Seems there is another numbered-version release of FFmpeg <https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/24/ffmpeg_6_1/>. I didn’t even notice: I did a fresh build a few days ago, and I fetch my upstream from <git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg>, and it appears that repo now actually points to <http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git>. And I just build whatever happens to be at the head of the master branch at the time. This FFmpeg version is named “Heaviside”, after Oliver Heaviside, a major figure in the whole 19th-century ferment over electromagnetic theory, Maxwell’s equations, the development of the associated mathematical techniques of vector analysis, quaternions and all that jazz. If you are interested, here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M12CJIuX8D4> is an entertaining exposition on the very human figures involved in these developments, from a presenter who combines an enthusiasm for the subject with the patience to dig up a remarkable amount of detail (including personal foibles, naturally) about what went on. Why build FFmpeg yourself? Because then you can enable combinations of options that are not legally allowed in any prebuilt binary package. For example, you can have both “--enable-gpl” and “--enable-nonfree”, and end up with a build that is marked “unredistributable”. FFmpeg is both a set of command-line tools, and a set of libraries underlying them, that can also be built into other custom applications. For those intimidated by the truly breathtaking array of options in the command-line tools, there are GUI front-ends to make the functionality more approachable. I hear HandBrake is quite popular. Though I was disappointed to discover that, instead of being a simple GUI wrapper around the command-line tools, it builds its own application directly around the libraries. The downsides of this are that it limits the functionality it can make available, and also makes it harder to keep up with changes to that functionality.