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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 (even encrypted)
- PAL or NTSC
- AC-3, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks
- Outputs:
- File format: MP4, AVI or OGM
- Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer encoding)
- Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 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 0.9.3: - Universal input HandBrake is no longer limited to DVDs: it will now accept practically any type of video as a source. This massive enhancement was achieved by tapping into the power of libavcodec and libavformat from the FFmpeg project.
- Video quality The x264 project has really come into its own this year, and HandBrake 0.9.3 integrates the latest improvements to the H.264 encoding library. Picture quality has enhanced dramatically through the use of psychovisual rate distortion and adaptive quantization, and there have been significant speed optimizations.
- Audio flexibility HandBrake now offers total control over multiple audio tracks.
- No more internal DVD decryption Yeah, we know, no one reading this is going "Oh wow, no more DVD decryption--what a great new feature!" but...deal. HandBrake will dynamically load VLC's copy of libdvdcss if you have it in your Applications folder in Mac OS X. We're not about to stop you from choosing to decrypt DVDs. If you're on a Mac, and you have VLC 0.9.x installed, you won't even notice the internal capability's gone.
- Persistent queues When queueing up a bunch of videos to encode, you need no longer fear a crash in HandBrake's graphical interfaces. Queued jobs are cached to disk for safekeeping between sessions.
- New, better organized presets (Be sure to run "Update Built-In Presets" from the Presets menu!) The presets are now "nested" in folders and have evolved. Notably, there is a new Apple "Universal" preset, designed to play and look good doing so on anything from an iPod Nano to an AppleTV. There have been many changes to most of them. Please be aware that most presets now use different settings. This means most of them are not suited for benchmarking 0.9.3 against 0.9.2. For example, the AppleTV preset is slower because it is now quality based, and produces much more efficient output. The Normal preset uses psychovisual rate distortion. The High Profile presets use psychovisual trellising. All of these setting changes can influence encoding time and output file size.
For comparison purposes, there are several presets in the Apple->Legacy folder (the old iPod High-Rez, the old AppleTV, and the old iPhone presets) which remain unchanged since 0.9.2.
- Audio-video synchronization HandBrake should now keep lip-synch as well as a DVD player can.
- Decomb filter HandBrake now offers a decomb filter, in the style of AviSynth's. It is a deinterlacer that can be left on all the time without degrading picture quality, because it only deinterlaces video when it visibly needs to be.
- Multi-threaded deinterlacing The "Slow" and "Slower" filters, as well as the new decomb filter, will now take advantage of as many processors as you can throw at them.
- "Same as source framerate" really is the same as the source framerate HandBrake now, by default, passes through the exact video framerate of the source instead of smoothing to a constant rate, which could lead to frames being duplicated or dropped.
- Theora video encoding HandBrake now can encode video using the Theora codec.
- Updated libraries Besides x264, updated libraries include libsamplerate, libogg, xvidcore, libmpeg2, lame, faac, and ffmpeg's libavcodec, libavformat, and libswscale.
- Massive improvements to all interfaces
As hard as it might be to believe, the changes listed above are only the tip of the iceberg. A much longer list is available, but even that is only a brief summary. There have been well over 600 changes to HandBrake's code base since 0.9.2, including hundreds of bug fixes.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
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| HandBrake User Reviews (288 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Oct 27 2009 |
BDKENNEDY1 The dev team has no way to test this old technology themselves and users aren't willing to test it for bugs, so they dropped it. The dev team is not a brick and mortar building with 100 employees and unlimited resources. The dev team is several software developers donating their spare time from their homes to keep this software going. No one is going to spend dozens of hours writing and testing code that 4 people are going to use.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Nov 3 2009 |
LMP I disagree. Just because a vocal minority does not care for XviD/AVI support, does not mean that there is no silent majority that wants this support. Look at it this way: how many audio applications support .ogg and AAC, but not MP3? AVI is the MP3 of video. It plays anywhere, and its quality is good enough for most users. Dropping support for AVI is like iTunes dropping support for MP3 in favor of AAC. It might be a good move from a purely technological point of view, but how many people prefer MP3 because it's more compatible?
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Oct 22 2009 |
LMP I just found out that according to the dev team, this will be the last version of Handbrake that will support AVI and XviD (http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12464). I find this very disappointing, because my main use for Handbrake was to create backups of my DVDs in XviD/AVI files which were compatible with my DVD player. Without further development on this front, Handbrake will become useless to me, and I will have to look for a more clunky and/or commercial solution, like FFmpegX. If you also feel that there should be some support for XviD/AVI in future versions of Handbrake, I suggest you contact the dev team, or post your comments here.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ 2 Replies - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Oct 22 2009 |
MISHA What features are you looking for that 0.9.3 doesn't provide for your XviD encodes? You can always keep using 0.9.3 just for that purpose. XviD is 10 year old technology, everything is moving to 264. The MKV container is also vastly superior to AVI.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Oct 22 2009 |
LMP I'm not arguing in favor of one format over another. I just find AVI/XviD very convenient because it's supported by almost all stand-alone video playback devices and DVD players. MKV and H264 are clearly superior from a technological standpoint, but I have yet to see any DVD player that supports them. As for Handbrake, I often see glitches and artifacts in its XviD conversion. I don't mind them very much, but it would be nice if the dev team fixed these glitches in the XviD encoder instead of completely dropping support for the format. Also, I'd like to see an improved 64-bit version of the Handbrake XviD encoder which could give me faster encoding speeds.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
 | Oct 17 2009 |
CORPSECORPS File dialogs don't activate the latest Default Folder.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 27 2009 |
XBOXSUMO Works very good just got to know your way around. Takes along time sometimes.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 15 2009 |
JSTEWARD I just used Handbrake in Snow Leopard and it crashed on me a couple times, then I switched to the Quicktime preset and it has worked several times in a row.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 11 2009 |
DASH77 Opening files from EyeTV (2.5.3) fails on Snow Leopard ("no valid source" it says). However, besides that one of the best apps!
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 8 2009 |
MACMAXPR Is it just me... or is it crashing with Snow Leopard?
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ 7 Replies - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Sep 10 2009 |
MC_SHIZZEL Me to, on a fresh install of Snow Leopard all I'm getting are crashes. Reinstalled Handbrake and still get the problems, VLC is working fine.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Sep 11 2009 |
MACMAXPR Well, it crashed with Snow Leopard 10.6. It is working now with 10.6.1 update.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Sep 13 2009 |
MC_SHIZZEL It's now working with 10.6.1 for the most part although sometimes it will still crash so I would have to convert a video file using another program into a different video format and then bring it into Handbrake to perform a final conversion and it would work.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Sep 21 2009 |
JBJORET Install the snapshot svn2829 version, there is a 64 Bits Snow Leopard build, it is 100 times better than the 1 year old 0.9.3. Not only it converts about 50% faster, but it has support for softsubtitles and x264 videofiles are about 30% smaller with the same quality.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Sep 21 2009 |
MACMAXPR Thanks JBJORET. Where is this available?
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Sep 21 2009 |
JBJORET It is always the same URL, so you can bookmark it: http://handbrake.fr/snapshot.php have fun.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Oct 17 2009 |
CORPSECORPS Tried the 64 bit snapshot and found the new UI changes nice. File dialogs are compatible with new Default Folder. Had to delete prefs to get soundtracks on video files to appear in settings menus.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| Aug 31 2009 |
PENNYHEAD1 Wonderful software! Great for converting your DVD library, and it's free too. NEEDS ANGLE SUPPORT.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Aug 29 2009 |
APPLEJACK78 After trying videovangelist I found this with the 'other people suggest' link. - Interface is out dated. - Good amount of settings to dig into. - Quality is from average to very good - PSP preset only plays well with H264. The default MPEG4 settings doesnt work with PSP3000 - 2pass encoding works like it should. - Couldnt select aspect ratio. - Not a real preview. Only a frame-shot of the source. This should be at least a shot of the destination result. In the end it actually works very well. Good tool
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Aug 25 2009 |
M85 Can't believe how fast this program is. Had to convert some mov files to mp4 and was using MpegStreamclip which was taking forever. Thought I'd try and do a file at the same time in Handbrake (2-pass, turbo first pass). A 400mb file finished in Handbrake in under half an hour while MpegStreamclip is in it's third hour! Quality is on a par i love MpegStreamclip for certain things, but Handbrake really rocks for speed.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Aug 25 2009 |
M85 I take that all back about the speed - turns out MpegStreamclip was making a continuous clip of everything in my cue. Otherwise the time would have been equal for the encode.
(Version 0.9.3) | |
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