HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or BluRay sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.
Here is a detailed breakdown of HandBrake’s features:
- Built-in Device Presets—Get started with HandBrake in seconds by choosing a profile optimized for your device, or choose a universal profile for standard or high quality conversions. Simple, easy, fast. For those that want more choice, tweak many basic and advanced options to improve your encodes.
- Supported Input Sources—Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or Blu-ray sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.
Outputs:
- File Containers: .MP4(.M4V) and .MKV
- Video Encoders: H.265 (x265 and QuickSync), H.264(x264 and QuickSync), H.265 MPEG-4 and MPEG-2, VP8 and Theora
- Audio Encoders: AAC / HE-AAC, MP3, Flac, AC3, or Vorbis
- Audio Pass-thru: AC-3, E-AC3, DTS, DTS-HD, TrueHD, AAC and MP3 tracks
Additional features:
- Title/ Chapter Selection
- Queue up Multiple Encodes
- Chapter Markers
- Subtitles (VobSub, Closed Captions CEA-608, SSA, SRT)
- Constant Quality or Average BitRate Video Encoding
- Support for VFR, CFR and VFR
- Video Filters—Deinterlacing, Decomb, Detelecine, Deblock, Grayscale, Cropping and Scaling
- Live Video Preview
HandBrake 1.6.0 changelog:
All platforms
General
- Added AV1 video encoding
- Added high bit depth and color depth support to various encoders and filters
- Added 4K AV1 General, QSV (Hardware), and MKV (Matroska) presets
- Added 4K HEVC General presets and updated related presets to use similar encoder settings
- Revised Web presets and renamed to Creator, Email, and Social
- Removed VP8 presets
- The VP8 video encoder is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release
- Related, the Theora encoder is long deprecated and will be removed in a future release
- Miscellaneous other preset revisions
Video
- Added SVT-AV1 (software) and Intel QSV AV1 (hardware) video encoders
- Added VP9 10-bit encoder
- Added NVENC HEVC 10-bit encoder
- Added VCN HEVC 10-bit encoder
- Added H.264 levels 6, 6.1, and 6.2 for the x264 encoder
- Added H.264/H.265 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 profiles for the x264 and x265 encoders
- Added H.265 4:2:2 profile for VideoToolbox encoder on Apple Silicon
- Added support for Intel Deep Link Hyper Encode (leverage multiple QSV media engines to increase performance)
- Fixed longstanding issue where slowest NVENC encoder preset caused encoding failures
- Removed support for Intel CPUs older than 6th generation (Skylake) when using Intel Quick Sync Video
Filters
- Added Bwdif deinterlace filter
- Improved Autocrop filter algorithm
- Higher accuracy on mixed aspect ratio content, e.g. both letterbox and full frame pictures
- Improved video scaling performance on Apple Silicon and ARM-based systems
- Use zscale (zimg) by default, falling back to swscale where necessary
- Improved multithread performance (slightly) for the following filters on high core count systems
- Comb Detect
- Decomb
- Denoise
- NLMeans
Updated the following filters to support higher than 8-bit content and 4:2:2/4:4:4 chroma subsampling
- Detelecine
- Comb Detect
- Decomb
- Grayscale
- Denoise
- NLMeans
- HQDN3D
- Chroma Smooth
- Sharpen
- UnSharp
- LapSharp
Build system
- Added support for building for OpenBSD
- Added --cpu configure parameter to enable building for native CPU architecture
- Added --lto configure parameter to enable link time optimization
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Third-party libraries
- Updated libraries
- AMF 1.4.24 (AMD VCN encoding)
- FFmpeg 5.1.2 (decoding and filters)
- FreeType 2.12.1 (subtitles)
- Fribidi 1.0.12 (subtitles)
- HarfBuzz 4.4.1 (subtitles)
- libass 0.16.0 (subtitles)
- libbluray 1.3.4 (Blu-ray decoding)
- libdav1d 1.0.0 (AV1 decoding)
- libdvdread 6.1.3 (DVD decoding)
- liblzma (xz) 5.2.6 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
- libjpeg-turbo 2.1.4 (preview image compression)
- libspeex 1.2.1 (Speex audio decoding)
- libvpx 1.12.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
- libxml 2.10.3 (general)
- oneVPL 2023.1.0 (Intel QSV encoding/decoding)
- x264 164 r3100 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
- x265 r12747 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
- zimg 3.0.4 (color conversion)
- New libraries
- SVT-AV1 1.4.1 (AV1 encoding)
Linux
- Added many quality of life improvements contributed by community members
- Improved parity with the Mac and Windows graphical interfaces
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
- Updated translations
- Added new translations
- Bulgarian (Български)
- Finnish (Suomi)
- Georgian (ქართული)
Mac
- Added Quick Look support to the queue
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
- Updated translations
- Added Japanese translation
Windows
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
- Updated all translations
- Added new translations
- Bulgarian (Български)
- Dutch (Nederlands)
- Polish (Polski)
NOTE: Windows users, please make sure to install .NET Desktop Runtime version 6.0.x. Read carefully: you need the DESKTOP runtime. You must install .NET 6 even if you have installed .NET 7.
Download: HandBrake 1.6.0 (64-bit) | Portable 64-bit (Open Source)
Download: HandBrake 1.0.7 (32-bit) | 9.6 MB
Links: HandBrake Website | Other Operating Systems | Screenshot
