After a year of development, GStreamer 1.26 is now available. It's a cross-platform set of components for creating a wide range of multimedia applications, from media players and audio/video file converters to VoIP applications and streaming systems. GStreamer's code is distributed under the LGPLv2.1 license. Separate updates are being developed for the gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good, gst-plugins-bad, and gst-plugins-ugly plugins, as well as the gst-libav framework and the gst-rtsp-server streaming server. The new release is backwards compatible with the 1.0 branch at the API and ABI level. Binary builds will soon be prepared for AndroidIOS, macOS и Windows (In Linux (It is recommended to use packages from the distribution).
Key improvements in GStreamer 1.26:
- Added an encoder and decoder for the VVC (Versatile Video Coding) video format, also known as the H.266 video compression standard, developed jointly by the MPEG (ISO/IEC JTC 1) and VCEG (ITU-T) working groups, with the participation of such companies as Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Sony. H.266 replaces H.265 (HEVC) and provides high efficiency of transmission and storage of all screen resolutions (from SD and HD to 4K and 8K), supports video with an extended dynamic range (HDR, High Dynamic Range) and panoramic video in 360-degree mode.
- Added an encoder and decoder for the LCEVC (Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding) video coding standard, which implements an additional layer with metadata to improve the quality of existing H.26x and MP4/ISOBMFF codecs.
- Added an encoder and decoder for the JPEG XS image format, which is positioned as a lightweight image coding system that provides minimal delays during encoding and decoding, and is focused on optimizing the transmission of very high-quality image sequences (up to 8K). JPEG XS allows for a significant reduction in the required communication channel bandwidth without any noticeable loss of quality for the human eye.
- Added the ability to insert and extract closed captions for H.264 and H.265 formats.
- Improved support for adaptive streaming based on the HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) protocols. Added new media sinks hlscmafsink and hlssink3 for outputting CMAF (fMP4) and MPEG-TS fragments, as well as hlsmultivariantsink for variable output.
- The MPEG-TS multimedia container packer and unpacker now supports H.266, JPEG XS, AV1, and VP9 codecs, as well as SMPTE ST-2038 and ID3 metadata.
- H.4/VVC codec packers and unpackers have been added to Matroska and ISO MP266 formats. Hap and Lagarith video unpackers have been added to MP4.
- Added support for SMPTE 2038, a system for attaching additional data and metadata to multimedia containers.
- Improved integration with the Vulkan graphics API. Expanded capabilities for memory management, color space selection, device management, and full-screen operation. Added support for Vulkan extensions to speed up decoding of H264 and H265 video. Improved performance of the encoder using Vulkan.
- Improved OpenGL integration. Added support for additional color conversion formats and pixel formats. Added support for importing streams using DMABufs.
- Improved integration with Qt6 library and QML.
- Expanded components for integration with CUDA and NVIDIA Video Codec SDK. Added AV1 format encoder based on NVCODEC API.
- The gst-d3d12 library has been implemented with encoders and decoders based on the Direct3D 12 API.
- Support for client-side MIKEY key management has been added to the RTSP stack.
- AudioConvert now supports rearranging audio channels.
- The plugin based on the GTK3 library has been updated to support OpenGL/WGL on the platform. Windows.
- The imagefreeze element now supports JPEG and PNG formats.
- The pitch element implements the ability to play in reverse.
- The rtmp2 element has improved authentication mechanisms on RTP servers. Support for authentication in Limelight CDN has been added.
- The VA-API integration plugin has been updated with elements to speed up H.266 (VVC) decoding, as well as VP8 and JPEG encoding.
- Added elements for working with streams based on the QUIC protocol (raw QUIC, RTP-over-QUIC and WebTransport).
- The gst-plugins-rs set contains 23 new items or plugins written in Rust. Plugins written in Rust can be used in programs written in any language and work with them in the same way as with plugins written in C and C++.
Source: opennet.ru
