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Question: I saw people pressing you here about supporting new versions of ffmpeg, and you replied it was a pain to do because of their constantly changing API. I just saw that you have done it. Well done! Was it a pain while doing it or it was not as painful as you envisioned??? Also, wouldn't their continous changing of API cause same issue again of latest version not being supported?
Asked by Ffmpeg (197.251.240.x) on February 16 2026, 1:52pm
Reply on February 16 2026, 2:17pm (edited at February 16 2026, 2:21pm):
    Turns out, this is was a task that an LLM could assist on. I provided some minimal source to Claude Opus 4.6, and with a simple prompt, got it to do 90% of the work (producing about 500 lines of new code in version-specific #ifdefs for 5.x/6.x/7.x -- it wasn't aware of ffmpeg 8.x, I guess it didn't exist when it was trained, so I added that manually, but it was pretty close to 7.x). It didn't produce perfect results, but it took care of the tedious part of digging through the API changes. I have mixed feelings about using this (what will the external downsides be?), but for now I'll take it as a win. As for future versions, yes we'll need to update it for the eventual ffmpeg 9.x etc.

Comments:
  • Posted by Ffmpeg (197.251.240.x) on February 16 2026, 3:40pm:
    Wow! Brilliant move, working smart, not hard. Once you tested and it works, pretty sure solving the downsides (if any) will be tedious. Support for 8.x is a huge jump from previous 4.4.x. This is great. Will check it out. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

  • Posted by Ffmpeg (197.251.240.x) on February 16 2026, 3:42pm:
    Sorry, I meant "solving the downsides (if any) will not be tedious."

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