ffmpeg News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 24, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

FOSDEM 2026 schedule – Embedded, RISC-V, Robotics, Rust, Open Hardware, and more

FOSDEM 2026 will take place on January 31-February 1, with thousands of developers meeting in Brussels to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. The free-to-attend “Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting” gets more traction every year, and in 2026, there will be at least 1,113 speakers, 1,016 events, 70 tracks, and potentially close to 10,000 attendees. As usual, I’ll create a virtual schedule with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms, including “RISC-V”, “Robotics and simulation”, and “FOSS on Mobile”, among others. I’m aware some of the talks overlap by a couple of minutes or so… FOSDEM 2026 Day 1 – Saturday, January 31 10:40 – 11:15 – RISC-V Vector optimisations in FFmpeg by Rémi Denis-Courmont FFmpeg is the most versatile multimedia codec and format support library, and was […]

December 31, 2025January 4, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

VisionFive 2 Lite SBC Review – Ubuntu 24.04 on a low-cost RISC-V SBC in 2026

VisionFive 2 Lite RISC-V SBC Ubuntu Review 2026

StarFive has sent me a sample of the VisionFive 2 Lite RISC-V SBC for review. It’s a low-cost credit card-sized board based on the StarFive JH7110S quad-core RISC-V SBC and designed to get started with Linux RISC-V on the cheap. When I first tested the earlier VisionFive 2 SBC with a StarFive JH7110 RISC-V SoC in February 2023, I didn’t call it a review, but rather a hands-on experience, since, at the time, many features still didn’t work properly. Almost three years have passed since then, so reviewing the VisionFive 2 Lite SBC with Ubuntu 24.04 will allow us to see how much progress has been made on the software side. If you are in a rush, you can jump to the what works, what doesn’t section. VisionFive 2 Lite unboxing I received the board in a plastic box with a cover reading “VisionFive 2 Lite Your Gateway to RISC-V”. […]

April 8, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Kodi 21.0 Omega released with FFmpeg 6, LG webOS support, and more

Kodi 21.0 “Omega” has just been released with the latest version of the open-source media center adding 3,750 commits since the release of Kodi 20.0 “Nexus” on January 15th, 2023 that notably added AV1 hardware decoding in Android and x86. The new Kodi 21.0 version updates FFmpeg to version 6, adds native support for LG webOS televisions after some reverse-engineering, and implements new features such as Dolby Vision on-the-fly profile conversion in Android, native windowing in macOS that does not rely on the SDL library, and an in-game player viewer to view which game port each player’s controller is currently connected to. Most of the changes were not user-facing and instead, were under-the-hood improvements to the stability, performance, and security of Kodi. You’ll find more changes in the Kodi 21.0 Alpha/Beta/RC pre-release announcements and the complete list of changes on GitHub. That also means Kodi v22 “P*” development has started. […]

February 1, 2024February 1, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

JellyFin adds support for Rockchip RK3588 MPP hardware acceleration

Jellyfin open-source media server has recently added support for Rockchip RK3588 MPP hardware acceleration, which means the software supports video hardware decoding and encoding, hardware scalers, and other features. The GitHub request lists the following changes: Add full HWA transcoding pipeline for Rockchip RKMPP HW decoder (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H264, HEVC, VP8, VP9, AV1) HW encoder (H264, HEVC) up to 1080p @ 480fps / 4k @ 120fps on RK3588 HW scaler, format conversion, and subtitle burn-in HW HDR-to-SDR tone-mapping (requires OpenCL, RK3588 only) The OpenCL runtime can be downloaded and installed from libmali-valhall-g610-g13p0-x11-wayland-gbm_1.9-1_arm64.deb Support lossless AFBC (Arm frame buffer compression) to save memory bandwidth and improve FPS Support async RGA filter and MPP encoder If indeed decoding and encoding can be performed simultaneously, that would mean video transcoding can be offloaded to the Rockchip RK3588’s VPU. The changes has been tested with Linux 5.10 and Linux 6.1, but do not […]

August 2, 2023February 7, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Firefly AIO-1684XQ motherboard features BM1684X AI SoC with up to 32 TOPS for video analytics, computer vision

Firefly AIO-1684XQ is a motherboard based on SOPHGO SOPHON BM1684X octa-core Cortex-A53 AI SoC delivering up to 32TOPS for AI inference, and designed for computer vision applications and video analytics. The headless machine vision board is equipped with 16GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, and 128MB SPI flash, and comes with a SATA 3.0 port, dual Gigabit Ethernet, optional 4G LTE or 5G modules, four USB 3.0 ports, and a terminal block with two RS485 interface, two relay outputs, and a few GPIOs. Firefly AIO-1684XQ specifications: SoC – SOPHGO SOPHON BM1684X CPU – Octa-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 2.3 GHz TPU – Up to 32TOPS (INT8), 16 TFLOPS (FP16/BF16), 2 TFLOPS (FP32) VPU Up to 32-channel H.265/H.264 1080p25 video decoding Up to 32-channel 1080p25 HD video processing (decoding + AI analysis) Up to 12-channel H.265/H.264 1080p25fps video encoding System Memory – 16GB LPDDR4x Storage 64GB eMMC flash 128MB SPI […]

April 7, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

AMD Alveo MA35D media accelerator transcodes up to 32 1080p60 AV1 streams in real-time

AMD ALVEO MA350 AV1 real-time encoding card

AMD Alveo MA35D media accelerator PCIe card is based on a 5nm ASIC capable of transcoding up to 32 Full HD (1080p60) AV1 streams in real-time and designed for low-latency, high-volume interactive streaming applications such as watch parties, live shopping, online auctions, and social streaming. AMD says the Alveo MA35D utilizes a purpose-built VPU to accelerate the entire video pipeline, and the ASIC can also handle up to 8x 4Kp60, or 4x 8Kp30 AV1 streams per card. H.264 and H.265 codecs are also supported, and the company claims its “next-generation AV1 transcoder engines” deliver up to a 52% reduction in bitrate at the same video quality against “an open source x264 veryfast SW model”. AMD Alveo MA350 highlights: Auxiliary CPU – 2x 64-bit quad-core RISC-V to perform control and board management tasks AI Processor – 22 TOPS per card for AI-enabled “smart streaming” for video quality optimization Memory – 16GB […]

January 30, 2023January 30, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

FOSDEM 2023 schedule – Open-source Embedded, Mobile, IoT, Arm, RISC-V, etc… projects

After two years of taking place exclusively online, FOSDEM 2023 is back in Brussels, Belgium with thousands expected to attend the 2023 version of the “Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting” both onsite and online. FOSDEM 2023 will take place on February 4-5 with 776 speakers, 762 events, and 63 tracks. As usual, I’ve made my own little virtual schedule below mostly with sessions from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive devroom, but also other devrooms including “Open Media”, “FOSS Educational Programming Languages devroom”, “RISC-V”, and others. FOSDEM Day 1 – Saturday February 4, 2023 10:30 – 10:55 – GStreamer State of the Union 2023 by Olivier Crête GStreamer is a popular multimedia framework making it possible to create a large variety of applications dealing with audio and video. Since the last FOSDEM, it has received a lot of new features: its RTP & WebRTC stack has greatly improved, Rust […]

June 9, 2022June 9, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Kodi 20 “Nexus” Alpha 1 gets AV1 hardware decoding, DietPi 8.5 released

I’ll combine two unrelated short news about software releases for TV boxes, Raspberry Pi, and other SBCs: Kodi 20 “Nexus” Alpha 1 media center, and DietPi 8.5 lightweight Debian-based image for SBC’s. Kodi 20 “Nexus” Alpha 1 The first alpha release of Kodi 20 “Nexus” is out with one highlight being support for AV1 hardware video decoding in Android and x86 (VAAPI) platforms with AV1-capable GPU or VPU. Other notable changes include: FFMPEG upgraded to version 4.4 Plenty of subtitle related changes: Added Steam Deck built-in controller support Initial support for M1 native including native windowing/input handling Pipewire support in Linux Various PVR improvements including in terms of performance when a large number of channels is displayed You’ll find more details in the announcement. The RetroPlayer project based on Kodi, but adding some game-related features, has also released some test images based on Kodi 20. Note that since it’s an […]