HandBrake Media Transcoder Hits Version 1.0.0 After 13 Years of Development

Veteran video transcoder HandBrake 1.0.0 was officially launched on Christmas Eve, as the development team planned the release as a Christmas present for all the fans of the tool for converting video files from nearly any format. HandBrake 1.0.0 is currently supported on all major platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows, and, as expected, it's a major release that brings number new features and improvements.

"After more than 13 years of development, the HandBrake Team is delighted to present HandBrake 1.0.0. Thank you to all of our many contributors over the years for making HandBrake what it is today," reads the announcement. "On that note, we are also excited to announce the new online HandBrake Documentation beta, available in English."

Look What's New in Handbrake version 1.0.0?

Video

- VP9 video encoding via libvpx
- Intel QuickSync Video H.265/HEVC encoder
  - Requires Intel Skylake or newer CPU
- Ultra HD / 4K color pass through (support for BT.2020)
- Additional standard frame rate selections in the graphical interfaces
- New Auto anamorphic mode maximizes storage resolution, replaces Strict anamorphic mode
- New Pad filter (command line only for now)
- New Decomb/Deinterlace filter settings and improved defaults
- Rotate filter now available in all graphical interfaces
- New NLMeans filter tunes Tape and Sprite for analog tape recordings and vintage video games, respectively
- Assembly optimizations NLMeans filter improve performance up to 10%
- Assembly optimizations in x264 encoder improve performance for faster presets by 5-10%
- x265 encoder quality improvements, especially when using tune grain
- High bit depth encoding support via external shared libraries (video pipeline is still 8-bit 4:2:0)
  - x264 10-bit
  - x265 10-bit and 12-bit

Audio

- Opus audio encoding/decoding via libopus
- Passthru now supports E-AC-3, FLAC, and TrueHD audio formats

Subtitles

- Improved subtitles rendering for some languages via HarfBuzz
- Miscellaneous subtitles improvements

Command line interface

- Presets can now be imported and exported from the command line and are compatible with the graphical interfaces
- Queue exported from the graphical interfaces can now be imported by the command line interface (Linux and Windows only for now)

Build system

- Add scripts to manually build and install Mac and MinGW-w64 (compile for Windows on Linux) toolchains
- Add support for multiple source URLs for third-party downloads
- Add SHA256 hash verification for third-party downloads
- Add configure parameter to disable or filter allowed third-party downloads (see configure --help)
- Use HTTPS everywhere; the few cases where a third-party does not provide packages over https, handbrake.fr does
- New targets on Mac to install and uninstall after building
- Add flatpak packaging support (experimental)

Third-party libraries

- Updated libraries
  - FreeType 2.6.5 (subtitles)
  - Fontconfig 2.12.1 (subtitles)
  - FriBidi 0.19.7 (subtitles)
  - Libav 12 (encoding/decoding/muxing)
  - libass 0.13.2 (subtitles)
  - libbluray 0.9.3 (Blu-ray decoding)
  - libmfx v6.0.0 (Intel QuickSync Video encoding/decoding)
  - libvpx 1.5.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
  - x264 148 r2708 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
  - x265 2.1 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
- New libraries
  - HarfBuzz 1.3.0 (subtitles)
  - libopus 1.1.3 (Opus audio encoding)

Linux

- Add options for saving and loading queue files
- Removed system tray icon due to performance issues on Ubuntu
- Usability improvements
- Miscellaneous bug fixes

Mac

- Updated all tooltips
- Added undo/redo support to the graphical interface
- Improved drag and drop support
- Added Open Recent to the File menu
- Added Add Titles to Queue... to the File menu (batch queueing)
- Preview prompts to open in an external application when the internal player does not support the format
- Preview now displays volume and audio/subtitles language selection during playback
- Picture and Filters settings are now part of the main window
- Settings are preserved when selecting a new title (instead of reloading the last selected preset)
- Improved support for importing/exporting comma-separated (.csv) chapter markers
- Queue is now automatically paused when available disk space is low
- When Done action can now be changed directly from the Queue window
- When Done notification is now interactive (reveals the encoded file in Finder)
- Activity Log window is now searchable (press "?"+"f" to activate)
- XQuartz is no longer required for subtitle burn-in
- Updated Sparkle software update library
- Enabled DSA signature checking for improved security
- Usability improvements
- Miscellaneous bug fixes

Windows

- Graphical interface now uses libhb directly, instead of sending commands to the command line interface
  - Encoding can now be paused and resumed
  - Stopping encoding will finalize the partial file to be playable
- Reduced installer and install size
  - The command line interface is no longer included in the graphical interface installer
- Update checker now verifies the signature of the update file for improved security
- Added support for quality-based audio encoding
- Added ability to import tab-separated (.tsv), XML (.xml), and plain text (.txt) chapter markers
- Improved the "configure default" options for audio and subtitles
  - Default audio track behavior is now configurable
  - Subtitles burn-in behavior is now configurable
- Removed DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) hardware-accelerated video decoding
  - Was causing many issues without providing sufficient improvement to decoding efficiency
  - May be added again at a later date if performance and stability improves
- Usability improvements
- Miscellaneous bug fixes

Handbrake Version: 1.0.0 Downloads

Mac OS

For Mac OS X 10.7 to 10.12
Download (Intel 64bit)

Windows

For Windows Vista to 10
Download (64 bit)

Ubuntu

For Ubuntu deb
Available at: Ubuntu PPA page.

Other

Command Line Version

Source Code

Nightly Builds

Downloads

Handbrake 1.0.0 Similar Tools

Why you need alternatives to Handbrake 1.0.0? Because Handbrake is lacking in the human interface niceties that most of us have come to expect in easy-to-use software. It does the job it claims to do but it is not very pleasant to use. It doesn't allow remuxing/ stream copy features (which with modern HW players it's an useful feature as they have the capability to play optimized video for many codecs and resolutions, but probably fail on variety of containers support, or just the audio needs to be transcoded so no need to touch the video). It doesn't has AMDAPP support and can't rip/copy commercial protected Blu-ray and DVD.

Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate - It can alter Handbrake 1.0.0 to convert video files from one format to another. It supports Ultra HD and 4K videos, with more frame rate options and FLAC, TrueHD and E-AC-3 audios. Recently, it has updated to version 4.9.1.0 with supporting the most advanced hardware acceleration NVIDIA CUDA & AMD APP by H.264/H.265 codec, which can give users 30x video transcoding speed than before. Not like Handbrake, it can only convert audio to audio and convert video to audio. If needed, it even can convert 2D to 3D SBS video for your PS VR, Oculus Rift CV1, Gear VR, Google Daydream VR, HTC Vive, etc. It's Mac version Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac can replace Handbrake 1.0.0 on macOS Sierra to allow you transcode media files. Read >> Handbrake 1.0.0 vs. Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate 4.9.1.0

Pavtube ByteCopy - Handbrake not only can convert video files but can convert Blu-ray/DVD to MKV/MP4. But Handbrake only can transcode unprotected Blu-ray and DVD discs. If your Blu-ray and DVD discs are commercial ones, they often have encryption like AACS, BD+, MKB v61, MKB v62, region code, CSS, Sony ARccOS, UOPs, APS, RCE, etc. Pavtube ByteCopy can help you remove these protection and convert Blu-ray/DVD to MKV/MP4 like Handbrake 1.0.0 does even rip Blu-ray/DVD to lossless/uncompressed MKV container with all chapter markers like MakeMKV does. Besides, it can convert Blu-ray/DVD to MP4 wrapper with multiple subtitle and audio tracks. Apart from MKV/MP4, it also export AVI, WMV, MOV, FLV, TS, MPEG, H.265, M3U8, etc video formats and FLAC, MKA, WMA, AAC, MP3, etc audio files. Entire disc copy and directly main title copy of Blu-ray and DVD are also supported. Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac is fully compatible with macOS Sierra, El Capitan, etc.