FFmpeg 9.0.2 Lei: what is new, and what hosted trim exposes

FFmpeg 9.0.2 "Lei" is the newest release of the 9.0 branch, published 2026-09-18, and 8.1.3 "Hoare" followed on 2026-09-21. If you are asking "ffmpeg 9 what's new" because you want a new codec feature in a hosted pipeline, note the catch: Sume does not let you pass ffmpeg flags at all. Its trim route takes a fixed set of fields, and a request that names ffmpeg options is rejected with ffmpeg_fields_rejected. The Sume docs do not state which ffmpeg version the workers run, so a feature that only exists in 9.x cannot be assumed to be available.

What is in the 9.0 line?

The release/9.0 Changelog lists, among other entries, LCEVC track muxing in the MP4 muxer, an animated WebP decoder and demuxer, a bitstream filter that splits Dolby Vision multi-layer HEVC, an ONNX Runtime DNN backend, SMPTE 2094-50 metadata support and a Vulkan 360 filter. The changelog was read through a summarizing fetch, so treat that list as partial and check the file itself before depending on an entry.

These are mostly demuxer, muxer and filter additions for people who run ffmpeg themselves. None of them is a field on a Sume route.

What does a hosted trim let you control?

The trim route cuts a clip with a worker-side ffmpeg and nothing else. You send start plus exactly one of end or duration (0.2 to 900 seconds). precision is exact, the default, which re-encodes to libx264 with yuv420p, or keyframe, which stream-copies. audio keeps or drops the sound track, and output can set width, height and fps on an exact cut. The source must be Sume-hosted media, so bring a file in with the media-imports route first, and every call needs an Idempotency-Key. The public rate is $0.02 per job; confirm it in GET /v1/catalog.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: trim-9-demo-001" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/talk.mp4","start":2,"duration":8,"precision":"keyframe"}'

Honest limits

• No codec, bitrate, CRF or filter flags on trim: the output of an exact cut is H.264 in yuv420p, and nothing in the docs lets you pick another encoder.
• The docs do not name the ffmpeg version, so a 9.0-only demuxer or muxer may or may not exist on the worker. Probe a sample file before building on it.
• Source clips are limited to 1800 seconds and output to 900 seconds.
• If you need a flag, run ffmpeg yourself; use Sume when the fixed fields cover the cut.