14 DAY TRIAL // After being in development for more than thirteen years, the open-source and cross-platform HandBrake video converter reached 1.0.0 milestone, and it can now finally be considered a mature application for editing various video file types.
HandBrake 1.0.0 was officially launched on Christmas Eve, as the development team planned the release as a Christmas present for all the fans of the tool for converting video files from nearly any format. HandBrake 1.0.0 is currently supported on all major platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows, and as expected, it's a major release that brings new features and improvements.
"After more than 13 years of development, the HandBrake Team is delighted to present HandBrake 1.0.0. Thank you to all of our many contributors over the years for making HandBrake what it is today," reads the announcement. "On that note, we are also excited to announce the new online HandBrake Documentation beta, available in English."
Here's what's new in HandBrake 1.0.0
Prominent features of HandBrake 1.0.0 include completely overhauled presets with new Matroska (MKV) and device presets, as well as a brand-new JSON-based preset system, improvements to the audio/video sync engine, VP9 video encoding by using the libvpx library, an Intel QuickSync Video H.265/HEVC encoder that requires Intel Skylake or newer CPUs.
There's also Ultra HD and 4K color pass-through support for BT.2020, a new automatic anamorphic mode that maximizes storage resolution, new Pad, NLMeans, and Decomb/Deinterlace filters, performance improvements to the x264 and x265 encoders, as well as high bit depth encoding, supporting 10-bit for x264 and both 10-bit and 12-bit for x265.
The Rotate filter is finally available in all supported graphical user interfaces, it is now possible to encode and decode audio files using Opus code via the libopus library, pass-through support for FLAC, TrueHD, and E-AC-3 audio formats has been implemented, subtitle rendering was improved for various languages via HarfBuzz, and it's possible to import and export presets from the command-line.
When updating to HandBrake 1.0.0, you should keep in mind that the FreeType 2.6.5, Fontconfig 2.12.1, FriBidi 0.19.7, libass 0.13.2, and HarfBuzz 1.3.0 libraries are required for processing subtitles. Moreover, libbluray 0.9.3 is required for Blu-Ray decoding, libav 12 for encoding, decoding and muxing, as well as libmfx 6.0.0 for encoding and decoding of Intel QuickSync Video streams.
You'll also need libvpx 1.5.0 for VP8 and VP9 video encoding, x264 148 r2708 for H.264/AVC video encoding, x265 2.1 for H.265/HEVC video encoding, and libopus 1.1.3 for Opus audio encoding. Check out the full changelog below for all the details on the platform specific fixes, and download the HandBrake 1.0.0 for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows binaries and source packages right now from our website. Flatpak support for Linux OSes is now available!