What is HandBrake?
HandBrake is an open-source video transcoder available as a desktop application for Linux, macOS, and Windows, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2. It is built by volunteers for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. It was originally developed in 2003 by Eric Petit to make ripping DVDs to a data storage device easier, and today it is maintained as an open-source project hosted on GitHub.
HandBrake takes videos you already have and makes new ones that work on a mobile phone, tablet, TV media player, game console, computer, or web browser. It works with most common video files and formats, including footage from consumer and professional video cameras, mobile devices, game and computer screen recordings, and DVD and Blu-ray discs (without copy protection). Its encoding components include FFmpeg, x264, x265, and SVT-AV1, and it produces MP4, MKV, or WebM files.
Built-in device presets let you get started quickly, and you can adjust basic and advanced settings, create custom presets, and use an encoding queue to run several jobs. Supported video encoders include AV1, H.265, H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, VP8 and VP9, with optional hardware-accelerated encoding, and subtitles, chapter markers and video filters such as deinterlacing, denoise and cropping are available. HandBrake supports batch encoding through its graphical interface and a command-line interface, and the project provides documentation and community support channels.
Key capabilities
- Video input Accepts common video files, camera footage, mobile recordings, screen recordings, and DVD and Blu-ray sources.
- Output containers Creates MP4, MKV, or WebM video files.
- Encoding components Uses FFmpeg, x264, x265, and SVT-AV1 to process and encode video.
- Presets and queue Supports custom presets and queued encoding jobs.
- Desktop deployment Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Where HandBrake fits
HandBrake fits workflows that convert existing footage or recordings into files suitable for a target playback device or browser. It can serve people handling camera footage, mobile video, or game and computer screen recordings. Before deployment, representative inputs and the resulting files should be tested against the intended playback environment.
Windows deployment requires the Microsoft .NET Desktop Runtime specified in the release notice. Before upgrading, pending encoding jobs should be cleared and custom presets and application preferences backed up, because they may not remain compatible with newer releases.
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