#AVpres Newsletter 2026-08-10

FFmpeg 9.0 has been released
Training
MIDI in Matroska
Swiss Film and Video Directory
Glossary in German
Software Used by Archives

1. FFmpeg 9.0 has been released

On the 4^th of August 2026, was published the release 9.0 of the FFmpeg package. It is actually a minor not a major release; even the change in numbering from 8.1 to 9.0 could tell a different story. And of course, after thoroughly testing it, we promptly updated our own configurable Homebrew distribution the same day.

2. Training

2.1. “Bash on [Ubuntu on] Windows”

The Report from the Field organised to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) was an unexpected success. More than one hundred people joined us online, including nine “public viewings” at universities in Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Switzerland and the United States. Thank you ever so much for your interest!

2.2. Manufacturing of Archive Film Scanners

We are very pleased that our Summer School enjoyed great popularity! It was also be a good occasion to give away to interested people the equipment we no longer need, in preparation of the company’s closing in less than one year time.

Given the high demand, we may prepare a small publication on this topic next year, once the company is closed, but we certainly don’t have time to do it before.

2.3. Chemical Treatments and Alchemy of Last Resort

We are receiving inscriptions for our Autunm School until 10 September 2026 at 15:00 CEST (that’s 13:00 UTC). Please note that places are not allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, but only after the registration deadline and based on the quality of the applications received.

3. MIDI in Matroska

The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is a technical standard and digital language that allows computers, synthesisers and electronic instruments to communicate. Not only it describes a communication protocol, digital interface and electrical connectors, but also defines a file format that stores and exchanges the musical data.

Reto began to work on a MIDI “codec” specification that could be used in the Matroska container. The plan is to present a provisional specification with a reference implementation at the “No Time to Wait” conference in 2027. Stay tuned if this topic interests you.

4. Swiss Film and Video Directory

Although we had planned to discontinue this activity at the end of June 2023, that’s more than three years ago, another small update of our Swiss Film and Video Directory took place.

5. Glossary in German

We have updated our Glossary in German. We have added links to the SMPTE Standards, Recommended Practices, Engineering Guidelines and Registered Disclosure Documents, which are now freely available for everyone, and we have replaced expired SMPTE documents with the latest version.

6. Software Used by Archives

Updates since the last newsletter are highlighted in bold.

Aaru Data Preservation Suite (CLI): “All-in-one solution for digital media preservation and archival.”
Version 5.4.2 LTS has has been released on 2026-02-14:
https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru
The developer, Natalia Portillo, has released the Beta 1 of a new version 6.0.0 on 2026-07-15.
AEO-Light (GUI): Extraction of optical sound tracks form image digitisations with sufficient overscanning.
Version 2.4 has has been released on 2025-07-23:
https://github.com/usc-imi/aeo-light
Audacity (GUI): Recording and editing sounds.
Version 3.7.8 has been released on 2026-06-11:
https://www.audacityteam.org/
Bash (CLI): Command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input, a string or a script file.
Version 5.3.15 has been released on 2026-06-09:
https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
This is the shell we use daily.
DCP-o-matic (GUI): “Get any content cinema-ready.”
Version 2.18.46 has been released on 2026-08-01:
https://dcpomatic.com/
FFmpeg (CLI): The FFmpeg package consists of the three commands ffmpeg (a media transcoder), ffprobe (a media metadata extractor) and ffplay (a media player), as well as seven librairies including libavformat (a container collection), libavcodec (a codec collection) and libavfilter (a filter collection).
Version 9.0 has been released on 2026-08-04:
https://ffmpeg.org/
We use our own FFmpeg distribution.
fq (CLI): “Tool, language and decoders for working with binary data.”
Version 0.17.0 has been released on 2026-03-15:
https://github.com/wader/fq
HandBrake (GUI): A video transcoder.
Version 1.11.2 has been released on 2026-06-07:
https://handbrake.fr/
MediaConch (GUI, CLI and web): “Implementation checker, policy checker, reporter, and fixer that targets preservation-level audiovisual files.”
Version 25.04 has been released on 2025-05-05:
https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch
https://mediaarea.net/MediaConchOnline/
MediaInfo (GUI, CLI and web): The most popular metadata extractor.
Version 26.05 has been released on 2026-05-12:
https://mediaarea.net/MediaInfo
MKVToolNix (GUI): Create, alter and inspect Matroska files.
Version 100.0 has been released on 2026-07-05:
https://mkvtoolnix.download/
mpv (CLI and GUI): “A free, open source, and cross-platform media player.”
Version 0.41.0 has been released on 2025-12-21:
https://mpv.io
This is our preferred media player, which we use with our own FFmpeg distribution.
Nano (CLI): A small and friendly text editor. This is not a word processing software.
Version 9.2 has been released on 2026-07-31:
https://www.nano-editor.org/
This is our preferred text editor.
OpenEXR: The reference implementation of the OpenEXR file format (and video codec).
Version 3.4.14 has been released on 2026-08-07:
https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr
QCTools (GUI): Analyse and understand digitised video files through use of audiovisual analytics and filtering.
Version 1.4 or 1.4.1 has been released possibly on 2025-05-19:
https://mediaarea.net/QCTools
https://github.com/bavc/qctools
RAWcooked (CLI): “Encode and decode audio-visual RAW data with Matroska, FFV1 and FLAC.”
A bridge between uncompressed still images and lossless compressed video stream formats.
Version 25.12 has been released on 2025-12-30:
https://mediaarea.net/RAWcooked
Disclaimer: We have supported this project since the development of the original idea, and Reto co-owns the copyright.
Shutter Encoder (GUI): A media transcoder.
Version 20.2 has been released on 2026-06-28:
https://github.com/paulpacifico/shutter-encoder
The Cable Bible: A valuable resource by Ethan Gates.
Version 2025-11-20 is online:
https://github.com/amiaopensource/cable-bible
VLC (GUI): A very popular media player.
Version 3.0.23 has been released on 2025-12-19:
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
vrecord (CLI/GUI): Open-source software for capturing a video signal and turning it into a digital file.
Version 2026-07-07 was released:
https://github.com/amiaopensource/vrecord
yt-dlp (CLI): A feature-rich command-line media downloader.
Version 2026.07.04 was released:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Best regards from Joshua, Michal and Reto

2026-08-09