FFmpeg 9.0 "Lei" Released, Extends Vulkan GPU-Compute Codec Push

FFmpeg 9.0 "Lei" shipped on August 4, 2026, roughly four months after 8.1. The release adds Vulkan-based decoding for APV video and Apple ProRes RAW, extending a GPU-compute codec trajectory that began in the 8.x series. Vulkan offers a vendor-neutral acceleration path distinct from codec-specific hardware blocks like VAAPI, D3D12, and AMF that prior releases expanded.