HandBrake

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HandBrake

HandBrake logo
Screenshot
Basic data

developer HandBrake community
Publishing year 2003
Current  version 1.3.3
( June 13, 2020 )
operating system Windows , macOS , Linux
programming language Objective-C , C , C #
category Multimedia software
License GPL ( Free Software )
German speaking Yes
handbrake.fr

HandBrake is a free and open source computer program for transcoding video files. Originally developed for BeOS , the program is now available for Windows , macOS and Linux . It is developed in Objective-C , C and C # and released under the terms of Version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

history

Early versions

HandBrake was originally developed by programmer Eric Petit using the pseudonym titer in 2003. He was the main developer until April 2006 and was still active in the HandBrake forum for some time. Contact with titer was lost around May / June 2006 , and no new changes were made to the program code in the period that followed.

MediaFork

In September 2006, Rodney Hester and Chris Long worked independently from the video compression format H.264 by reverse engineering from the firmware of the iPod company Apple extract. Both met on the HandBrake forum and it turned out that their work complemented each other. So together they began to develop a still unstable, but compilable version of HandBrake that supported the H.264 video format.

Hester and Long further developed the software, particularly with regard to stability, functionality and usability. Due to the absence of titer , it was not possible to incorporate these new versions into the official HandBrake repository , as titer's authorization was required for this. Hester then created a copy of the repository of the last HandBrake version officially released by titer (version 0.7.1), on which Hester and Long developed the software under the name "MediaFork".

2007 until today

In 2007, titer offered his support to Hester and Long and encouraged them to continue developing the software. MediaFork was reintegrated into HandBrake, and the next release of MediaFork / HandBrake took place under the original name "HandBrake".

The software "VidCoder" is based in part on HandBrake.

Version 1.0.0 was released on December 24, 2016 and offered numerous innovations, for example support for the VP9 codec.

features

HandBrake enables the transcoding of DVDs and other video sources in H.264 (with x264 ), MPEG-4 ASP ( FFmpeg ) or Theora (VP3). HandBrake is widely used to convert movies from DVDs / Blu-ray Discs so that they can be used on devices such as iPhone , iPod , Apple TV , Xbox 360 , PlayStation Portable or PlayStation . The user can use setting profiles to specify the end devices with which the files created should be compatible.

From version 0.9.4, the live preview function enables you to quickly assess the final quality based on a short transcoded section of the video.

From version 0.10.0, Windows OpenCL is used for scaling .

variants

HandBrake is available in several versions, for Windows 7 to 10 (32 and 64 bit), macOS (from 10.7) and Ubuntu as a GUI and as a command line version. With the GUI version, most of the transcoding options available in the program can be used with the command line version.

Supported Sources

Historically, only DVDs (either directly or from a VIDEO_TS folder), DVD-VOB files, and transport streams were supported as sources. From version 0.9.3 the program accepts video files in almost all popular container formats such as AVI , Matroska or MP4 . This is made possible by the integration of the two libraries libavcodec and libavformat , which come from the FFmpeg project.

Output format

HandBrake supports the following output formats:

AVI and Ogg Media (OGM) are no longer supported from version 0.9.4, as the developers mainly concentrate on H.264 / H.265, which are not compatible with these old container formats anyway.

HandBrake supports chapter and language changes for MP4 and Matroska, noise removal , deinterlacing , de telecine , anamorphic , cropping and scaling.

HandBrake provides its own, specifically modified, current versions of the libraries it uses (including x264, libavcodec ) to quickly benefit from speed and quality improvements, e.g. B. to be able to benefit from x264.

From version 0.9.4, subtitles can no longer only be " burned " directly into the video ( hard-subbed , whereby color and transparency can be determined), but can also be mixed in as separate, hideable text and image tracks (only in MKV format) ( soft subbed ); HandBrake also recognizes existing forced subtitles.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ handbrake.fr .
  2. ↑ Release 1.3.3 . June 13, 2020 (accessed June 16, 2020).
  3. ↑ a b c d Bradley Sepos: The History of HandBrake . HandBrake. 2017. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  4. ↑ VidCoder Home . David Rickard. Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  5. ↑ Andreas Sebayang: Handbrake reaches version 1.0.0 and supports VP9 . Golem Media GmbH. December 26, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2017.

Web links

Commons : HandBrake  - collection of images