HandBrake is one of those pieces of software that I've never even had to consider looking around to find something slightly better, it's always done what its supposed to with no fuss. A while back I wanted to rip a DVD my kids got so they could watch it on their tablets and downloading HandBrake was such a no brainer that I entirely forgot that I don't have an optical drive built into any of my computers anymore before installing it.
I keep Handbrake around even without optical drives - although it's been a few years since I last ripped a disc, it's still easily the best general-purpose encoding tool I've used. Nothing else really approaches its combination of reliable, high-quality output, fast performance, and uncluttered UI.
My annoyance with HandBrake was that it requires so many clicks to rip all the videos from a disc while preserving all audio and subtitle tracks. My kids have a bunch of DVDs where several TV episodes are stored as a single title with chapter separators. Getting HandBrake to split them up was also kind of a pain in the GUI.
When I switched from OpenSuse to MacOS as my primary desktop, I needed a replacement for DVDrip (although, there is a dvdrip for Mac via brew but I had trouble getting it to work.
Handbrake was the top search hit and immediately became my workhorse for ripping DVDs. (Main use case is to rip my own DVDs for more convenient viewing on another device)
Well done, Handbrake.fr
By the way, mine is version 0.10.5 and when I tell it to check for updates, it says:
HandBrake 0.10.5 x86_64 is currently the newest version available.
I love this software. I rip my kids' DVDs using it and play them on a Raspberry Pi with Kodi. This way I don't have to wade through menus, language selection (never defaults to mine), commercials, and ridiculous piracy warnings (I paid for it! Don't treat me like a criminal).
I often wonder if archivists are out there somewhere, armed with HandBrake, ripping every DVD they can find into a digital format for preservation beyond the life of the disc.
I've been fascinated with some projects that have tried to recreate the original theater experience of the original Star Wars,[0] or groups trying to capture classics that influenced Chinese cinema but haven't been widely reproduced, like Red Heroine.[1]
If everything moves to streaming though, even that could become impossible. Wonder how long until they'll stop printing DVDs...
Rest assured that there are archivists ripping their discs losslessly somewhere in the dark corners of the internet. Hidden because the copyright mafia will otherwise ruin their lives.
HandBrake found me a defective RAM module on my PC: it freezed in the middle of video conversion - every single time on exactly the same video position. After further investigation I found the "bug" in my RAM...
It is amazing to see software that is about 10 years old just hitting 1.0. Never really quite understood that. Is the developer just not confident in it that it is in beta for a while? or is it just a style of versioning? Anyways glad to see development on handbreak.Great software!
Though 1.0 usually has a different meaning in both world's.
1.0 usually includes a set of features the project had in mind at the beginning in open source. Whereas in closed source it usually means the first version that works to a minimal extent.
Closed source 1.0 equals open source 0 point something.
Versioning is generally arbitrary. I actually don't know why people pay so much attention to it.
1.0 for some people, is 0.1 for others.
1.0 might mean it's stable, or it could meant that it's feature complete. As you say it could also be used to convey the confidence the developers have in the software.
The thing I find most important myself is conveying compatibility, i.e. semver. To me that tells me it will be easy to upgrade a library, or it could be hard.
HandBrake offers a really nice GUI for many one-off transcoding tasks. If you're looking to automate transcoding tasks with some scripting, handbrake-cli (or ffmpeg directly) are very powerful, albeit overwhelming at times.
For something in the middle - offering both convenience and scriptability - I recommend video_transcoding[1] (uses handbrake-cli and ffmpeg under the covers). It's a really handy set of command-line tools that eliminate a lot of the guesswork and frustration.
I'm a little surprised they aren't signing their MacOS releases. It's even documented on the download page, "We are not currently able to sign the HandBrake downloads". I wonder if it's a philosophical choice or a legal one? It seems like a failure of Apple's Gatekeeper though: either because such a popular app is not able to be signed, or because it's not signed and yet so many people run it anyway.
> I'm a little surprised they aren't signing their MacOS releases.
Do any small developers actually do this? It seems entirely useless from a security prospective. You go through an expensive process so that at the end it can "verify" that the binary was signed by an individual the user has never met who may not even live in the same country and for all anyone knows is perfectly willing to sign ransomware, or who has stolen some arbitrary third party's signing key.
If you don't actually know and trust the party who makes the software then the signature is worse than useless because it makes people think signed=trustworthy when in reality it only means signed=signed. And if you do know and trust the authors you don't need a CA to verify anything more, at great expense, when you can already just download via HTTPS from the domain you trust.
Apple should eliminate practice entirely, and in the meantime no one should use it.
I'm a huge fan of HandBrake and excited to see them still improving the application. The last time I used a DVD ripper was >5 years ago but it was an essential tool for me earlier in life. I'm happy to see I will still have it available should I need to use it.
I love Handbrake. It's my goto for video transcoding.
I often download stuff for my children from YouTube using a YouTube downloader, and then transcode them to the ideal iPad format, so the children can watch stuff in the car on the iPad without an internet connection. Great for long trips.
I've so much respect for the team behind handbrake. What a quality piece of software. Kudos to them to making it to 1.0 -- I hope to be using it for many years to come. It's cool to see H265 support too. That's something I look forward to trying out.
I just downloaded it for the first time in a while 3 days ago and noticed that H.265 exists and compresses twice as well at the same quality level... how in the hell did I miss that? (VLC will play them). I did a test on a full-rez MKV and worked great
Most hardware video players (like Raspberry pi etc) can't decode H.265 using hardware acceleration, a RPi 2 (haven't testen RPi3) does not have enough computational power to play a FHD H.265 at 24FPS.
Until hardware H.265 decoding is introduced to the popular media center hardware, H.264 will remain the codec of choice for most people.
H.265 only compresses twice as much as H.264 in marketing materials, or when not comparing to x264. It is trivial to change the defaults to give half the bitrate but you will not get the same quality.
Wow, I used to use this many years ago when ripping DVDs was a thing and also for the occasional transcode to mkv. I had no idea it was still in development. I'll have to check it out again.
Ah brings back memories of my college days when I would go to the library at night when the computer labs were empty, check out a dozen dvds on 4 hour loan, and use a separate computer to rip each one at the same time.
odd how checking for updates via Handbrake's in app update checker (is there a better way to write that?) fails to see any newer version. So I had to get it via their website. Meh.
Great timing! I just built a new workstation over the last few days, put a BluRay/DVD/CD writer in it, and am looking at the ~15 or so new movies we just got over Christmas that I'm planning to rip. Gonna set up a "media PC" hooked up to the TV to play our movies over the network.
[+] [-] bsharitt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xenomachina|9 years ago|reply
I ended up making a wrapper for HandBrakeCLI to simplify this: https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|9 years ago|reply
Handbrake was the top search hit and immediately became my workhorse for ripping DVDs. (Main use case is to rip my own DVDs for more convenient viewing on another device)
Well done, Handbrake.fr By the way, mine is version 0.10.5 and when I tell it to check for updates, it says:
HandBrake 0.10.5 x86_64 is currently the newest version available.
I guess the update isn't in the queue quite yet.
[+] [-] forinti|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
Really makes me think twice about giving them my money
[+] [-] rabboRubble|9 years ago|reply
Disney is doing some funky disc encryption and I didn't find a solution with a few hours of googling.
[+] [-] brownbat|9 years ago|reply
I've been fascinated with some projects that have tried to recreate the original theater experience of the original Star Wars,[0] or groups trying to capture classics that influenced Chinese cinema but haven't been widely reproduced, like Red Heroine.[1]
If everything moves to streaming though, even that could become impossible. Wonder how long until they'll stop printing DVDs...
[0] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:b1Dmiou...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obpyt_tYxCU
[+] [-] aw3c2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eximius|9 years ago|reply
DRM is dumb.
[+] [-] symlinkk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pulse7|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisper|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brownbat|9 years ago|reply
If Handbrake fails, it's only because your hardware is broken.
[+] [-] dvdhnt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 77pt77|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adim86|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuaxo|9 years ago|reply
Though 1.0 usually has a different meaning in both world's.
1.0 usually includes a set of features the project had in mind at the beginning in open source. Whereas in closed source it usually means the first version that works to a minimal extent.
Closed source 1.0 equals open source 0 point something.
[+] [-] bluejekyll|9 years ago|reply
1.0 for some people, is 0.1 for others.
1.0 might mean it's stable, or it could meant that it's feature complete. As you say it could also be used to convey the confidence the developers have in the software.
The thing I find most important myself is conveying compatibility, i.e. semver. To me that tells me it will be easy to upgrade a library, or it could be hard.
[+] [-] marcosdumay|9 years ago|reply
HandBrake probably does not bring money to its developers, so the pace is inherently limited.
[+] [-] dperfect|9 years ago|reply
For something in the middle - offering both convenience and scriptability - I recommend video_transcoding[1] (uses handbrake-cli and ffmpeg under the covers). It's a really handy set of command-line tools that eliminate a lot of the guesswork and frustration.
[1] https://github.com/donmelton/video_transcoding
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|9 years ago|reply
Do any small developers actually do this? It seems entirely useless from a security prospective. You go through an expensive process so that at the end it can "verify" that the binary was signed by an individual the user has never met who may not even live in the same country and for all anyone knows is perfectly willing to sign ransomware, or who has stolen some arbitrary third party's signing key.
If you don't actually know and trust the party who makes the software then the signature is worse than useless because it makes people think signed=trustworthy when in reality it only means signed=signed. And if you do know and trust the authors you don't need a CA to verify anything more, at great expense, when you can already just download via HTTPS from the domain you trust.
Apple should eliminate practice entirely, and in the meantime no one should use it.
[+] [-] throwaway4891a|9 years ago|reply
Do not install untrusted, unverifiable apps is security 101.
[+] [-] weisser|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|9 years ago|reply
I often download stuff for my children from YouTube using a YouTube downloader, and then transcode them to the ideal iPad format, so the children can watch stuff in the car on the iPad without an internet connection. Great for long trips.
[+] [-] pilif|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Veratyr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kennell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gigatexal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FabHK|9 years ago|reply
And yes, great team.
[+] [-] pmarreck|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeonM|9 years ago|reply
Until hardware H.265 decoding is introduced to the popular media center hardware, H.264 will remain the codec of choice for most people.
[+] [-] rockdoe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobermin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avitzurel|9 years ago|reply
It worked surprisingly well. Glad to see a new version of this released.
[+] [-] pixelfeeder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dexterdog|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nik736|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eliasbagley|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrmondo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcstreeter|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlgaddis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Magnets|9 years ago|reply
http://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/