Skip to Content

Handbrake 0.9.4 released, includes 64-bit support

by Chris Rawson Nov 24th 2009 at 9:15PM

It's been a year in coming, but Handbrake, the multiplatform, open-source video transcoder, has been updated to version 0.9.4. It's one of the tools I included in my list of 10 must-have apps for a new Mac.

The Handbrake team has been busy indeed over the past year -- their change log shows over 1000 changes since the build they released last year. The biggest new feature with this update is support for 64-bit, which allows Handbrake to encode approximately 10% faster than previous 32-bit builds. The 64-bit build is not exclusive to Snow Leopard, so if you're still running 10.5 on a 64-bit capable machine, you'll still be able to reap the benefits of reduced encoding time.

That 10% performance improvement estimate appears to be very close to the mark, at least on my MacBook Pro. Using 0.9.3, Handbrake encodes would average around 27 - 29 frames per second when transcoding a VIDEO_TS folder to H.264. In 0.9.4, using the same settings, I'm seeing encoding rates of closer to 30 - 34 frames per second. This means that on my Mac, Handbrake is now transcoding DVDs in real time or faster thanks to the improvements in the new version.

The Handbrake team has trimmed some of the fat from this release. There are no more presets for the PSP, PS3, or Xbox 360; all three have been replaced with a "Normal" preset that should work on any device that supports Main Profile H.264. Handbrake has also removed support for transcoding to AVI, OGG, and XviD. Personally I won't miss any of these, as I always transcoded to H.264, but for people who are still clinging to AVI (for whatever reason), this update will force them to abandon the format.

Another new feature that looks like it'll be incredibly useful is Live Preview, which allows you to encode a small portion of the video source using current settings and then see what it looks like. This will keep you from having to encode the entire video only to find out two hours later that one of your settings was off, forcing you to start all over again.

Handbrake 0.9.4 is a free download, available here.

View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Multimedia Freeware Open Source

It's been a year in coming, but Handbrake, the multiplatform, open-source video transcoder, has been updated to version 0.9.4. It's one of...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

67 Comments

Filter by:
Tom

Does this preserve the aspect ratio of the original video? Some video converters in the past have scaled the video to the exact dimensions of the iphone, stretching things out

November 25 2009 at 4:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
murph

can you boost the output audio now? that's the only reason i don't use Handbrake. the NYC subways are too noisy for video and dialogue :(

November 25 2009 at 3:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael Murdock

Well...not happy with this one, installed the new version of handbrake and told vlc is not 64bit, tried using fairmount, it complains about vlc as well (hello vlc) and installed the intel version and it still gripes, so...pretty much sucking bits right now. Oh well, back to RIPIt, it works :)

November 25 2009 at 3:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Michael Murdock's comment
b. Touch

The current release of VLC (1.0.3) is not 64-bit. There is a 64-bit 1.0.2 release of VLC available for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6; this is the version you would need to install if you wanted ot use the 64-bit version of Handbrake. Otherwise, you would stick to the 32-bit versions of each.

I can confirm that 64-bit Handbrake + 64-bit VLC does indeed work, and well.

December 02 2009 at 8:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rrdmxjedah

I just tried to encode an avi file under default settings for my iphone but when I tried to sync it to my phone it says it can't play that type of file. Do I have to change the settings?

November 25 2009 at 2:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to rrdmxjedah's comment
rrdmxjedah

nevermind I got it

November 25 2009 at 2:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
david amodt

mactheripper works so much better though, although it's outdated. handbrake taking 2 hours to rip a dvd is ridiculous in my opinion. programs like dvd decrypter on the pc side made it easy to do this straight to the HD within 20 mins. Like the concept of handbrake but too long to rip

November 25 2009 at 11:53 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to david amodt's comment
Ditty

dvd decrypter and handbrake do 2 different things. dvd decrypter just un encrypts the dvd but leave it in the original format. handbrake converts to a more friendly format so it can play on more devices.

November 25 2009 at 12:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
malte

update with less mainstream codecs = total fail

November 25 2009 at 9:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
teiresias

If I choose the new "Normal" setting when feeding Handbrake an avi file, and leave all the settings alone it finishes the encode fine. However, if I choose the "Normal" setting and then move the Quality bar from the default ~60% up to 100% the resulting file is corrupted somehow. Finder can identify it as an mp4 (because of the extension), but it cannot create a thumbnail and Quicktime can't play it, and I can't even copy the file to a new location - I get an "Unexpected Error" problem. Hmmmm, not sure what's up with this.

November 25 2009 at 8:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to teiresias's comment
Thomas

Pointless using 100% since most likely you're encoding a file which was already lossy in the firstplace. Based on 100% you're going to end up with a file bigger than what you started with.

November 25 2009 at 9:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
TedJ

Constant quality at 100% = RF 0 = lossless.

Do NOT do this unless you want an encode that's significantly larger than your source... 64.7% (RF 18) to 54.9% (RF 23) are sane values.

BTW, the reason your encode was corrupted was it's size exceeded 4GB which breaks 32 bit MP4 containers - you need to enable "Large File" support.

November 25 2009 at 5:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
oshawapilot

Either this version is working some amazing magic, or I've got a setting wrong, because I'm encoding at about 33FPS right now.

I own an Elgato Turbo264 encoder and am only seeing about 6-8 FPS faster using the hardware encoder versus Handbrakes software encoder, which is what makes this even more amazing to me.

November 25 2009 at 8:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rob47

Can anyone give me some advice on converting .MKV files to a 360/PS3 friendly format. Usually I'd use handbrake but these videos have subtitles and when I convert it they aren't on the video? I've been tearing my hair out over it.

November 25 2009 at 7:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Rob47's comment
mikehild

I'm not able to check right now, but I assume Handbrake should have a preset available for the 360. Just select it and you're guaranteed to have a file that works. Just like all the other presets for iPod, PSP, PS3, Apple TV, etc. I don't see why they wouldn't also have a 360 preset. I've never looked for it myself though so I could be mistaken.

November 25 2009 at 9:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rob47

Nah I've tried that the video looked superb but the subtitles were not on it. They work when I play the .MKV.

November 25 2009 at 1:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
TedJ

In true Murphy's Law tradition, the handbrake.fr mysql server decided to take a little nap... good news is that everything should be back to normal now.

November 25 2009 at 7:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.