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EDITOR NOTES
The 'Download Now' link yields the 64-bit Intel version. See 'Related Links' for links to the 32-bit Intel version, and to the PPC version.
DESCRIPTION
HandBrake is a GPL'd multiplatform, multithreaded video encoding tool.
Supported Sources:
- Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted--protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files
- Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.
Outputs:
- File format: MP4 and MKV
- Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
- Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 and DTS pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)
Misc features:
- Chapter selection
- Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
- Integrated bitrate calculator
- Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
- Grayscale encoding
WHAT'S NEW
Version 0.9.4: - New build system, allowing 64-bit binaries (around 10% faster)
- Soft subtitles and Closed Captions:
- DVD Closed Captions
- ATSC Closed Captions
- SRT subtitle import
- Text soft subtitles in MP4 and MKV output
- Bitmap soft subtitles in MKV output
- Better support for DVD inputs:
- Uses libdvdnav
- DVD angles support
- Workaround for libdvdread malloc bomb on invalid PGC entry
- DVD drive region detection support in Linux
- Handles DVD programs with more than 16 streams - No longer tries to detect and discard duplicate titles when scanning
- Libdvdnav patched to perform read error recovery
- Libdvdread patched to allow raw device access in Windows
- Handles poorly mastered DVDs that had the menus ripped out of them
- Better support for non-DVD inputs:
- Preserves MP4 metadata
- TrueHD
- DTS-HD demuxing
- 8 bit audio
- Better handling of transport streams where audio starts first
- Better handling of transport streams that have been spliced together, leading to duplicate timestamps
- Better VC-1 frame detection
- Fixes bug that was causing one sec. of audio to be dropped on many ffmpeg files
- Looks harder for aspect ratio info from DV sources
- No longer truncates the last (dummy) chapter
- Allows specifying field parity for detelecine and decomb
- Better AV sync
- Support for sources with no audio
- DTS passthrough for MKV
- x264 bumped from r1169 to r1347, which means speed optimizations, new default settings (see r2742 commit comment), the magic of macroblock tree rate control (mbtree), a new CRF curve (meaning you will get different, generally lower bitrates at the same RF, with similar quality metrics), and weighted P-Frames (disabled by default for Baseline encodes and the AppleTV preset).
- Better sample interleaving
- Better, optional deinterlacer for decomb (EEDI2)
- New mode structure for the decomb filter
- Variable verbose logging levels
- Fixed timing for first two frames coming out of filters
- Libtheora bumped to 1.1.0
- Improvements to our theora implementation (2 pass encoding + soft target rate control)
- Caters to Theora's insistence on content having mod16 framing dimensions specified
- Flushes LAME encoder's final packets
- Fixed interjob framerate calculation
- Fixed pthreads regression in cygwin
- Tweaks for packaging tools
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
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| HandBrake User Reviews (300 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Nov 28 2009 |
BILLBAR I'm sorry to see the loss of AVI encoding, too. I have friends with windoz boxes who have trouble with MPEG4 files, and, for better or worse, many DVD players can display movies burned as AVI data files. I just re-encoded a 94 minute film from XviD to H-264 and it took only 35 minutes, where a file of similar length would take over a hour with Handbrake v 0.93 on my machine.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
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| Nov 26 2009 |
CHRISTIANS Although I like this new version it is a pity avi/divx support has been dropped. :-/ Also, they say it is 10% faster with 64bit. This is very hard to believe because every video codec en/decoder only uses small chunks of memory which is mostly a bit faster with 32bit floating point calculations. Just for the sake of it I did some tests with the previous 32bit version and this 64bit version. 5 tests - converting the same file to mp4. All tests shows this new version is even slower (not much but it was slower) on my Macbook Pro. Anyway, I still like this for ripping DVDs. But I use iVideo Converter now for general converting.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Nov 26 2009 |
VGOKLANI The new build of Handbrake is awesome! Just curious, is there a way to get this to work via xGrid? I have three macs, I would like to split the workload...
(Version 0.9.4) | |
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| Nov 25 2009 |
BOUSOZOKU 64-bit version complained that I didn't have a 64-bit version of VLC. When it directed me to the VLC downloads page, there was no 64-bit version of VLC (that I could find) anyway.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Nov 26 2009 |
ROBOTANK I think because the 64-bit releases were too buggy, there is no 64-bit OS X binary of the latest VLC version. HandBrake needs a same-bit version of VLC if it's going to use it for DVD decryption. So, your options are either to use a 32-bit HandBrake build for now, stick with an older 64-bit version of VLC, or use a standalone DVD ripper to strip copy protection before you feed the VIDEO_TS to HB. In that case there is no need to have VLC, as the DVD source is already decrypted. I prefer the third option personally, because a good standalone ripper will often be able to crack advanced copy protection schemes (like RipGuard, etc.) that HB/VLC can't handle.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| Nov 25 2009 |
ROBACKJA Love Handbrake. The presets are super nice. Easy way to get videos on my iPod for travel and airplane rides. Handbrake is definitely one of those high-quality open-source applications that stand above the rest. One thing I would like to see [in all these encoding apps] is a preference to set the process nice value automatically when the program starts. It doesn't have to be cryptic, like -20 to 20 values, but it could be some simple values like High, Normal, Low. That way every time you want to have encoding jobs going without really effecting your computer's responsiveness, people won't have to drop to a Terminal, find the Handbrake process, and renice it. :)
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Nov 25 2009 |
MILA06 RIP Avi...
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Nov 25 2009 |
ROBOTANK I think this is a fantastic update to HandBrake. It includes numerous improvements and updates to HB's encoding libraries and features. I think many users will especially appreciate the improved options for handling subtitles. The absence of XviD/AVI isn't an issue for me, since I never used HB to output to those formats anyway. I much prefer x264 in an MP4 container, and HB is the perfect tool for these encodes. While I understand that some people still have uses for XviD/AVI, I don't think there's much point in lamenting their disappearance from HB--the developers have made it pretty clear that they won't return. There are still plenty of video conversion tools out there that support these formats (VisualHub, iVideo Converter, etc.). I don't think that HandBrake has ever aimed to be a do-everything utility like VisualHub. It's clear in this version that it has a particular focus, x264 encoding, and it does it very well.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Nov 25 2009 |
KKNOPP Went to get the PPC version and got this Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111 in /www/handbrake.fr/site/rotation.php on line 9 Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111
(Version 0.9.4) | |
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| Nov 24 2009 |
TRANCE Xvid has been removed! Very dissapointing since Xvid gave the best tradeoff between quality and speed, with high quality rips in 25% of the time h264 takes. I don't care how many improvements are in the new version, i'm sticking with the old one until it doesn't work anymore.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Nov 24 2009 |
LEMMING Here is there reason for removing XviD and AVI support: * AVI: AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display. Furthermore, HandBrake's AVI muxer is vanilla AVI 1.0 that doesn't even support large files. The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read/maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance. * XviD: HandBrake, these days, is almost entirely about H.264 video, aka MPEG-4 Part 10. This makes it rather...superfluous to include two different encoders for an older codec, MPEG-4 Part 2. When choosing between FFmpeg's and XviD's, it came down to a matter of necessity. We need to include libavcodec (FFmpeg) for a bunch of other parts of its API, like decoding. Meanwhile, XviD's build system causes constant grief (it's the most common support query we get about compiling, after x264's requirement of yasm). Since we mainly use MPEG-4 Part 2 for testing/debugging, and recommend only H.264 for high quality encodes, Xvid's undisputed quality edge over FFmpeg's encoder is inconsequential, while FFmpeg's speed edge over XviD is important to us.
(Version 0.9.4) | |
| Nov 24 2009 |
PENNYHEAD1 Improvements are really nice specifically preview and angle support. The preview window shudders when making it larger or smaller. I don't know if it's my machine (2009 17" MBP) or not. Tanks for a great free app!!!
(Version 0.9.4) | |
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