HandBrake – video transcoder

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter. This software application therefore lets you compress DVDs so that they take less space on a hard disk.

HandBrake is a console based (command-line interface) tool, although there is some development in progress to provide a graphical user interface under Linux.

The application requires many switches and variables to begin the conversion of a DVD to an MPEG video file. The hbencoder script was written to make encoding files a little bit easier for Linux users on the command line.

Features include:

• Supported sources:
  • Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software), and some .VOB and .TS files.
  • PAL or NTSC.
  • AC-3, DTS, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks.
• Outputs:
  • File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM.
  • Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding).
  • Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks).
• Misc features:
  • Chapter selection.
  • Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture).
  • Integrated bitrate calculator.
  • Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling.
  • Grayscale encoding.

Website: handbrake.fr
Support: Forums, GitHub
Developer: Eric Petit, Laurent Aimar, John Allen, Joe Crain, Damiano Galassi, and others.
License: GNU GPL v2

HandBrake is written in the Objective-C, C, and C# programming languages. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C# with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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