Original author(s) | Developer(s) HandBrake community | |
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Initial release 24 August 2003 (13 years ago) (2003-08-24) Stable release 1.0.3 / 25 February 2017; 17 days ago (2017-02-25) | ||
HandBrake is a free and open-source video transcoder, originally developed in 2003 by Eric Petit (a.k.a. "titer" from his SVN repository username) to make ripping a film from a DVD to a data storage device easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions.
Contents
HandBrake is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It uses third-party libraries such as Libav, libvpx, and x265.
Early versions
HandBrake was originally developed by Eric "titer" Petit in 2003 as software for the BeOS, before porting it to other systems. He continued to be the primary developer until April 2006, when the last official Subversion revision was committed. "titer" continued to be active on the HandBrake forum for a brief period after. Since May–June 2006, no one in the HandBrake community was successful in contacting "titer" and no further code changes were officially made.
MediaFork
In September 2006, Rodney Hester and Chris Long had been independently working to extract the H.264 video compression format from Apple's iPod firmware (1.2) through reverse engineering before meeting on the HandBrake forum. Since their work was complementary, they began working together to develop an unstable, but still compilable, release of HandBrake supporting the H.264 format. Hester and Long made considerable progress in terms of stability, functionality, and look and feel. It was not possible, however, to submit their patch to the HandBrake subversion repository without authorisation from "titer".
Unable to submit their revisions as a successor to HandBrake, Hester created a subversion repository mirroring HandBrake’s final subversion (0.7.1) on the HandBrake website and began development on top of that. Hester and Long named the new project MediaFork.
From 2007
On 13 February 2007, Hester and Long were contacted by "titer" who informed them of his support and encouraged them to continue development. Plans were then made to reintegrate MediaFork as a direct successor to HandBrake. The MediaFork website and forums were moved to HandBrake’s, and the next release was officially named HandBrake.
There is another transcoder, called VidCoder, that uses HandBrake as its encoding engine.
On December 24th, 2016 after more than 13 years of development, HandBrake 1.0.0 was released.
Hardware acceleration
Some GPUs or APUs contain SIP blocks dedicated to do calculations for video encoding (e.g., Quick Sync Video or Video Coding Engine). Such solutions are limited to a very few video codecs. When used, they are very fast but don't necessarily match the quality of good software encoders.
Transcoding
Users are able to customise the output by altering the bit rate, maximum file size or bit rate and sample rate via “constant quality”. HandBrake also supports deinterlacing, decombing, scaling, detelecine, and cropping (both automatic and manual).
Batch
HandBrake supports batch encoding through graphical user interface (GUI) and command-line interface (CLI). Third-party scripts and UIs exist specifically for this purpose, such as HandBrake Batch Encoder, VideoScripts. and Batch HandBrake. All make use of the CLI to enable queueing of several files in a single directory.
Sources
Handbrake transcodes video and audio from nearly any format to a handful of modern ones, but it does not defeat or circumvent copy protection. One form of input is DVD-Video stored on a DVD disc, in an ISO image of a DVD disc or on any data storage device as a VIDEO_TS folder. HandBrake’s developers removed libdvdcss (the open-source library responsible for unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS)) from the application in version 0.9.2. Removal of digital rights management (DRM) from DVDs using HandBrake was possible by installing VLC, a media player application that includes the libdvdcss library. Currently, Handbrake can remove DRM only after the user installs the latest version of libdvdcss.
As with DVDs, HandBrake does not directly support the decryption of Blu-ray Discs. However, HandBrake can be used to transcode a Blu-ray Disc if DRM is first removed using a third-party application, such as MakeMKV. Unlike HandBrake, MakeMKV does not transcode; it removes the digital rights management from a Blu-ray Disc and creates an exact copy, at its original frame size and data rate, in a Matroska (MKV) multimedia container which can then be used as a source in HandBrake.
Reception
In 2011, Preston Gralla of PC World praised HandBrake for its feature set: "Advanced users will be pleased at the number of options." He furthermore criticized the usability for new users: "Note that HandBrake isn't necessarily the easiest program to use. It has a large number of options available, and there's no good explanation of what they do or how to use them. Beginners should stick with the defaults (...)" He concluded by calling HandBrake a "solid choice" for people who are looking for a free video transcoder.
In 2013, Lifehacker.com visitors voted HandBrake as the most popular video converter over four other candidates by a wide margin.