HandBrake is a video transcoder for converting video from almost any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.
It can process common multimedia files as well as DVD and Blu-ray sources that do not contain copy protection. A large collection of built-in presets provides sensible settings for common devices, platforms and production workflows.
HandBrake offers extensive control over video, audio, subtitles, filters and container settings, while its queue makes it practical to process multiple encodes unattended. Both graphical and command-line interfaces are available on Linux.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Reads most common multimedia files as well as DVD and Blu-ray sources without copy protection.
- Outputs MP4, MKV, WebM and MOV containers.
- Video encoding includes AV1, H.265/HEVC, H.264/AVC, VP9, VP8, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, FFV1, ProRes and DNxHR.
- Supports hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding on compatible Intel, AMD and NVIDIA hardware.
- Audio encoding includes AAC, MP3, FLAC, AC3, E-AC3, Opus and Vorbis, together with passthrough for supported source formats.
- Built-in presets cover general-purpose devices, web video, hardware encoders, production workflows and archival use.
- Supports constant-quality and average-bitrate encoding with variable and constant frame rates.
- Video filters include deinterlacing, decomb, detelecine, denoise, deblock, colourspace conversion, cropping and scaling.
- Handles subtitles including SRT, SSA, VobSub and closed captions, with options to pass through or burn subtitles into the video.
- Preserves or creates chapter markers and allows encoding by title, chapter or selected range.
- Static and video previews help assess cropping, filtering and encoding settings before processing the complete source.
- Batch scanning and an encoding queue allow multiple conversion jobs to be prepared and processed sequentially.
- Supports HDR metadata passthrough and modern high-bit-depth video workflows.
- HandBrakeCLI provides the transcoding engine through a command-line interface for scripting and automation.
Website: handbrake.fr
Support:
Developer: The HandBrake Team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
HandBrake is written in Objective-C, C, and C#. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C# with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Video Converters | |
|---|---|
| HandBrake | Multithreaded cross-platform media transcoding application |
| FFmpeg | Multimedia player, server and encoder |
| Shutter Encoder | Graphical frontend to FFmpeg with editing features |
| FastFlix | GUI for H.264, HEVC and AV1 hardware and software encoding |
| Videomass | Cross-platform GUI for FFmpeg and youtube-dl |
| avconv | Part of libav-tools; fork of FFmpeg |
| VLC | Vdeo player which also converts multimedia to different formats |
| mpv | Cross-platform media player with video encoding support |
| ab-av1 | AV1 encoder with automatic quality selection through sample testing |
| MEncoder | MEncoder is included in MPlayer |
| FFQueue | Graphical frontend to FFmpeg written in C++ |
| Edconv | User-friendly FFmpeg GUI |
| transcode | Utility to encode raw video/audio streams |
| OmniGet | Uses FFmpeg to perform the video conversion |
| MystiQ | GUI for FFmpeg, a powerful media converter |
| Frame | Desktop media conversion utility |
| ffdash | VP9 video encoder |
| Constrict | Compress videos to target sizes |
| Leonardo | Media conversion application |
| Ciano | Easy way to convert your multimedia files to the most popular formats |
| Recoder | GTK4 video transcoding application |
| VidCom | Simple utility for video archiving and compression |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
What good is this information, I am looking for apps to download.
What apps are you looking to download?
This article seems outdated because the GUI for handbrake has been available for Linux and other OSes for a while now.
Regards.
Gerald.
Yes, the article had an outdated sentence, which has been updated. We’ve shown an image of the GUI for some time.