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HandBrake – An open source video transcoder
- boromi 5y agoDoesn't ffmpeg provide similar functionality?
- cjensen 5y agoYes, and under the hood Handbrake is using the FFmpeg libraries. Handbrake's value is providing simple presets that "just work" for converting video for various uses. Want to convert video for playback on an iPhone? Handbrake has you covered.
- merb 5y agoah the good old dropbox. > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 just gold. btw. handbrake is simple to use, ffmpeg is not.
- arbitrage 5y agobrb reading man pages. again. in three different terminals. ffmpeg is a great tool, and time is well spent getting to know how to use it. but it takes a lot of time/effort to get there.
- capableweb 5y agoWell, yeah, both can be used for mostly the same things (probably ffmpeg has more features in total though), but ffmpeg doesn't have a GUI, which HandBrake does.
- wfleming 5y agoYes, but Handbrake provides a GUI. Ffmpeg is fantastic, and I believe supports a wider range of formats than Handbrake, so it's the power user's tool of choice. But Handbrake is way more accessible for the average user, and is very high quality in its own way.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- prvc 5y agoAside from the interface, Handbrake provides many features not implemented in ffmpeg, especially concerning extracting data from DVDs. Handbrake is also the easiest way for non-technical people to transcode videos from one format, resolution, or quality to another.
- concinds 5y agoI find ffmpeg more intuitive. Handbrake only has presets, and it pre-fills so many options for you. Why can't I just have "original" everything, just change the format? I don't want any changes except codec, but with Handbrake I don't feel confident it's not going beyond that.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoI'm the same. I used to use handbrake, but found the presets didn't work very well. I set up custom presetsz fiddled with lots of things, and still failed to always get the right subtitles or audio or something. I've switched to ffmpeg now, with MakeMKV to do the rip. I find this works better and more reliably. It also let's me separate the ripping from the transcoding. So I can rip really fast and just queue up the transcoding.
- abdusco 5y agoThere's a really cool and feature-filled app on Windows called VidCoder that uses Handbrake as its engine. It allows you to create picker presets, offers better queuing options, compare different results etc. It's worth checking out. https://github.com/RandomEngy/VidCoder https://github.com/RandomEngy/VidCoder
- ghostly_s 5y agoWhy was this posted? Doesn't seem to be any recent news.
- reidjs 5y agohandbrake is a fantastic piece of open source software, I think it's worth reposting every now and then.
- detaro 5y agolast discussion January 2019, that's quite a while
- dotty- 5y agohttps://twitter.com/lego_operator/status/1461077353476628488 https://twitter.com/lego_operator/status/1461077353476628488 This seems to be why.
- seanw444 5y agoFunny how the replies all say "omg you can't clip videos idiot" but the defense isn't claiming they clipped any evidence. They're claiming that scaling / interpolation is enough to invalidate video evidence where mere pixels matter. Which is true.
- dave78 5y agoTo expand: It was discussed extensively in the Rittenhouse court case today that the prosecution provided the defense with a much lower quality of a particular video file (one that was also possibly cropped) than what the prosecution possessed. The prosecution contends this was an accident and the transcoding occurred when they AirDropped it from one phone to another and then emailed it from their personal Gmail account. Internet sleuths then spotted Handbrake on the prosecutor's laptop as he was preparing to show one of the videos. Those same sleuths are now speculating that the prosecutors deliberately transcoded/cropped the video that they provided to the defense, as Handbrake could possibly be used for that purpose.
- smcleod 5y agoBeen using Handbrake for years, fantastic easy to use software and absolutely flies on the new M1/M1 Pro chips.
- superkuh 5y agoHandbrake is incredibly useful to me since I use many older machines that don't have hardware (or even software) support of modern codecs. I basically treat handbrake like an "unzip" software to unzip the h265/av1/etc to a standard h264 with aac audio. The file sizes really aren't that much different.
- senectus1 5y agosame, I've used it extensively over the last 5 years or so.
- rednerrus 5y agoFor when you want to downsample a video to send to the defense team.
- kyleee 5y agoA very versatile tool indeed. Good to hear it's find a footing the legal field, and a testament to handbrake's incredible UI/UX that even completely non technical users have no problem with it
- steviedotboston 5y agoI remember using this to rip every DVD I received in the mail from Netflix, and then copying the file to my iPod Video so I could watch it on the bus ride to school. Man have times changed...
- seanw444 5y agoMy Dad did this all the time when he wasn't so busy with work.
- matthewpick 5y agoSame here the value proposition of curating a movie collection has changed a bit over the past 10+ years
- darkteflon 5y agoFunny you mention that! I started doing it again after a ~10 year hiatus. I decided I wanted to curate a collection for my kids. The issue with streaming services - especially outside of the US - is the recency and popularity bias.
- tomjen3 5y agoTo some point yes, but I ended up buying a boxed DVD set of Buffy when netflix removed the show. Dealing with DVDs are super annoying when you don't have a DVD drive in your computer, so it was back to 2005 for me.
- arbitrage 5y agoI did the same! Except for my now spouse's iPod Video. And it was for a train, not a bus. But wow has Handbrake delivered for me. A great piece of software.
- throwaway829379 5y agoNothing has changed here. I get Blurays in mail from Netflix, rip them via MakeMKV, re-encode with Handbrake and put them on Synology NAS for later convenient viewing via Vero4k. Disk space is cheap, skipping stupid menus and previews is priceless!
- orliesaurus 5y agoVague vibes of VLC! Great tools, both of them!
- Macha 5y agoI remember using a version that had ads embedded in the app in my teenage years, and so avoided it for years afterwards, but then I had reason to use it 3-4 years ago and there are none. I don't know if this was something in an official build at one stage, or if I ran into one of the cases of someone rebuilding an open source app with ads in that happened in the mid 2000s (the paint.net author dubbed this "backspaceware" when he cited it as a reason he would no longer release source code).
- gjs278 5y agohandbrake should just be a front end to ffmpeg. it used to be practically impossible to figure out which profiles would work for older android / iphone devices. thankfully now they both accept a lot more codecs and profiles.
- worldmerge 5y agoUsed to use Handbrake back in HighSchool. Blast from the past.
- cronix 5y agoFor context, today in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution (ADA Kraus) claimed that he was basically technically illiterate and basically didn't know about transcoding, not in as many words. A review of previous video testimony from PBS's live feed showed that he (Kraus) had Handbrake in the directory that he was showing the video from. That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. The backdrop is the defense alleges the prosecution gave the defense a lower resolution copy of the original video that showed about 4x fewer pixels, so they did not have the ability to examine it. The jury has already seen the video and is currently in deliberations. They have asked to view the video again. This whole trial, well, just seems riddled with big time issues. I tried to present this in a non biased way, but I don't think this is a good trial no matter what side you sit on, if any. It's been tainted in several places, even 5th amendment violations numerous times. At a minimum, I think it needs to be tossed out and retried with these evidentiary issues ironed out and with no last minute springing of evidence.
- lr4444lr 5y agoHe may have had a forensics person load it on his machine and tell him to just use that app and click play. But your basic point is correct: clearly someone at least halfway knowledgeable worked on that file.
- woodruffw 5y ago> That's not a normal application one would just have floating around. Without addressing the rest of the post: I've seen plenty of non-engineers use Handbrake. In fact, I've seen more than one lawyer use it. It occurs to me that it would actually be pretty common for lawyers to have it installed, particularly if they're reviewing and copying evidence that was delivered to them by DVD or other physical forms.
- schwartzworld 5y agoI used handbrake before I was an engineer. Now I use ffmpeg
- vlunkr 5y ago
- manpagereader 5y agoI keep this around in case I have to rig a trial that's not turning out how I want. It's pretty easy, most of the time anyway, to fool other lawyers with this.
- Meglis 5y agoIs this news somehow, been using handbrake since 2012!
- Supermancho 5y agoBecause https://twitter.com/lego_operator/status/1461077353476628488 https://twitter.com/lego_operator/status/1461077353476628488 which is relevant to a high profile trial contention.
- jhgb 5y agoThat would be a very poor standard for newsworthiness on this site.
- kyleee 5y agoThe reason for it being in the public consciousness today is immaterial really in terms of relevance for HN discussion purposes, and since it's an interesting piece of software it's quite on topic here
- jhgb 5y agoHow is software presumably well known to a large portion of the site's audience relevant news merely for reason of some people outside of this site's audience discovering it for the first time? And what's there to discuss about it since its features have been the same for many years?
- Supermancho 5y ago> How is software presumably well known to a large portion of the site's audience relevant news Large portion is not all. It's relevant because it's an element of a popular news story. There isn't some mystery agenda here as it was voted up by the community.
- courtwatcher 5y ago
- snvzz 5y agoChecked recently. Unfortunately there's still no AV1 encoding support.
- beezischillin 5y agoI always use handbrake to optimize video for embeds, whether it’s to remove audio, reduce size or simply resize, it works well. I’m so grateful to have discovered it years ago.
- dang 5y agoPast related threads: HandBrake 1.2.0 Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18949007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18949007 - Jan 2019 (58 comments) HandBrake 1.0.0 Released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13258029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13258029 - Dec 2016 (174 comments) Handbrake 0.10.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8650126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8650126 - Nov 2014 (56 comments)
- hdanirwin 5y agoI've been using this app for at least 5 years when I need to change the encoding of a file I download so it'll work on Plex. Works great.