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170 reviews, Showing 1 to 170 reviews


I batch converted 388 .mp4 files by dropping the container folder into the "Source Selection" window of Handbrake. It converted 49.3 GB of .mp4 files down to 9.00 GB. I cannot tell any difference in either the video or audio quality when comparing with VLC player. Wow! Excellent program!
Here's how I did it:
Using HandBrake to shrink file size.
1.Launch HandBrake and drop the folder that stores all the video files you want to convert into the "Source Selection" window. Optionally click "Folder (batch scan)" to choose the folder to batch scan and convert.
2.Click "Tools-> Preferences", navigate to "Output Files" and click "Browse" to choose a folder for saving output files. I left all the (checked/unchecked) boxes as is. One of them, "Automatically name output files" was already checked by the Handbrake program default settings. Then, click "< Back" to go back to main window.
3.Choose any output presets you'd like. I chose "Very Fast 720p30 (Default)".
4.Click the down arrow beside "Add to Queue". I chose "Add All" for batch converting all my 388 .mp4 files. Once added, you will see a number beside "Queue".
5.I clicked "Add to Queue", and selected "Add All". Beside "Queue" the number 388 in white numerals was displayed in a blue oval.
6.Then I clicked the "Start Queue" button to begin processing HandBrake batch video.
7.You'll see a green status bar in the bottom left-hand corner that indicates the progress. When done, in that same bottom corner Handbrake displayed "Queue Finished".

Review by namitutonka on Dec 15, 2023 Version: 1.7.1 (2023112200) OS: Windows 11 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Fantastic freeware which imho never gets enough credit. Many companies out there use free FFmeg via their inferior gui's and charge you quite a lot for doing what Handbrake, Staxrip and Hybrid do for free and vastly much better without any charge!

Review by L.C Bell on Nov 21, 2023 Version: 1.7.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Rating by spitfire777 on Mar 2, 2023 Version: Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS OS: Linux Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Did a quick check of latest version 1.6.1 and it may no longer support ripping using libdvdcss.dll Tested on Win10 64bit 22H2 and Win 11 22H2. 1.6.0 was last version to support libdvdcdd.dll. 1.6.1 needs more testing.

Review by SlimJim on Jan 23, 2023 Version: 1.6.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




Pretty good software, I used it in an entire series without problems so far.

Review by Devin on Dec 22, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Rating by HD MOVIE SOURCE on Nov 14, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Just to add, - my biggest problem with this program was finding a way to leave some feedback! Nothing on their website, and took more effort than the initial task to wind up posting here!...

Review by Happy User on Jul 19, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Just to add, - my biggest problem with this program was finding a way to leave some feedback! Nothing on their website, and took more effort than the initial task to wind up posting here!...

Review by Happy User on Jul 19, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Converted my 25 minute DVD Video_TS folder with 2 VOB files to .mp4 perfectly first time in a few minutes without having to change any of the default settings.

Very rarely to jobs go so easily when working with free software. - Thank you Handbrake developers.

I gave "ease of use" full marks because I didn't have to change any recommended settings. All buttons have 'mouse hover' quick descriptions and options are well laid out in tabs etc.

I gave "functionality" full marks because there are plenty of buttons to tweak things if you need to. I have no experience of other similar video software to compare it to, but it looks like there's plenty more than minimal here (especially for something that's free).

Value for money - can't get anything other than full marks. Doesn't look like there's any restrictions or attempts to get money either. Pure free :-)

Overall - For me it did in about 20 minutes (of installing and using) what I expected to take several nights of struggling with other free software. (For my particular job it wasn't worth parting with money for - it was either get it done for free or don't bother).

Review by Happy User on Jul 19, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Excellent video encoder, nice interface. Thanks for this software!

Review by VidiMini on Mar 26, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 (x86_64) OS: Linux Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Hybrid for experts or Staxrip, Handbrake for dummies as some derogatively utter! Seriously, all are good and all have minor problems as nothing is perfect.
I sometimes prefer the simplicity of Super Simple Converter for down and dirty re-encodes, but when you require an accurate ivtc or archiving your vids, Handbrake is the business.

Review by Barry on Feb 27, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Perfect to re-encode 2160p, specifically under NvENC, although there is a big missing regarding the BT2020 settings (--master-display, --max-cll, --chromaloc and other color matrix/primaries...).
More, NvEnc is able to manage HDR10+ data.
The options should at least be open to all those available in the NvEnc encoder, --encopts seems to do this, except that the possibilities are currently limited :(
It could be great to add these possibilities (perhaps simplest way unlike Hybrid, as this one has a complex GUI).
BTW, Hybrid is much faster than Handbrake (under NvEnc), also a bad point.

Review by charlie on Feb 26, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




There is still a problem in version 1.5.1 with video encoder 'H.264 Nvidia (NVEnc)', encoder preset 'Slowest'. It results in a 2 second delay to the video compared to the audio and a video with variable framerate when 'Constant Framerate' is ticked.

Review by TheGhost on Jan 10, 2022 Version: 1.5.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




There is a problem with video encoder 'H.264 Nvidia (NVEnc)', encoder preset 'Slowest'. It results in a 2 second delay to the video compared to the audio and a video with variable framerate when 'Constant Framerate' is ticked.

Review by TheGhost on Jan 9, 2022 Version: 1.5.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




One of the most primitive encoder with the fewest settings.

Review by Truthler on Nov 29, 2021 Version: latest OS: Windows 11 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 2/10




The best and it's freeware. Period!

Review by Jacko on Jul 18, 2021 Version: 1.4.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I had an excellent NTSC DVD horror classic which I wanted to convert, because the blu ray release was dnr'ed to death, so I didn't buy that. I managed to ivtc the dvd, but tried everything even old software like Avi.NET, AutoGK to convert to xvid and a few others e.g Fairuse Wizard etc to H264 format.

All left annoying combing artifacts. In the end I found an older version of Handbrake on an 'antique' XP based laptop. Set detelecine and decomb to auto, Deinterlace to off and my DVD came out perfect. Old stuff is the best.

Review by Mike on May 27, 2021 Version: 0.9.9 last version OS: WinXP Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Rating by a on Apr 21, 2021 Version: 1.3.3 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Rating by jokster on Jan 22, 2021 Version: 1.3.3 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Rating by John on Dec 8, 2020 Version: 1.3.3 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 7/10




Rating by alex on Jun 14, 2020 Version: 1.3.3 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Rating by FLP437 on Jun 14, 2020 Version: 1.3.3 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




totally trash

Review by handsome on Jun 14, 2020 Version: 1.3.3 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




Version 1.3.1 extremly slowly than v.1.2.2 too (as 1.3.0) with coding 4k video with resize 2 fullHD on AMD VCE!!!!
Adrenalin drivers v.19.12.3

Review by Любитель on Jan 8, 2020 Version: 1.2.2 & 1.3.0 & 1.3.1 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 4/10 Functionality: 3/10 Value for money: 3/10 Overall: 3/10




Version 1.3.0 extremly slowly than v.1.2.2 with coding 4k video with resize 2 fullHD on AMD VCE!!!!
Adrenalin drivers v.19.11.2

Review by Любитель on Nov 25, 2019 Version: 1.3.0 & 1.2.2 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 4/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 5/10 Overall: 5/10




It was helpful.
canon ts3122 setup

Review by ericaturner on Nov 7, 2019 Version: 2.513 OS: Windows 10 Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 7/10 Overall: 7/10




but i really don't like .NET framework.

Review by GeorgeK on Jun 16, 2019 Version: 1.2.2 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 7/10 Overall: 7/10




I used to switch between using Xvid4PSP and Handbrake, first time coming back to Handbrake in a while but I'm glad I did not only is it FAR better laid out than Xvid4PSP now it also appears to have everything Xvid4PSP does and more while not being a cluttered mess of profiles. Xvid4PSP as good as it once might have been as an alternative has washed all of that away by forcing users to pay if you want to use daily builds which for me is unethical as the software is and has been for years in a beta state and it is an absolute slap in the face to all of the people that reported issues and helped make it as popular as it has become. Stick to Handbrake, as good as it is now it makes Xvid obsolete anyway.

Review by ket on May 18, 2019 Version: 1.2.2 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




If you need the latest libdvdcss-2.dll library (compiled for Windows) to convert video directly from DVD, you'll find it here:
https://github.com/allienx/libdvdcss-dll/releases
The last version for Windows at the original site (where all internet manuals point to):
http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/
is 1.2.12.

Review by AllisOne on Apr 25, 2019 Version: 1.2.2 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Rating by 3xploit on Mar 14, 2019 Version: 1.2.2 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




I've used Handbrake for years and it has never failed me! It's great to have a free software that does better than those paid ones. Keep it up.

Review by Nats Maniago on Feb 18, 2019 Version: 1.2.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




it took a little getting used to, but i have really only scratched the surface of this tools full potential. What i am really amazed about is when i put my video files through handbrake and it drops it down to 5.5 % . that is amazing. I am saving lots of space on my hard drive now.

Review by Patrick on Jan 29, 2019 Version: 1.1.1 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Rating by AlenB on Jan 18, 2019 Version: 1.2.0 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




Fix the problem! desable QuickSync Decoding in preferences! Works again!

Review by andkem on Dec 23, 2018 Version: 1.2.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Dont work any more! Only produse audio!

Review by andkem on Dec 22, 2018 Version: 1.2.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




Amazing! I love open source projects. This worked for converting 4K .mkv files into .mp4 and .m4v files while keeping the audio intact. MYypartner on my film project was using iMovie and was unable to use .mkv. The converted .mp4 and .m4v files worked!

I'm so thankful for this, it took a lot of searching to find a free program that could do this for me.

Review by aikaw on Feb 24, 2018 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Worked perfectly, compressed my video files to mp4.
Thank you!!!!

Review by dster71 on Nov 7, 2017 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I still use the older stable version in XP. I had a go with the newer 10 branch in Win7/10 and hated it, plus it was a bit buggy and the denoise settings bonkers. My only real moan is I wish any version of Handbrake would have solved that licensing issue(they did briefly but ffmeg encoder was removed!!) and put a better aac encoder in e.g Nero 1.5.4, than Faac 1.28? which at medium high bitrates 112/128kbps is acceptable, but at lower bitrates gives truly awful audio quality.

Review by Mr A on Oct 19, 2017 Version: 9.9.574 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Iam using different software for editing and encoding to mkv. I actually hate default presets in Handbrake like peak framerate etc. But it become invaluable when encoding MKV files, that are created by merging two files together in mkvtoolnix. Only GUI that is able to convert them propertly is Handbrake. Nor Vidcoder, which is based on handbrake nor avidemux and others that I tested didnt work properly. It is invaluable, when you capture TV something, GOP starts in commercial and finished when film already started. In avidemux I reencoding start of movie (x264) interlaced tff as rest of TV something is. Then I merge it in mkvtoolnix. Everything is fine. But problem begins when you try to reencode it to different format, like h265 or just recommpress it with different settings in h264) but Handbrake handles it perfectly (dont know about ffmpeg iam not familiar with command line but I believe ffmpeg will do it as well properly). So it is for me invaluable software for this one special reason.
*Other software has problem with 1st part of video that was merged in mkvtoolnix to one video track and one audio track (But audio seems not to be affected).
Sorry my english is bad, and I know it.
Bernix

Review by Bernix on Oct 12, 2017 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




hi i have very important question

want to Upgrade my pc to Ryzen 7 1700x ( 8 Core / 16 Threads) i'm an encoder Freak :D
is handbrake support and use all of 8 cores and 16 threads? or just support 6 core 12 thread? the i will go for Ryzen 5 1600x ( 6 core / 12 threads)
is handbrake doesn't support 8c/16t so far, will be support in future?

Review by vahid on Aug 18, 2017 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Without a doubt this is the best all rounder. For freeware it can compete with many of the dozens of inferior commercial software which merely copies Handbrake or slags it off. If only Freemake could be as good or offer as many advanced options like decomb etc. Vidcoder which is quite good( based on Handbrake) is not as stable as it; it's crashed on me a few times. Handbrake never has!

Review by 7of9 on Aug 4, 2017 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




@AntW93

Precisamente!

Review by Eneas on Jul 22, 2017 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Rating by Ken T on May 27, 2017 Version: 1.0.7 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




HandBrake is an excellent free open-source video converter (transcoder) that continues to improve over time and gradually incorporates new features. I've been using it for quite a few years now to convert videos for playback on my mobile devices and would highly recommend the software to others. The graphical user interface (GUI) is fairly self-explantory and easy to use (although there is still room for improvement!), making it accessible even to novice users who haven't really got into video converting before.

However, the FDK-AAC encoder was removed from HandBrake due to GPL licensing issues (from version 0.10.5 onwards), and the current default AAC encoder (LibAV) for the Windows and Linux versions is lacking in quality compared to FDK as its only a basic AAC encoder (the Mac version uses CoreAudio (Apple's AAC encoder) which is even better than FDK, but cannot be used in the Windows version, AFAIK!), fortunately you can still compile HandBrake from source and re-enable the FDK-AAC encoder, see my guide on how this can be done for the Windows version: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/383208-How-to-get-HandBrake-with-FDK-AAC-for-Windows

Note: This is by no means an easy process and I would only recommend this to advanced users!


My hope for the future of HandBrake is that a new and better quality AAC encoder will be made accessilble to Windows and Linux users, or LibAV improves significantly!

Review by AntW93 on Apr 23, 2017 Version: 1.0.3 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




This software continues to be an app that could potentially be the best around yet under-delivers drastically.

It's open source software, that uses open source tools behind the scene yet there is no official Linux build other than via PPA which by definition limits it to Ubuntu based distros. Yes you can usually download it from your distros repos but I find it odd that the developers essentially endorse one distro over others. Why no .rpm? Why no .deb? Why no appimages, or Suse packages or just a generic Linux binary?

But it's more than that, they include QS support on Windows, but they only included the fast and medium presets, no "best" preset because of some silly explanation. They won't include QS supprt for Linux despite the fact that it's implemented using open source libraries. The won't include NVENC support for any platform, despite ffmpeg supporting it with an open source library.

It goes on, there's only an "advanced" configuration option for x264, not any other encoder and even that only exposes what the HB developers care about.

Yet here's the sad reality, let's assume they fixed all these issues, you still wouldn't want to use it for anything other than 4:2:0 8 bit encoding, because, in one of the dumbest things imaginable, they support 10 bit x264 encoding and 10/12 bit x265 encoding yet the internal video processing pipeline, by their own admission, is 4:2:0 8 bit! So if you have a 16 bit 4:4:4 source and choose x265 12 bit Intra, it will still convert it to 4:2:0 8 bit for processing before spiting it out as 12 bit!

Absolutely ridiculous, this software should be considered strictly for the amateur hobbyist that wants to convert his DVD's/BD's for playback on a tablet or similar device and that's it.

Review by sophisticles on Dec 25, 2016 Version: 1.0.0 OS: Linux Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 5/10 Overall: 5/10




I use this to optimize the file sizes of my video collection. It's been really efficient & fast to encode and given good compression ratios.

Review by decodethis on Sep 4, 2016 Version: 0.10.5.0 OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Would some one please get rid of that stupid value for money option when a program is freeware! I fail to understand how some here manage to vote even 9/10 using value for money, did you knock off 1 point because you paid for it?It is free for Pete's sake! Last version of Handbrake patched 9.9.x is by far most stable, but you want to try out newer builds if using Win 10. Handbrake is vastly superior to its offshoot Vidcoder, which makes a mess of audio output and is far from stable. At least with Handbrake using a gain of 2 or 3 you can extract the audio with yamb, then check with aac gain, finally normalize removing any clipping incurred, Vidcoder's audio output is not recognisable.

Review by azmoth on Aug 27, 2016 Version: .9.9.x OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Best video converter All Around

Review by kingmax1001 on Aug 27, 2016 Version: 0.10.5.0 OS: Vista Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 9/10 Overall: 9/10




This might be a false positive, but my Norton Internet Security detected that the uninstall file contained a virus.
[img]http://edu-net.net/images/handbrake.jpg.[/img]

Review by jgg on Aug 22, 2016 Version: Nightly 20160822 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Cannot download batch scripts from https://videoscripts.wordpress.com/downloads/. The link is dead.

Is there an alternate location?

Version and Ratings are not real… filled as are mandatory.

Review by ConverterCrazy on Jun 4, 2016 Version: 5 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: -/10 Functionality: -/10 Value for money: -/10 Overall: 5/10




Very useful software for bluray movies etc. I don't understand how it's useful for DVD rips, as these are typically less than 6GB total size - and compressing these with HBrake doesn't work well. For example looses the memes etc, special features etc, introduces jaggies and makes image worse. May as well just leave DVD rips alone as far as I can see. Whole movie bluray data files are a different matter entirely, superb results for a H.264 compression.
Can someone tell me different?

Review by MickeyMetal on Apr 10, 2016 Version: 10.5 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




"Don't fall for other companies tricks saying you need to spend XX.99 for good video, Handbrake will outdo them with ease and for free!"

2nd this. The free x264 encoder employed in handbrake has meanwhile increasingly be used for several retail Blu-ray encodes.

E.G., the nordic Blu release "Nightcrawler", and it looks terrific, more fine detail than else releses.
(at the generous bitrate of 37.42 MBps)

Review by tuco76 on Feb 12, 2016 Version: 0.10.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I have been using Handbrake quite literally since it first became available. I have watched it grow almost like a child from the basic but superb encoder many of us in the AV community needed to a truly advanced piece of software, I am proud to have used Handbrake from everything from converting DVD's to MPEG-4 visual at 240p for my PSP to converting high resolution HD+ video straight from a ProRes file for YouTube and archival. There is a lot of nostalgia and emotion with Handbrake so pardon that intro. This software should be in everyones AV toolbelt, it will allow you to great H.264 streams of superior quality than most other encoders because it gives you options instead of presumptions, adjusting analysis options, 2-pass encoding, custom reference and B-frames, etc. can make your video at any given bitrate look a billion times better than the next guy who simply used a basic encoder. Audio options are supurb! The ability to downmix surround sound sources to 2ch stereo encoded with Dolby Surround and new Pro Logic II optimized Dolby Surround encoding gives you rich stereo that works on an AV receiver in a pinch if needed while options for surround sound formats native to DVD and Blu-ray are offered through passthrough and for Dolby Digital (AC-3) through encoding. I've encoded probably thousands of DVD's and Blu-rays for my personal movie collection and Handbrake has been the most useful, it has also useful for creating quality but smaller archival versions of videos I make, edit, and master. If I COULD pay for Handbrake I would but it is free and I am grateful for that, I only wish I could donate bitcoins for the further development of such an amazing and longspanned project. While I hope for some further features, currently as of v.0.10.2 it offers so much more than I could ever expect from free-ware, in fact compared to Apple Compressor it is definitely on par if not better, only down side is with handbrake you need to understand x264 and how H.264 works to really get that advantage. Give it a shot if you need a quality encoder for whatever, don't fall for other companies tricks saying you need to spend XX.99 for good video, Handbrake will outdo them with ease and for free!

Review by nateo200 on Jan 13, 2016 Version: 0.10.2 x86_64 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




This is a great tool for video resolution reduction. I wish it could handle 3d sbs videos as well.

Review by hos on Nov 7, 2015 Version: 0.10.2.7286 OS: Windows 10 Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Best free encoder for Windows.
That said, it only supports mp4 and mkv. What about avi? Prores?

Review by John1972 on Feb 27, 2015 Version: 1.10.0 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 6/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Tried the x265 encoder at qrf=28. Excellent result equal to x264 at qrf=19 to my eye. The video stream is now under 900MB for a 2h 15mn movie @1080p. My only wish is for an option for 480 kbps bit rate for ac3 audio.

Review by Rogeroo on Jan 5, 2015 Version: 0.10.0.6534 64-bit OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Hope to see ADVANCED config for x265. Also, oftener updating of x264 and x265 would be great. x264 r2525 includes AQ MODE 3, which is focused to dark scenes details. x265 1.4.209 offers improvement in speed from 1.4, and also supports DEBLOCK command line paramater, using AQ MODE 1 as default (not 2 as in 1.4, which is way too bad). Also I would like to see 10-bit version of encoders, as I am waiting for HEVC 10-bit HW decoder, and 10-bit HEVC encoding has no issues with banding and color gradients.

Review by jlpsvk on Dec 31, 2014 Version: svn6678 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




neat app...

Only, 2 thingies i realy like to see improved..

when using DXVA acceleration in Vidcoder i get an FPS boost of 2, 3 frames ^^.

When using dxva in handbrake , the app wont progress with the encode and stalls for some reason !!

Also, in vidcoder when an X amount of jobs are added to the queue list.
One can still change bitrate 1 time and apply it to all the jobs in the list whitout to have import all DVD/bluray structures and episode one by one again to aply the new bitrate !!

I hope i wos of any help to the coder of this very neat apps, and will read me ..

Review by metagondria on Dec 8, 2014 Version: svn6509 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 8/10




Finally AVI Mirillis Action files are supported.

Very nice release.

Review by Cauptain on Nov 23, 2014 Version: 0.10 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Please if possible ad the feature "Frame Interpolating" for soft motion by converting from
AVC to MPEG2 Pal (From 23.976 to 25 FPS).

Review by Royalstar on Nov 22, 2014 Version: 0.9.9 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Hello,

I like the application allot, especially the new added denoiser (NLMeans).

Now, iam using handbrake mainly for converting old TV SERIES ripped from DVD to MKV and with succes..

now , bear with me for what i have to say about the audio !!

as i have mentioned before, i use handbrake to convert dvd to mkv and only to convert the video track not the audio ..

All audio has passthrough selected, so nothing is converted there or anything or is altered by handbrake.

Afterwards, i use the MKV file in multiavchd to make an bluray structured folder to burn on an BD25
All with great succes..

BUT NOW....

I noticed that the volume from the audio is lowered somehow when i play it in my stand alone !!!

NOW, the weird part is that when i create an mkv file through VIDCODER again using audio passthrough preset the volume from the audio is NORMAL and LOUD enough !!!!

Iam sure multiavchd isnt recoding the video stream nor the audio stream.. i have checked the logs and settings to come to this conclusion !!

So something must be happening to the audio stream during the video encode and/or remux process in handbrake and/or multiavchd !!!

cheers,

Review by metagondria on Oct 27, 2014 Version: 0.10 RC1 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 9/10 Overall: 8/10




It doesn't remove your audio. You probably don't have the necessary codecs to play the video. Get Klite codec pack, it's the most frustration free solution for n00bs, despite what you may hear from people.
In future, direct your comments to the forum, you're more likely to get help there.

Review by blud7 on Oct 27, 2014 Version: 0.9.9 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Help!
I have windows 7. I just downloaded handbrake 64bit, as instructed in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s10ARdfQUOY
I followed the instructions precisely but it ALWAYS removes the video and turns it to audio only.
It IS an .mp4 file but the video is just gone. WHAT DO I DO?

Review by Jarma on Oct 26, 2014 Version: 0.9.9.5530 64bit version OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 5/10 Overall: 5/10




Excellent software. Easy to use...

Review by eagletdw on Nov 30, 2013 Version: 0.9.9 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 9/10




The new version 0.9.9 "gives us the option" to encode with x264 Presets + x264 tune + extra options that we add manualy (for instance ref=5:bframes=6:rc-lookahead=200...)
or by clicking on advanced and add your setting there.
All sounds fine but none of them work. Handbrake goes nuts and does the encode how he likes it ignoring all the extra settings I added.
The previous version was just fine, although encoding BD-s to 1080p with Handbrake will end up with more light no matter what settings you use. So not reccomended for those who want perfect encodes. Also if you select in Tools/Options...to add all audio tracks Handbrake will NEVER ADD THEM ALL! Annoying really.
I'm planning to use megui instead even if it's user-unfriendly (AVS script creator crap).

Review by mkvonly on Aug 2, 2013 Version: 0.9.9 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 5/10




+ Fast, excellent quality, easy to use

- The audio is out of sync for most of my RIPs.

Review by portal2 on Jun 19, 2013 Version: 0.9.9.5530 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 1/10




@ MindController

Try the latest nightly build:

http://handbrake.fr/nightly.php

If that doesn't help, then provide encoding logs to HandBrake support:

https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewforum.php?f=11

One from the old build, one from the new build. There could be a discrepancy somewhere in the settings.

I've not seen anyone else report this on the HandBrake forums since 0.9.9 was released.

Review by mike20021969 on Jun 10, 2013 Version: svn5573 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 6/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




This program worked so well for me, then I updated to the latest version (May 31st). I appreciated the new icons and slightly different interface. It was definitely a great way to modernize the program. The issue comes to me in the form of encoding. I attempted to convert a 4 gig mp4 file down to a smaller one as I always have. I click start, and the progress bar is going by soooo slowly. It gives me an estimated time of nearly 5 hours.

So I uninstall the program, re-install a previous version. I apply the same settings, go to convert the video and the estimated time is now at 45 minutes. Much better.

The new version is crap. Don't get it.

Review by MindController on Jun 9, 2013 Version: 0.9.9 patch OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 2/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 3/10




@ mkvonly

If you think you've found a bug, try the latest nightly build from here:
https://build.handbrake.fr/view/Nightlies/job/Windows/

If that doesn't help, then report it on the HandBrake forum here:
https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27236

Review by mike20021969 on May 30, 2013 Version: svn5525 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 6/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




It's my favorite video encoder but in last version there is a bug:
When I encode a 1080p video with AR 2.35 or 2.40 , automatic cropping will always crop 20+20px as if movie had AR 1920/1040 instead of 1920/816 or 1920/800. Using user preset under "Picture settings" I selected None "Picture Size". Can someone confirm it's a bug? Thanks.

Review by mkvonly on May 30, 2013 Version: 0.9.9.5470- 64bit OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Hybrid thats what im talking about!

Review by rapunzel on Dec 24, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 5/10




Fair enough friend :-)
Lanczos is probably the best resizer (considering how fast it is).
But I don't see your rating of 1/10 as fair?

PS if you want an encoder with all the bells and whistles, you can't beat Hybrid. The GUI is confusing at first though precisely because it has everything. Selur updates all the components including ffmpeg and x264 regularly as well so you don't have to. And I mean regularly.

Review by blud7 on Dec 24, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




blud2,,Handbrake may be open source but it was developed and used extensively by Apple users in its early days..You are right about ffmpeg and mkvmerge using header stripping in the TX264 encoder but you can also put the header back after the encode is finished in about 1 minutes time using the standalone version of mkvmerge..I said I Like using external calculators For ANY program I choose to encode with..Lanczos resizing produces a sharper end result and looks better all around to me then bicubic,thus Lanczos is my resizer of choice..A few years ago I might have cared about subtitles in dvds or even dvd encoding..These days I dont deal with resolutions smaller then 1024x576..And when you speed up the encoding process in Handbrake the end product just pales in comparrasin to the TX264 encoder and I have never had a problem with subtitles,audio or video in any of the mkv files that I use it for..Look,,It just seems that whenever a file wont play for me and I look at the media info of that broken video file,,that file 9 times out of 10 was encoded somewhere by Handbrake..And this is why I dont like Handbrake..

Review by RappinRod on Dec 24, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




I hate Apple as much as the next guy but the last commenter is just plain wrong on a few things:
1. Handbrake is not proprietary at all, it is free and open source (GNU GPL)
2. It does not use header stripping afaik
3. It does not use ffmpeg or mkvmerge (which btw enables header stripping by default)
4. TX264 is terrible at encoding subtitles and a nightmare with DVDs. You have to dump and merge files for it to work properly. Even then it sometimes fails.
5. TX264 is NOT faster than Handbrake at all if you use the same settings. Both use implementations of x264 which would make near identical encode times. Not to mention, unless you use different filters, the quality should be the same as well
6. If you want an up to date binary, Handbrake has nightly builds which work perfectly well

The actual drawbacks of Handbrake are these:
1. There are no fancy filters, just the built in ones but these work fine in most cases. e.g. the resize filter seems to be bicubic by default and not changeable
2. The file size calculation is a bit off (but not much at all) as the last commenter noted
3. You don't have access to all of x264 settings but most of the important ones are available under the advanced tab. Most notably are the presets and the tune settings, which are not needed since they are just made up of tweaks you can mostly make in the advanced setting anyhow.

Review by blud7 on Dec 23, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




People who use this Apple based garbage encoder need to trash it,,there are much better encoders out there like TX264 and AvantiGUI..Both of these encoders are easier to set up and use then Handbrake.I have been encoding files since 1996 and I have tried many programs in all my xp and win7 computers..And honestly Hanbrake is extremely slow and produces files that are NOT playable in most hardware multimedia players..I cannot tolerate proprietary programs that want to give you a finished file to their liking and not yours..What takes Hanbrake 4 hours to encode takes TX264 encoder 1 hour to do and the file looks better and plays in everything!!!Handbrake is notorious for stripping headers..And I never use the built in calculators that are in these programs,there are better free standalone video/audio calculators right here in video help..Also I would NEVER use an encoder that dosent update regularly or one that I couldnt insert the newest ffmpeg or mkvmerge builds etc,etc,manually...

Review by RappinRod on Dec 23, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: WinXP Ease of use: -/10 Functionality: -/10 Value for money: -/10 Overall: 5/10




Handbrake needs a serious update from its author. We request you to do so. I tried this software and StaxRip as well but found this to be too simple and outputs acceptable quality. Please update with latest x264 and add some more profile and GUI design. Add some more funcionality options to configure if you wish to in x264. Thanks.

Review by pearlblack15 on Dec 23, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 6/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




It's true that Handbrake doesn't offer fancy filters or do 10 bit encoding but it's great at what it does: make encoding from almost any source to devices extremely easy. Not many playback devices support hi-10p video anyway. And you can tweak h264 pretty well from the advanced options. No free tool is simpler and more foolproof for video conversion.

Review by blud7 on Dec 20, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




The truth is that HandBrake needs a major update otherwise is going down the hill as other tools offer more fancy options their filters has improve a lot plus 10-bit encoding>time to wake-up!

Review by rapunzel on Dec 19, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 4/10 Value for money: 7/10 Overall: 5/10




Handbrake haven't even detailed options for h.264 encoding... It is an ernomous deficiency for a transcoder.

Review by Stears555 on Dec 18, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: -/10 Functionality: -/10 Value for money: -/10 Overall: 5/10




I really wanted to like this program. It's simple to use, has a lot of nice features, etc.

Unfortunately, every attempt I made to generate a high quality encoding turned out unacceptable quality.

A 1080p to 720p project with a high profile and retaining grain showed weird crawling color splotches in areas. That was with a constant quality of 18.

I suspect the issue could be the resizer used by HandBrake, but you can't tune the resizer. I suppose I could have scrubbed the grain and gotten better results, but that wasn't my goal.

Review by doctorm on Dec 9, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 4/10 Value for money: 5/10 Overall: 5/10




It's really simple. If you need a freeware that converts your blu-ray or dvd disk to a portable format or high compression full HD MKV with original audio, this tool will not fail you. Who cares if it is built on .NET, so are 1000's of other applications out there.

The only suggestion I have and that I have seen on another blu-ray converter is the ability to collect meta data to define the file title so that tools like media center master correctly identify the movie. This is candy and certainly not a must have.

Review by anosis on Aug 2, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




If you have a problem all the time with this software, that means get a new computer!

Review by 2F2E on Aug 1, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Requires Net Framework 4.0 which is totally useless to me. What for? This adds 600MB to my system volume (this isn't a disk space issue; it's a backup speed and common sense issue). This is the reason I ditched MediaPortal for XBMC.

And then it doesn't support Nero AAC. Yes, it's a GPL program and they can't include Nero AAC, but they could allow the user to download it and add it manually.

So, not only this program requires a huge amount of system space but it is also not good enough. Sorry no. MediaCoder, with all its advertising silliness and GPL breaking is a better option.

Review by v0x on Jul 22, 2012 Version: 0.9.8 OS: WinXP Ease of use: -/10 Functionality: -/10 Value for money: -/10 Overall: 5/10




latest version sucks big time. they removed the possibility of setting the max file size. that is a no - no in my book . and no, i cannot do that through the max bitrate only

Review by angel40204 on Jul 10, 2012 Version: 9.6 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 6/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 2/10




By far the best encoding app available. I have used it for DVD, Blu-ray, and re-encodes of mkvs with nearly flawless results. I would like to see it have the capability of either directly passing pgs subtitles through or converting them to vobsub cause that is really the only thing missing. But, there are ways around that.... Woulda given it a 10 if not for that.

Review by WascallyWabbit on May 25, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




1 - Not capable of just accepting audio and video without problems. (Takes forever to open and can't encode). Must be in the form of an mkv already.
2- Have to keep an eye on all settings because when switching between tabs, sometimes the settings revert back to default.
3- After hours of encoding, the audio is garbled at the beginning and out of sync
4 - Dev did away with target size in later versions, refuses to bring it back.

Review by somebodeez on May 25, 2012 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




Haven't had issues with this one so far. Comes with presets and allows to create own. Also lets you easily alter encoding settings, but no overload. BUT: Will this thingy ever have PGS (BD subtitles) support?

Review by leghorn on Apr 5, 2012 Version: latest svn OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




No 3rd party?

HandBrake uses a lot of (L)GPL libraries from the Linux world:

CoreAudio AAC/HE-AAC (OS X Only), MP3, Flac, or Vorbis. AC-3, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC and MP3 pass-thru

Vobsub and Closed Captions

Most common multimedia files that libavformat and libavcodec support.

http://handbrake.fr/details.php

Review by locotus on Apr 4, 2012 Version: 0.96 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




To whoever objected to the "no real alternatives" ... if, like me, you won't use programs anymore that rely on 3rd party codecs that bugger up your registry, what other alternative is there for windows? I won't have one program repointing all the media codecs away from directx. Hacker crap.

I rate this 10 for functionality despite the fact that it doesn't have all the h.264 bells and whistles built into the menu options (without manually adding strings) because it has the best compromise between ease of use and power of anything I've seen. You don't have to be a hard core video geek, at least at first.

The only thing is that some things are somewhat buried in menus that should be out front imo. Like the shut down after encoding option. To me that's so important in a program like this I assumed at first it wasn't there because it's in the options submenu.

Review by Hoser Rob on Apr 4, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




a great video encoder ......not like another converter like formafactor* etc..this tools is different

Review by batlak on Apr 4, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




No proper alternativses?
Megui, vidcoder(handbrake gui), hybrid, simple x264 launcher,
HDconvertoX, Staxrip, Cyko (another handbrake gui), and some others.

Review by locotus on Apr 2, 2012 Version: 0.96 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




This tools works great, But constantly loosing features.

AVI and XVID support is gone sometime back.
Now I can not select target size.

What Next???

May be it is targeting some specific applications.

Unfortunately there is no proper alternative.

Review by chicken264 on Apr 2, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 6/10




I like the new version, even though the first build I installed didn't work properly. The newer one is fine, so far.

I have absolutely no objection to needing a higher version of the .net framework, unlike the previous commenter. Everyone wanting to run media software on windows should have all the .nets, plus visual c++.

Besides, if the size of the .net upgrade is a problem you don't have enough room to deal with video.

The audio gain control is very nice. However, I missed target file size at first. It's not hard to adapt though.

My only problem is that, unlike vidcoder (which uses the older handbrake engine, at least for now). there's still no option to shout the machine down after encoding is done. At least that I can see.

Review by Hoser Rob on Mar 23, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




I'm somewhat impressed with the new approach for the program.
I can get by the loss of the *target size* for the output size of any video file that I am working with,... using the *constant quality* slider takes a little getting used to, one has to become familiar with the amount of compression the slider position structures to the video to,but one can still narrow down the selected size that one wishes the output video file size to be.
...(for example....squeezing a 30gig ts video from a Bluray disc down to a particular x264 size within an mkv container)
What I am really NOT impressed with is the building of the new version on the netframework 4 platform. Why couldn't the programmer build it on the framework 3.5 platform that is already part of Win7? Even on Win7, framework 4 is not there and before Handbrake 096 will install it will by default download & install framework 4. Now, that doesn't bother me except for the fact to get the new framework installed uses up almost 600mb of op/sys space!
The dl that goes into windows/framework/.V4 is almost 220mb large and that is before the program dll's install. To me personally, I don't need my op/sys to increase it's size to something that much just to accommodate this little program. I'll stay with 095, it needs no extra install to get it running, and that is fine with me.

Review by 55trucker on Mar 3, 2012 Version: .0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 6/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 7/10 Overall: 6/10




Nightly builds are back for download.

Review by mike20021969 on Feb 29, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




From https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15901 - Nightlies will be unavailable until further notice. Back Soon.

Review by V1de0Luvr on Feb 29, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




The link to "Download nightly builds here" is no good. It takes you to a login screen.

Review by mail2tom on Feb 29, 2012 Version: 0.9.6 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




I tried new version of this tool (0.9.5) on Win XP and am surprised to see the "High Profile Film setup" missing. Otherwise, it is an awesome tool for converting to MKV.

Review by lal on Jan 28, 2012 Version: 0.9.5 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Wouldn't install on XPP - some error message

Review by zoobie on Jan 6, 2012 Version: 0.9.5 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




Compression level? As far as I'm aware, one can specify a target size, an average bitrate, or a Constant quality setting. I'm not sure how those aspects could be overlooked.

Profile levels would be nice, but they're not to be mixed up with compression levels or settings.

Additionally, Handbrake does allow for the setting of bframes etc. Use the advanced tab on the main window where you can add x264 options.

Review by Meritocracy on Jan 1, 2012 Version: 0.9.5 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 8/10




Indeed, Handbrake lacks a few options for a decent x264 configuration, like compression level, maximum number of consecutive b-frames and probably a few more. Luckily, Handbrake enables the user to alter the command line and thus making use of missing options ('--level n' to specify compression level; '--bframes n' to to specify maximum number of b-frames at once).

Review by pintcat on Jan 1, 2012 Version: 0.9.5 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 6/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 7/10




Useful tool, works very well for what it is capable of doing.
I found that it does not seem to have the ability to allow the user to manually select the *profile* level ( example....3.1..4.1..5.1 etc, etc), while I was using the program it was locked onto 3.1, I wanted to use 4.1.
The biggest disappointment has to be the incredibly slow speed. I was re-encoding two relatively small 2.5 gig files that were each 1/2 of a 3 hour movie... a two part movie that I was joining together. I just had to alter the bitrate for both halves to match each other so they would join together in mkvmerge without any issue. Handbrake took more than 16 hours to re-encode EACH file. Terribly slow. It did the job, but, terribly slow.

Review by 55trucker on Jan 1, 2012 Version: 0.95 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 6/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 5/10 Overall: 6/10




WOW, this is an AWESOME tool.

I used it a while back when i recall the interface was different. I was not impressed then. Now however, I can see the magic of MP4 compression and its amazing hands-over-fists advantages from XVID. The only major downside to the codec is lack of current device support.

I have a ton of VHS. Handbrake not only detected the letterboxing and helped me remove it, with some de-interlacing the picture was amazing! And for a very efficient size!

This is a very worthwhile program, but you have to invest proper time in encoding. I always use 2-pass if available.

Review by kbbbb on Dec 26, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




for me ,space problem on my PC so i want convert DVDs to mkv,
i use some freeware software but that was not satisfy me,
but this HANDBRAKE is really good for mkv or H.264 result is so powerful,
(i convert DVDs to mkv in almost 8 gb to 1.5 gb with great quality) must use for mkv conversion

Review by ashe09 on Nov 16, 2011 Version: 0.9.5. OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




By gum, you're right. However I don't have any pressing reason to prefer mkv to mp4 so it doesn't affect me either way.

Review by Hoser Rob on Sep 20, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Apple Only format? if you mean the .m4v extension you can change that under the setting menu. It also puts out to .mkv. IF you mean codecs it does AVC which is the most widely used codec now and days. IF I could fault it for anything it would me the lack of filter options (i.e avisynth). for most people it does it all. And the linux version supports video preview when cutting/cropping in the program itself

Review by dannyboy48888 on Sep 17, 2011 Version: 64 bit nightly OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Only gave this an 8 for functionality because it only outputs Apple format. This isn't a problem for me, though, and it definitely makes it easier to use.

How do you rate freeware as to value? It seems to me it'll either get 1 or 10.

This is just about the best freeware I've ever used. Despite what the last comment says it doesn't load the CPU any more than a number of other video rendering programs I've tried that do a crappy job.

And this does an excellent job. It's not buggy like Avidemux and it's much, much easier to use.

Plus, the documentation is excellent. Lots of paid programs don't have docs nearly that good.

Review by Hoser Rob on Sep 17, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Hi folks,

I was not sure how to grade this tool ... I have used the older version before and it worked OK ... this version 0.9.5 I used to "try" to convert a RMVB file to MP4 ... and I left everything as "default" ... HandBrake (HB) started doing it's thing ... running my CPU to the max and pretty fast ... so far so good. So, then when the Progress Bar shows 100% ... but HB still chugging along at max 100% CPU use ... so I wonder what the heck ... I manually stopped it after 5 minutes of this BS ... and cheked the Output MP4 file ... file is DEAD ... and unplayable. I tried HB for the second time again ... same problem. So, now I have to look for some other Tool for RMVB to MP4 or AVI conversion.

So, to me this tool is definitely Broken! As far as Rating I was Not sure what to give it to be Fair ... so!!!

Thanks! G!:)

Review by gonwk on Jul 27, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Vista 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 5/10




Handbrake is exceptionally easy to use, with a clean and attractive user interface. The program allows you easily to change the dimensions of the video (set between custom, strict, etc), it allows you to change the format (m4v, mkv) and allows you to customize an output size. You can also choose an average bitrate, and use 1 or 2 pass encoding.

Highlights for me were: Handbrake allows you to easily import multiple subtitles tracks. Easily select the audio streams you want, and adjust codec, bitrate, etc. Supports direct encoding from VIDEO_TS source file. Handbrake is a great program to encode h264 videos. It accepts a wide range of formats, and I recommend it.

Review by khl on May 23, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




This is a great freeware program that makes excellent quality MKV's with multiple language and subtitle and chapter support for my Popcorn C200 and my Beyonwiz PVR media centre (although the Beyonwiz doesn't support chapters or subtitles at the present time) No problem on Windows 7 32 or 64 bit systems from my personel experience. CQ support is good that doesn't required 2 pass encodes.

Review by netmask56 on May 2, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




does not yield acceptable results for Popcorn Hour or xbox - creates the illusion of a successful conversion but some of the mkv's will not run. Not recommended for anything not sold by apple.

Review by nikemouse on May 1, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 2/10 Overall: 2/10




Compared to the other software that I use to convert DVD to H264:

Nero Recode: Limits you to 2 audio files and 2 subtitles. It automatically detects interlacing and applies deinterlacing if detected (Handbrake does not). Nero does not have constant quality encoding, so 2 pass mode is needed to achieve same quality as handbrake (45 min for nero vs. 30 with handbrake on my machine). Nero does not have a queue and does not work with BluRay.

DVD Fab: Creates a folder with separate subtitle files rather than putting them in the same container (Even with MKV container). Allows only a single audio and subtitle file. I have had audio sync issues with this program. Note that it works GREAT for decrypting discs. Rivals Any DVD in breadth of decryption.

Review by Obfuscator on Apr 27, 2011 Version: 0.95 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




Boo Yaa; couldn't get a better freeware for converting. I like the GUI, and the advanced options. such as; convert to a specific frame-rate or file-size. You can use presets or try to google others optimal settings. upgraded to a 64-bit OS and forgot about Handbreak as I had not used it in a while. I tried several others and i registered with this site just to leave positive feedback!

Review by Alivallo on Apr 8, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Handbrake is one of the less buggy and glitchy free software to make x264 videos.

I use MeGUI too. Other software that is worth mentioning here is SUPER and StaxRip. They all can do something other tools cannot do.

Wishlist for Handbrake: more friendly batch processing, custom fps selection, he-aac encoding.

All in all it's a great reliable tool that does its job, has clear understandable interface and doesn't feel buggy. At least it doesn't crash or produce corrupted out of sync videos like some other free tools tend to make without extensive tuning and tinkering.

Review by VAbstract on Feb 12, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 8/10




0.9.5 Still has the stutter issue,

All the issues that have been resolved since 0.9.4, but the most important one has been ignored,


Try converting an episode of TNG, DS9 or Voyager,

Even with VFR, without it, or any other setup (PAL Source), the stutter is always there,

Especially on large panning screens,


This is an issue that has plagued Handbrake for a considerable amount of time, and I’m sorry to say, but 0.9.5 has still not remedied this issue, in fact I don't see any improvement from 0.9.4 to 0.9.5,

I have heard that VFR works quite well on NTSC source, but I can't comment on that side of things, but for PAL sources, the problem is severe, and very hard to miss,

Staxrip, Xvid4PSP, AutoGK, Fairuse Wizard, and avi.NET do not exhibit this issue,
but strangely enough all of the programs mentioned use DGIndex and AVISynth, yet Handbrake is the only one of it's kind, it doesn't seem to utilize these programs, rather the x264 CLI it uses seems to take on these roles, (I’m not saying that this is why Handbrake has this stutter problem, but it does seem strange how Handbrake seems to be the only one that exaggerates the stutter effect, a lot of sci-fi TV programs has this issue, but Hanbrake seems to make the stutter effect so prominent, where as the other converters out there try to minimize the stutter effect, some does better jobs than others, but most are on even PAR in regards to the job they do, but Hanbrake makes the stutter problem worse by far, in some cases to the point where the end result of video is unwatchable because of the frustration it causes to the individual watching the finale result produced by Handbrake)

Why HASN'T this issue been resolved once and for all, so much time and effort that has been done on 0.9.5 release, and this horrible long time problem has still not been addressed,
Personally I don't understand why Handbrake just doesn't use the power of Visit and DGIndex
like all other converters out there, most of the good ones mentioned above does, and they all do a wonderful job, and all have a great reputation for quality!!

Review by Registered55 on Jan 8, 2011 Version: 0.9.5 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 5/10




HandBrake is one of the top 2 tools for H.264 encoding. For videos that need cropped, I use StaxRip. Otherwise, I use HandBrake. No, it does not encode to old, outdated non-HD codecs such as MPEG-2 or XviD, but who cares?! Yes, it requires .NET 2.0, but that is a silly thing to whine about.

Review by V1de0Luvr on Sep 13, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




easy to use, once you can get it set up. set up is difficult, to say the least, and requires a very bloated download from micro$oft website in order to even install this thing! this was a major turnoff for me. also, its file conversion is extremely limited, almost to the point of being crippling. the only supported video formats this program is able to convert to are mp4 and mkv! no avi, no mpeg, just the aforementioned proprietary PITA .mp4 and .mkv, which have very limited use and require proprietary software to play (ex Apple Quicktime Player). does not play nice with ffdshow either. its free, so that is good, i just hope the programmers make it a little more versatile in future versions, such as not having to install microsoft software prior to the install, and making it possible to encode to non-esoteric, standardized, user-friendly, open and well accepted file formats such as mpg and avi. would not recommend, unless you have some sort of a fetish for mp4 and/or mkv.

Review by dunce on Sep 13, 2010 Version: 2.513 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 2/10




Quite disappointed with this.. wanted to use it to convert mpeg2 tVrecs to a smaller filesize. But after a bit of casting about, I cant seem to get sufficient quality out of it. This may be a function of the recorded files and maybe my lack of understanding of the parameters involved, but there appears to be no attempt to explain any of the trade-offs in encoding time vs filesize vs quality. They? seem to be saying "use the defaults" or figure it out for yourself. The defaults didn't give me the quality I am looking for. Oh well just buy more disks I suppose.
Didn't try on any DVD's.. so that could be where it excels.

Review by RabidDog on Jul 6, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 6/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 6/10




A major flaw is the inability to burn in srt subtitles into mp4.
It's useless for all devices that cannot handle embedded or external subs.

Review by ulapines on Jun 10, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 7/10




I'm taking back my previous comment.
The dot.NET installation on my PC somehow got corrupted.
Having solved that, Handbrake functions perfectly well again.
Apologies, Stephan

Review by StephanP on Jun 9, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 8/10




Doesn't work anymore with .NET version 4
Upon start, Handbrake fires an error that I should install .NET version 2.0.
But my system has got .NET v4, so HB shouldn't have to complain.
Pity.

Review by StephanP on Jun 7, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 8/10




LOVE this tool! Use to convert to mp4 for iTouch as well as Sony Walkman Video Player (NWZ-S544). Wonderful, wonderful converter! Very easy to use. Visit author's webpage for how-to's/tips/guide. There are also guides on Videohelp site to get you started. I rip DVD movies to my hard drive first using freeware portion of DVDFab. Handbrake works perfectly for iTouch just choosing the Handbrake iPod Touch preset. The Sony Walkman, on the other hand, was a bit of a trial. Long story short, THANK YOU for your posts "frim fram sauce" on "anythingbutipod.com" forum "Walkman H.264 avc Video Encoding Tips"....Not a lot of help out there for the Sony Walkmans. All of the info is actually in the "manual" that is loaded on the Walkman that you install on your computer, but you have to be able to interpret it (end of manual under Specs for video format AVC~mp4).In handbrake, CHOOSE THE IPOD PRESET (same max screen width of 320 pixels~for Walkman to view videos horizontally). Then the only things you HAVE to change are under Picture tab, make sure Keep Aspect Ratio is checked. Under Video tab, Sony is serious about the max 30 fps, so change the framerate to 29.97 in Handbrake. (My TV DVD shows from the 80s and 90s worked fine without changing this, but everything else froze my player and was glitchy 5-6 minutes into the video.) Also under Video tab,Average Bitrate can't be greater than 768 kbps (much smaller bitrate will still give excellent video quality on this small screen). Under Advanced tab in the bottom commands/input window, change "level=30" to "level=13" (for level max 1.3 on the Walkman). I also usually under the Subtitles tab will check "forced only". My walkman doesn't recognize chapters, fast forward is all I can do. I also make my videos under an hour to help prevent audio/video going out of synch on the Walkman, easy to do by selecting only certain chapters at a time under the Source section in Handbrake.Don't bother with 2-pass, just a waste of time with this new version of Handbrake for my 2.4"-screen. Once you've changed everything, do yourself a favor and under the presets on the right, click Add button and follow instructs to make a new preset for the Walkman. The important stuff will save in the preset, like level=13 and 30 fps (check "store cropping values" option when adding the preset).Anyway, after a LOT of frustration with the Sony Walkman, YIPPEE! Handbrake is a great program! Conversion takes a bit longer than the video playback time on my old computer running WinXP(AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2.07GHz 1.5 Gb RAM WinXP, Radeon 9200SE 128Mb) and is very quick (about 16 mins for 1hr video) on my notebook running Vista 32-bit (AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core 3 Gb RAM, ATI Radeon x1250), depending on source file and output. Thanks Handbrake!

Review by sieve5 on May 9, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: Vista Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I think you should keep learning, experts know that is the best program of its kind to MP4 and now to MKV videos.
works well in all O.S.

Regards.

Review by jorgecmn on May 5, 2010 Version: 0.9.4. OS: Linux Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I used this program to convert some ungainly 1080p MOV files from a Canon camera to much more manageable mp4 files which, at 1/10 the size of the original file, retain about 90% of the quality.

However... I can't seem to figure out a way to convert SEVERAL source files into a SINGLE mp4, and the interface is, at best, confusing in that regard.

The "Batch" converter is just outputting to the same resulting filename, thereby erasing any previous results.

There are no tutorials that would explain what need to be done in this respect, although it would see to be an important feature...

Otherwise, I'm very pleased with this program - it replaces much more expensive software.

Review by AnitaPeterson on Feb 3, 2010 Version: 0.9.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Been using this for about 3 months now. Kick ass program. Had no issues at all. Fixed all of my audio issues problems I had with dvdfab. And its free. Highly recommend it.
Converts proper mkv files. Tried ten different converts and nothing comes close to it.
Wish they have a 64bit version for windows though.

Review by onneeye on Jan 28, 2010 Version: .9.4 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Severely disappointed in the decision to bail on formats still viable. Tried to use this on Mac but it never worked, then they went Leopard mandatory, when it still didn't work. So goodbye, back then. Now I'm trying to get rid of crappy, poorly constructed, matroska files, using a windows machine, and I can only get .mp4 files out of it, and not very good ones, at that. MPEG-4 is great for in-house and personal use, but useless for clients who haven't upgraded to extremely fast, modern windows.
Great that it's free, but functionality has suddenly been kicked out from underneath it, right after they had expanded it's abilities. Again, very disappointed.

Review by SeijoKoibito on Jan 28, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 2/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 5/10




Love this for creating (h264)mp4 from my dvd's. Well laid out. Makes h264 encoding easy. I use it to create files for easy access on my htpc and my tivo.

Review by freebird73717 on Jan 27, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




I use Handbrake for two years and before use Divx, but now with the H264 codec and MKV container, my videos have best quality, best sound, less space and can include captions. It's perfect for my HTPC and my WDTV Live, with a little patience can learn to use better this great tool. The version 0.9.4 runs very well on Win XP and Ubuntu Linux 9.10
Greetings.

Review by jorgecmn on Jan 27, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




After trying to encode a ripped dvd from my hd all night I did have some success with this program. Some of the options for the H.264 can make files created unusable and I never did get a .mkv contained file to work. A little tweaking goes a long way. Otherwise, the authors believe h.264 is the "wave of the future" and I guess it is used for bluray or so they say. The problem is I tried the videos cross platform on a 360, win2k and win Vista64. My older computer running at 1.8GHz can barely play back the video unless almost all the complexity is removed this problem is not evident with divx my old computer can handle those with ease. Xbox has no problems with most of vids created same as vista. The other downside hear is that this tool doesn't offer the use divx the "wave of the past" perhaps. So the bottom line is that this tool is for creating Mac or apple or ipod based video. Although these are supported under windows it would be nice to use this interface for a wider array of codecs and therefor other video formats. Finally video at 25% the size is quite remarkable h.264 is comparable to divx compression quality and with complexity maxed out and the right hardware it looks very much like the original. In summary the user interface is helpful and it does work with some tweaking all in all I was left wanting something more like virtual dub showing input and output video and allowing for any codec you can install although I never got as good of results in virtual dub. I would recommend changing the settings testing the created file on your different hardware and see if it will work for you. Then I would look for something more versatile in-case you want more than applevid.

Review by Big A on Jan 27, 2010 Version: 1.9.4 OS: Vista 64-bit Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 6/10




I recently tried discovering the best way to convert Blu-Ray M2TS files to MP4 files that can be played on a PSP. The 64bit Win7 machine I was using experienced issues with a number of different tools. In the past, I used MeGui extensively for converting DVDs, but I had too many issues with the M2TS conversion. Plus, I wasn't thirilled about having to install all these different tools and "hacks" to get around the Directshow issues in Windows 7. Aside from MeGui, I tried XVid4PSP, Ripbot264, and some others. Handbrake, by far, is the best of the pack. It converted my desired Blu-Rays in less than 2 hours time with exceptional quality and perfectly in-sync audio. The only thing I did not like about Handbrake was the fact that a lot of device profiles were not present, which did exist in prior versions. However, by using the Apple Universal profile, and changing the desired aspect ratio, it worked just fine. All-in-all, a fantastic tool.

Review by scottyblackspider on Jan 14, 2010 Version: 0.9.4 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Please be aware the latest version has stripped out the ability to convert to .AVI, only leaving .MKV and .MP4, if you still want to convert to .AVI do not upgrade(downgrade) to latest version

Review by darkknight145 on Dec 26, 2009 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 6/10




A must into each Video toolbox

Review by doubleBB on Dec 25, 2009 Version: 0.9.4 OS: Vista Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I posted a few weeks ago, just when 0.94 was released and have since then tested this nifty tool thoroughly. My overall experience with it is excellent as it does what I need it to do very efficiently and quicker then other tools out there.

StaxRip and AviDemux have been my alternatives and StaxRip has been one of my favorites for years. However, since most of my conversions are now HD based, neither StaxRip nor AviDemux do as well of a job as Handbrake does. AviDemux keeps having aspect ratio issues when indexing the media clips and Staxrip as powerfull it is, needs much tweaking for each case to get it right. In this perspective these two alternatives still have much more tweaking capability, but if you need quick results without a PHD, this tool is the better choice.

Most of my conversions are based on transport stream files with HD video and DTS or AC3 audio. Handbrake takes this file type now without any issues and the result is a very clean compressed version of the original at half the size to 1/3 the size.

Also, comments like you need .net to get it to work is more of an platform related issue than the fault of the program. It's almost impossible to come across any code now that does not rely on .net one way or another. Maybe these folks should move to other operating systems.

Good work Handbrake team!

Review by anosis on Dec 23, 2009 Version: 0.94 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




This workas great on my new duo core laptop. Takes about an hour to convert a movie. This is the only software that would convert my movies with out any audio sync problems. I had a tough time with id4 movie. Hand brake converted with no problems. What I love about this program is that you can convert your movie with 2 or more audio tracks, add subtitles with out any problems.

Review by onneeye on Dec 9, 2009 Version: .094 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Works exceptionally well for me (using XP) - relatively simple, fast and excellent results. My only complaint is the lack of ability to correct color and/or luma - option to use Avisynth script would be superb. I have also had excellent results using Handbrake in Ubuntu.

Review by andie41 on Nov 26, 2009 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Crashes more than a teenager on coke in a BMW.

Review by Bobbo on Nov 26, 2009 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 3/10




Disregard the ratings from the previous post, as they were clearly posted by a twit. Just because you don't like .NET, doesn't mean the program should be rated badly in all categories.

This program is fantastic. Whatever I throw at it, it spits out a file that is near perfect in all regards (of course, quality depends on the source). Every release just gets better and better.

Review by bucho on Nov 25, 2009 Version: 0.94 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I hate all those applications which requires net framework to run because due to installation of net framework it leaves a lot of garbage in your system thus makes it slower and slower and also takes a lot of disk space to install, thus your system will become slower and it takes a lot of memory space.

Review by parag19 on Nov 25, 2009 Version: 0.9.4 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




I have tried many other encoding solutions under Windows XP and this one was at the top. It may not have as many features as other ones out there, but where this shines is the fact that anything I threw at it worked flawlessly. Never experienced any audio/video sync issues which is much more common on other software titles.

Also does an excellent job converting BD to MKV retaining full HD video with AC3 sound. Compression ratio between 3:1 and 4:1

What would be nice is a preview window when you crop your video (maybe that is now possible on 0.9.4) and some transformation routines (pulldown, FPS re-sampling).

Review by anosis on Nov 25, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




How may I crash thee? Let me count the ways.

Basically, just attempt to set parameters to other than the default and watch the app disappear.

Works great on my Mac; it's a disappointment in Ubuntu 8.10

Review by rumplestiltskin on Jul 27, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Linux Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 8/10 Overall: 6/10




Handbrake helps the persons do not be beginners, it is a multiplatform, has many options, easy to deal and very popularly. I tried in Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Excellent.!
I think, is better not to discredit what you do not know.
Regards.

Review by jorgecmn on Jul 24, 2009 Version: 0.09.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




HandBrake is very popular, I can see it on many website, this is benefit from free. On the other hand, it is difficult to use for beginner, lack support and weak stability. HandBrake attend technology and ignore user experience. I consider iFunia is better than it.

Review by pigula on Jul 24, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 3/10 Value for money: 2/10 Overall: 2/10




Pretty much the easiest and best MP4 encoder out there, one minor issue is that it fails to encode forced subtitles on some of my DVDs.

Review by mh2360 on Jul 7, 2009 Version: v0.9.3 OS: Windows 7 Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 7/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Hmmm...the previous reviewer finds Handbrake hard to use but does not find MeGUI difficult to use!?. I have used both and hands down Handbrake is much easier to use and the encoding results are pretty much identical, hence I greatly prefer Handbrake.

Review by wwjd on Jul 6, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I must be a real idiot because I can't get this thing to work-I load my file, do all the setup, query and hit start- 2 seconds later it says encoding complete and I have nada..What am I missing here? The guide doesn't offer much help--Guess I stay with megui

Review by headhunter03 on Jul 6, 2009 Version: .9.3 OS: Vista Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




Handbrake is easy to use, does excellent encoding and free!

If I had a complaint it would that I would like to have more input options for video file types.

Review by direstrates on Jun 19, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Vista Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I have been using Handbrake to re-encode mpeg2 to h264 for quite sometime and it has performed superbly. Unlike the previous reviewer I find the GUI to be quite useable and visible.

Review by bits on Jun 18, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Vista Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Badly designed interface, doesn't fit on the screen (unless you have a huge screen) and doesn't take into account that users may have changed DPI (meaning some controls become impossible to see)

May work, if you can actually see the interface

Review by branch on Jun 18, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 1/10 Functionality: 1/10 Value for money: 1/10 Overall: 1/10




An excellent transcoder that produces fantastic results, although it's limited to transcoding to H.264/X264 or MPEG-4 codecs. Has a very good advanced H.264 settings section that you can tweak to get the best possible quality to size. I gave it a 9 on Functionality because it doesn't support DTS (Digital Theatre System) audio pass-through.

Review by LedAstray on Jun 11, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Vista 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I wish this app would allow me to boost or normalize the volume of any audio type, not just AC3.

Review by mel2000 on Apr 21, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Vista Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




I ripped a dvd to my hard drive and thought "let me give Handbrake a try", I was very impressed with its results, along with its ease of use. It looks to be an app I would regularly use for DVD to AVI conversion. Speed of conversion is also good. "Thanks much" goes out to its creator(s).

Review by Hittz on Apr 21, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Handbrake 0.9.3 would be my favourite DVD ripper by far - if only it was capable of ripping mono audio tracks to mono MP3 for XviD/avi rips. I have a lot of old international films (especially Japanese) that have mono audio, and it is a waste of bits to rip to stereo, so I use alternative rippers at the moment.
If Handbrake had mono audio capabilities, I would never use anything else.

Review by LezDawson on Feb 12, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 3/10 Value for money: 5/10 Overall: 4/10




Great tool in Ubuntu 8.10 easy to setting and use, video-audio-sub work perfect. Is for me the best dvd rip tool of linux at moment.
Tanks a lot.

Review by jorgecmn on Jan 7, 2009 Version: 9.3 OS: Linux Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Best transcoder ever! I've used them all over the last 10 years. They all have some sort of quirky problem...except Handbrake 0.9.3. I've done maybe 50 transcodes so far without any problems with aspect ratio, size, or audio. I run in on Ubuntu 8.10 Ibex. There's nothing better.

Review by simonsonjh on Jan 7, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Linux Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Excellent tool; more so now that the ability to transcode files (and not just DVDs) has been added. One warning, however: The "5G iPod Compatible" checkbox doesn't make otherwise incompatible settings magically compatible. Start with the "Legacy iPod" setting and tweak from there if you want 5G iPod compatibility.

Quality of the transcode is excellent. Batch/Queue function is very helpful. This is an indispensable tool.

Review by rumplestiltskin on Jan 4, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




0.9.2 was great, but with the added capabilities to convert video other than DVD content, and even more improvements to the GUI, allowing additional capabilities, this is exceptional!

It's much easier to understand than most tools with a great GUI. For what isn't obvious, the tool tips and especially the website user guide are excellent.

Far and away the best small-scale video tool i've seen for Mac! Can't wait to see what comes along with the next version.

Review by Flarch on Jan 3, 2009 Version: 0.9.3 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




After trying different conversion tools to get video onto my iphone, I found Handbrake to be the best for me. So far managed to convert anything I throw at it.
The presets are very useful and very well tuned for either univesal playback on most devices (appletv, ps3, xbox, iphone) or specific devices.
Can't really comment on speed etc as I let it run overnight, but like I said the quality is very good with default settings alone.
There is excellent support on their forums as well and it looks like it is constantly being developed/improved.
I would recommend you try this if you are still looking for the "perfect" tool.

Review by sg1969 on Dec 15, 2008 Version: 0.9.3 OS: Vista Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Just finished transcoding a 700MB AVI (850kbps) over to a 500MB H264/MP4 (500kbps). I was expecting a noticeable loss in quality but I was pleasantly surprised; I couldn't tell the original from the transcoded version. Very nicely done! Great to have another tool for transcoding to iPod, etc.

Review by rumplestiltskin on Nov 24, 2008 Version: 0.9.3 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




I tested this for the purposes of iPod conversion, so my comments should be taken in with that in mind. Having read glowing recommendations, I was frankly disappointed in the quality of output using the HQ presets, as well as when tweaking settings by hand. While Handbrake is slightly faster than Videora (approx 3% across a 2 hour film at 2 pass HQ encoding), it produces video output that is full of artifacts and displays definite colour change. Side by side comparison with Videora output created at a lower bitrate but same resolution shows Handbrake produces images filled with large blocking artifacts and blurring to Videora's sharp images, and faded and off colour images to Videora's true to source output. I was also disappointed in the very limited formats that Handbrake can convert. I will be uninstalling this version, in the hope that perhaps a later version will be up to snuff.

Review by guns1inger on Apr 26, 2008 Version: 0.9.2 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 5/10 Functionality: 5/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 4/10




I've recently evaluated FairUse 2.8 and HandBrake 0.9.2 for my DVD to H264 conversion. Conclusion is that I will use FairUse at the moment and wait for HandBrake to improve on its usability in Windows. Some advantages of FairUse over HandBrake:
1. Automatic detection of telecine or interleave content.
2. Preview window for cropping and checking of subtitle. HandBrake do not have a preview window for Windows.
3. Using the "H264/AAC/MP4, Slow" profile and quality setting, the speed of conversion is slightly faster than HandBrake quality preset.
4. Appears to be more stable than HandBrake.

Disadvantages of FairUse:
1. Cannot convert DVD files on hard disk rip by other programs, e.g. DVDFab Decrypter. You have to convert the DVD-Video files to an iso image before FairUse can read it.
2. Limited documentation and community support. HandBrake on the other hand has great documentation and forum support.
3. HandBrake seems to be more actively developed.

Review by pustefix on Apr 14, 2008 Version: 0.9.2 OS: Vista Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




The good and the bad..........

The good:

This is a nice and user-friendly program. It produces great quality for H.264 videos on my xbox 360 (I use the PS3 preset, which works perfectly). Let me say it again- handbrake produces GREAT picture quality.

The bad:

I do have a couple complaints. Not any gripes, but just a few setbacks that have me searching for alternatives to convert to xbox 360 compliant specs. As follows:

(1) I have found the program a little buggy with the audio encoding. A couple times, Handbrake didn't produce the audio bitrate that i set it for. Not a REAL big deal, but I did end up having to encode my audio using Belight and then having to do some demuxing and muxing using Yamb. No biggie, like I said, but it was a bit time-consuming.

(2) The encoding time takes FOREVER and a day. And I mean that. Wow- it took so long to do a 2 pass H.264 encoding ripping from a DVD. I thought there was something wrong. And apparently there is something wrong because my 3.2 Pentium 4 processor just isn't up to the task. What do I need to get? An Intel Core 2 Quad to get the encoding time under 10 hours?

Conclusion:

Aside from these setbacks, Handbrake is a winner. If (and that's a big IF) you're patient......very patient.

Review by thundar on Dec 11, 2007 Version: 0.9.1 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 8/10 Functionality: 8/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 8/10




I have heard a lot about this tool, particularly that it is available on multiple platforms, which is a feature that I really love. So I recently tried this out to see if it could replace the good (but a little simplistic) AutoGK.

The installation and loading of HandBrake was very quick and painless, and was very happy that I only needed to install 1 application (instead of AutoGK's 3-4). The GUI was very intuitive and I could easy see what needed to be done or what operations were available to convert a video. Once I had set the settings for the conversion, I could add the job to the conversion queue.

There were a few minor problems with setting up the job. For starters, regardless of what file extension I wanted the video file to be (I wanted .mp4), the GUI would always choose .m4v, which I most definitely do not want. I was unable to set the resolution\width that I wanted for the output at all, which later became frustrating. More annoying was that, when entering the video output size, the GUI would ignore half of the keystrokes I pressed, making a trivial task seem a little more difficult.

When it came to the output files themselves, I was highly impressed with the first job, a DVD using the x264 codec. Quality was great and though the conversion speed was slow, I expect that from a superior codec. However the resolution of the movie was over 1000x pixels across, which seems a bit of a waste when the source is only 720x across.

More unfortunately was when I tried to do another conversion the next night, I woke up the next morning to find the file approximately 10% of what the size should have been and was unplayable. Assuming that I must have entered the size incorrectly due to the program ignoring key strokes, I attempted again the next night on a different movie, but the same thing happened (though the size of the output was now around 25% of what it should have been).

Overall, this tool has potential, and the fact that it can be used on Windows\Linux\Mac is very convenient, However the tool isn't quite there yet.

Review by retpyrc on Nov 29, 2007 Version: 0.9.1 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 7/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 4/10




Very easy to use, works perfectly after DVD Shrink.
Quiet processor intensive, 2 pass ~ 2h!
Well worth it.

Review by SebMKd on Nov 9, 2007 Version: 0.9.0 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Very simple interface but this is a good thing for me as I cannot stand myriads of tweaks, bells and/or whistles. Took 2 hours to back up a 1h 38min DVD movie into 1.5GB, very good quality Xvid movie (app. 1 hour per pass). And that is with a Pentium M processor and 512MB RAM. I am sure more powerful systems will have a doddle with this little programs. Cannot wait to see what my P4 3Ghz and 1GB RAM will make of this....
All-in-all very good performance for a free utility!

Review by hakamtzan on Nov 1, 2007 Version: 0.9.1 OS: WinXP Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 6/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




superb program - it's great to see apps for MacOSX :)

Review by wilddezign on May 1, 2006 Version: 0.7.1 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




Can use handbrake to rip dvd's so that you can play them on your iPod.. the guide is below. Easy to use, great quality. Will be using it a ton for sure.

Review by dausone on Oct 16, 2005 Version: 2005/04/29: 0.7.0-beta3 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




A previous post mentioned Handbrake "hanging" at the end. Be patient; it's actually doing something but not providing feedback.

I've foud a few DVDs that Handbrake can't seem to work with. This might be a copy-protection with which the app is not (yet) familiar. As a workaround, I gave it the copy of the DVD (using DVDShrink) which only contained the main title; Handbrake was happy with this.

Review by rumplestiltskin on Jun 23, 2005 Version: 0.7.0 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Tested on a dual-1.8GHz G5. Following advice given in the docs resulted in a fairly high quality transcode from DVD to AVI. I asked for a 700MB target size and got 699.3MB; close enough.

Used the 2-pass VBR and it took a little over an hour to process through 104 minutes of movie.

Relatively user-friendly and responsive to mouseclicks even during processing (like when I decided to cancel because I had chosen the wrong settings).

The AVI, when moved to my PC, played perfectly; no audio sync issues.

Review by rumplestiltskin on May 3, 2005 Version: 0.7.0 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 9/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10




I give it a 9 overall because I had to force quit at the end. One second left and 100% complete and it would have run forever. Otherwise an awesome piece of software. "Heavily multi-threaded" is an understatement. I have a 1.25GHz eMac with 256mb 333ddr and it ripped at 27fps from an firewire Pioneer107D. Almost real-time. The settings are simple and easy. The mp4 was immediately accepted on the Mac as a Quicktime movie and played on my "other" computer(a 1.1 GHz eMachine) in VLC.

Review by dnix71 on Aug 3, 2004 Version: 0.6.2 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 10/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 9/10




Does what it should as simple as it could be.
Does only accept Video_TS Folder as source. But thats it for.
Would like to have another input source too. but therefore I can use ffmpegX.

Review by stargator on Jul 9, 2004 Version: 0.62 OS: MacOSX Ease of use: 10/10 Functionality: 9/10 Value for money: 10/10 Overall: 10/10


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