1/-/releases/v4.2.0The encoder FFmpeg recommends for AV1 distribution encodes, and the one our convert and compress pages name as libsvtav1. Its point releases keep landing roughly quarterly, and each one tends to buy either speed at the same preset or compression at the same speed; if you encode AV1 in production, tracking them is free efficiency. (GitLab)Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/-/tags/1.5.4https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d/-/tags/1.5.4The decoder that actually plays the web's AV1: dav1d is what browsers and most players ship, so its quiet maintenance releases reach more devices than almost any codec news on this page. Boring in the best possible way; update and move on. (VideoLAN)Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,129691.0.htmlhttps://hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,129691.0.htmlFor years the honest advice was "use libfdk_aac, the built-in AAC is mediocre". That era may be ending: the native encoder has been rewritten with an overhauled psychoacoustic model, and FFmpeg's own metrics and listening tests place it ahead of fdk-aac and Apple's qAAC. It missed the 9.0 cut and ships in 9.1, and because this encoder sits behind countless defaults (OBS included), the average AAC on the internet is about to get better. (Hydrogenaudio)Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/releases/tag/v0.12.0https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/releases/tag/v0.12.0Encoding gets a 2 to 5 times multi-threaded speedup, progressive lossless images come out 30 to 40% smaller, and the notes flag numerous security fixes that make updating less than optional for anyone running libjxl server-side. A new jxltran tool extracts codestreams from JXLP boxes. (GitHub)Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://av2.aomedia.org/https://av2.aomedia.org/Ten years after AOMedia formed, AV1's successor is frozen: specification and the AVM 1.0 reference implementation, with roughly 30% bitrate savings over AV1 in AOMedia's own test conditions. The realistic clock starts now, though. AV1's spec landed in 2018 and needed half a decade of hardware and browser work before it became a default; AV2's road is the same length. (AOMedia)Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15800https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15800The paper behind the headline number: AV2's common test conditions, including convex-hull adaptive-streaming configurations and user-generated content in the test set. The measured result is a BD-rate reduction of 29.8% on PSNR-YUV and 33.8% on VMAF in random-access configuration. Worth reading before quoting the 30%: codec gains always depend on how you score them. (arXiv)Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-145-Releasedhttps://www.phoronix.com/news/Chrome-145-ReleasedThree years after tearing JPEG XL out, Chrome carries a decoder again: the memory-safe Rust jxl-rs rather than C++ libjxl, gated behind enable-jxl-image-format and off by default. Nothing decodes for real visitors yet, but the code being in the tree at all is the reversal the format's supporters spent those three years arguing for. Default-on is expected in the second half of 2026 if the launch criteria hold. (Phoronix)Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT