HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but now has been ported over to MacOS X and to GNU/Linux.
Features:
- Can encode directly from DVDs (even encrypted ones) or from VIDEO_TS folders
- Supports AC3, LPCM and MPEG audio tracks
- Outputs MP4, AVI or OGM files
- Outputs AAC, MP3 or Vorbis audio
- Supports 2*pass encoding
- Supports encoding of two audio tracks
- Includes a bitrate calculator
- Supports picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
What's New:
General
- Switched core decoding library from Libav to FFmpeg
- Fixes numerous sources previously unreadable or otherwise broken
- Facilitates a number of the improvements and features in this release and planned for the future
- Removed deprecated Legacy presets
- See the list of compatible replacements on GitHub
- Updated official presets to use stereo instead of DPL2 mixdown
- Avoids potential spatial positioning issues with the current DPL2 algorithm and wide pans in source material
- Limited in impact since DPL2 decoding has not been in widespread use for years
- Updated official presets descriptions to revise compatibility and mention recently released devices
- Updated official presets to rename Fire TV to Amazon Fire
- Added Amazon Fire 720p30 and Chromecast 1080p60 presets
- Added {creation-date} and {creation-time} to automatic file naming
Video
- Fixed an issue decoding Blu-ray titles where the aspect ratio is unknown (assume 16:9)
- Fixed an issue encoding video with very short frame durations (less than 0.00285s or greater than 350 FPS)
- Improved extradata handling to accommodate all codecs
- Added support for decoding TIFF/LZMA video
Audio
- Fixed potential decoding issue for audio lacking an explicit channel layout (intelligently guess the layout)
- Fixed a potential crash during audio probe
- Improved resampling to allow dithering for all codecs (only where necessary)
- Improved quality of the default AAC encoder on non-Mac platforms (FFmpeg AAC), no longer experimental
- Improved bit rate constraints to allow Opus as low as 6 kbit/s per channel
- Added support for up to 7.1 channel AAC encoding (note that FDK AAC/HE-AAC do not support 6.1)
- Added support for E-AC3 audio in MP4 container
- Added Speex audio decoder
Subtitles
- Fixed a potential crash where an SRT file cannot be opened
- Added support for SRT files using periods instead of commas to delineate fractions
Command Line Interface
- Fixed inability to override preset subtitles burn setting (native and none are now valid values for --subtitle-burned)
Build system
- Fixed Linux packaging with an out-of-tree build directory
- Fixed Windows graphical interface build script signing tool location
- Removed --enable-local-* and associated contrib libraries; please see the documentationfor dependencies help
- Updated to mingw-w64-build 4.1.0 with gcc 7.3.0, continuous output (keep alive), and miscellaneous improvements
- Improved support for building with Xcode 10
- Improved support for building on FreeBSD 11, 12, and 13
- Improved Flatpak packaging for Linux (numerous fixes and improvements, no longer experimental)
- Improved configure.py to always use the Python executable found by configure
- Added script for creating Flatpak manifests
- Added support for selecting a compiler via the CC environment variable
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Third-party libraries
- Removed libraries
- Libav 12.3 (decoding and filters)
- yasm 1.3.0
- Updated libraries
- libopus 1.3 (Opus audio encoding)
- x264 157 r2935 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
- x265 2.9 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
- New libraries
- FFmpeg 4.1 (decoding and filters)
- liblzma (xz) 5.2.4 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
- libspeex 1.2.0 (Speex audio decoding)
Linux
- Fixed Blu-ray title name being set to device name (e.g. sr0) when scanning raw devices
- Fixed Blu-ray default destination file names to no longer include MPLS number
- Fixed an issue with queue state not being updated properly on reload
- Fixed various issues importing presets
- Updated most translations
- Added initial support for GTK 4
- Added ability to customize activity window font size and increased default from 7 to 8
- Added destination overwrite protection (append number to file name on conflict)
- Added {source-path} to automatic path setting
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Mac
- HandBrake now requires OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later
- Removed preferences option to show the advanced tab (deprecated and slated for removal)
- Fixed minor display issues on macOS 10.14 Mojave
- Fixed queue toolbar icon not updating
- Removed Growl in favor of native system notifications
- Updated Sparkle automatic update library
- Improved handling of invalid presets
- Improved layout to better support localization
- Improved preview border alignment on high density displays
- Improved automatic naming to avoid updating when unrelated settings change
- Improved criteria for showing destination overwrite warnings
- Improved stop encoding confirmation dialog
- Improved notifications to no longer play sounds when alerts are disabled
- Added initial localization support and German translation
- Added initial support for VideoToolbox hardware-accelerated encoding
- Added support for Dark Mode on macOS 10.14 Mojave (new Dark Mode toolbar icons require building with Xcode 10 on Mojave)
- Added Touch Bar support to various windows and dialogs
- Added Finder progress bar to files currently encoding
- Added Show Source in Finder to queue contextual menu (renamed Show in Finder to Show Destination in Finder)
- Added validation for custom filter parameters
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Windows
- HandBrake now requires .NET Framework 4.7.1 or later (installer offers download if missing)
- Fixed mixdown selection where the specified mixdown in the selected preset is not available
- Fixed audio sample rate of 48 kHz being selected where Auto was the specified behaviour
- Removed preferences option to show the advanced tab (deprecated and slated for removal)
- Removed options menu from queue in favour of contextual menu
- Improved layout to better support localization
- Improved error handling when adding items to the queue
- Improved multi-instance queue recovery to avoid loading queue files from the wrong instance
- Improved filters layout and controls
- Improved video quality slider by allowing it to grow with window size and setting x264/x265 granularity to 0.5
- Improved SRT import default browse location (open source video location)
- Improved keyboard shortcuts by making Ctrl-S open the destination save dialog (start encode is now Ctrl-E)
- Added additional keyboard shortcuts for various actions
- Added initial localization support and German translation
- Added support for AMD VCE and Nvidia NVENC hardware-accelerated encoders
- Added automatic queue archiving and option to select an archived queue for recovery (archives are removed after 7 days)
- Added support for recovering specific queue files on start using --recover-queue-ids=
- Added additional controls to passthru audio tracks to configure audio fallback parameters
- Added ability to drag and drop SRT subtitles files onto the main window
- Added option to disable preview image on summary tab
- Added option to disable checking for update on start in portable mode
- Added stop encoding confirmation dialog
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
