1Release Notes
2=============
3
4* 0.5 "Bike Shed World Domination" March 3, 2009
5
6General notes
7-------------
8
9It has been so long since the last release that this should be considered the
10first FFmpeg release of recent times. Because of the way things have unfolded to
11date, the notes for this version cannot be entirely conventional.
12
13See the Changelog file for a list of significant changes.
14
15Please note that our policy on bug reports has not changed. We still only accept
16bug reports against HEAD of the FFmpeg trunk repository. If you are experiencing
17any issues with any formally released version of FFmpeg, please try a current
18version of the development code to check if the issue still exists. If it does,
19make your report against the development code following the usual bug reporting
20guidelines.
21
22API notes
23---------
24
25In the next release, it is intended to remove a number of deprecated APIs. We
26decided to put out a release that includes said APIs for the benefit of third
27party software.
28
29As such, this release:
30- provides a sync point for said APIs
31- increases awareness of API changes
32- allows the next release to detail how to transition from the old to the new
33
34The deprecated APIs to be removed are:
35- imgconvert (to be replaced by libswscale)
36- vhook (to be replaced by libavfilter)
37
38If at all possible, do not use the deprecated APIs. All notes on API changes
39should appear in doc/APIchanges.
40
41
42
43* 0.5.1
44
45General notes
46-------------
47
48This point release includes some minor updates to make the 0.5 release series
49usable for users that need to retain the existing behavior as closely as
50possible. The changes follow below:
51
52Security fixes
53--------------
54
55Various programming errors in container and codec implementations
56may lead to denial of service or the execution of arbitrary code
57if the user is tricked into opening a malformed media file or stream.
58
59Affected and updated have been the implementations of the following
60codecs and container formats:
61
62 - the Vorbis audio codec
63 - the FF Video 1 codec
64 - the MPEG audio codec
65 - the H264 video codec
66 - the MLP codec
67 - the HuffYUV codec
68 - the ASF demuxer
69 - the Ogg container implementation
70 - the MOV container implementation
71
72Symbol Versioning enabled
73-------------------------
74
75The backported symbol versioning change is enabled on platforms that support
76it. This allows users to upgrade from 0.5.1 to the upcoming 0.6 release
77without having to recompile their applications. Please note that distributors
78have to recompile applications against 0.5.1 before upgrading to 0.6.
79
80libx264.c backport
81------------------
82
83This release includes a backport to the libx264 wrapper that allows FFmpeg to
84be compiled against newer versions of libx264 up to API version 85.
85
86licensing changes
87-----------------
88
89Previously both libswscale and our AC-3 decoder had GPLed parts. These have
90been replaced by fresh LGPL code. x86 optimizations for libswscale remain GPL,
91but the C code is fully functional. Optimizations for other architectures have
92been relicensed to LGPL.
93
94AMR-NB decoding/encoding and AMR-WB decoding is now possible through the free
95software OpenCORE libraries as an alternative to the non-free libamr libraries.
96
97We found out that libfaac contains non-free parts and is not LGPL as previously
98claimed. We have changed configure to reflect this. You now have to pass the
99--enable-nonfree option if you wish to compile with libfaac support enabled.
100
101Furthermore the non-free bits in libavcodec/fdctref.c have been rewritten. Note
102well that they were only used in a test program and never compiled into any
103FFmpeg library.
104