FFmpeg/doc/RELEASE_NOTES

Release Notes
=============

* 0.8 "Forbidden Fruit"

General notes
-------------

This release continues the API cleanups that have begun with the
previous release. While it is binary compatible with 0.7, many parts of
the public API were deprecated and will be removed in the git master and
later releases. Please consult the doc/APIchanges file to see
intended replacements for the deprecated APIs.

Furthermore, our work on the 'ffmpeg' command-line tool has resulted in
major revisions to its interface. In order to not break existing scripts
and applications, we have chosen to introduce a new tool called
'avconv', and keep the traditional 'ffmpeg' frontend for end-user's
convenience. Please see the Changelog file for details how 'avconv'
differs from 'ffmpeg'.

Additionally, this release introduces a number of new interesting codecs
such as the Apple Prores, Flash Screen Video 2 and Windows Media Image,
and muxers such as LATM or CELT in Ogg, among many others. Moreover, our
H.264 decoder has been improved to decode 4:2:2 material and our libx264
wrapper now allows to produce 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 video.

See the Changelog file for a list of significant changes.

Please note that our policy on bug reports has not changed. We still only accept
bug reports against HEAD of the Libav trunk repository. If you are experiencing
issues with any formally released version of Libav, please try a current version
of the development code to check if the issue still exists. If it does, make your
report against the development code following the usual bug reporting guidelines.


API changes
-----------

A number of additional APIs have been introduced and some existing
functions have been deprecated and are scheduled for removal in the next
release. Significant API changes include:

* new audio decoding API which decodes from an AVPacket to an AVFrame and
is able to use AVCodecContext.get_buffer() in the similar way as video decoding.

* new audio encoding API which encodes from an AVFrame to an AVPacket, thus
allowing it to properly output timing information and side data.

* rewritten AVOptions API with better built-in support for private options.

* private options support for demuxers [avformat_open_input()], muxers
[avformat_write_header()], encoders and decoders [avcodec_open2()].
As a result, many format- or codec-specific fields and flags in AVFormatContext
and AVCodecContext were deprecated -- notably most of CODEC_FLAG2_* and many
CODEC_FLAG_*.

* new API for custom IO interrupt callbacks.

* #include cleanup in libavutil -- libavutil/avutil.h no longer includes all
the other headers in libavutil, they must be included manually. One specific
result is that libavutil/mathematics.h is no longer included from
libavcodec/avcodec.h, which is a common source of errors.

Please see the file doc/APIchanges for details along with
similar programmer-centric information.



Other notable changes
---------------------

Libavcodec and libavformat built as shared libraries now hide non-public
symbols. This will break applications using those symbols. Possible solutions
are, in order of preference:
1) Try finding a way of accomplishing the same with public API.
2) If there is no corresponding public API, but you think there should be,
post a request on the user mailing list or IRC channel.
3) Finally if your program needs access to Libav internals for some special
reason then the best solution is to link statically.

Please see the Changelog file for a more detailed list of changes.