HandBrake is a cross-platform, open source video transcoding tool. Need to convert a DVD or Blu-ray rip to an MP4 file with AAC, MP3, or FLAC for the audio track? No problem. Handbrake will let you do that on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

It’s a powerful tool that’s been around for years… but the developers have a penchant for small version numbers: this weekend HandBrake 0.10.0 was released. The new version adds support for several new encoders which should allow you to create smaller, higher quality videos.

handbrake 10

HandBrake 0.10.0 includes support for H.265 and VP8 formats thanks to the x265 and libvpx encoders.

These formats are designed to offer high video quality at smaller file sizes than the H.264 encoding that’s so popular these days.

HandBrake also now includes support for Intel QuickSync Video (QSV). This is a hardware-based H.264 encoder that allows you to transcode videos to H.264 more quickly by leveraging technology built into many of Intel’s more recent processors.

QuickSync only works with the Windows version of HandBrake for now, but there are plans to add Linux support eventually. While you might end up with larger and/or lower-quality videos using QuickSync than H.264, you should be able to convert large files much more quickly when using this option.

You can read more about HandBrake 0.10.0 in the release notes, or just head to the download page to grab the latest version.

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12 replies on “HandBrake 0.10 video transcoder adds H.265, VP8 and more”

  1. What’s HandBrake’s policy with deprecating support for older Ubuntu releases? I see that they don’t support Ubuntu 12.04 LTS anymore.

  2. I’m excited in the respect that it nearly gets 50% of the file size of an h264 file at the same quality, not excited by the 5x – 10x the processing time needed to encode/decode.

    Assuming all of my playback hardware is ready to playback h265, I’ll be more than happy to nearly half my NAS storage usage. Although I’m not certain if transcoding between is going to be an option as it may induce quality loss in the translation.

    It also concerns me on how susceptible is this new encoding to bitrot, as the encoding becomes smaller the significance of a single bit can become more and more important to image quality or even the playability of the file altogether. I don’t believe fault tolerance is something they had in mind with these codecs.

  3. Been looking for an H.265 transcoder, if only to see
    how it stacks up to H.264. I hope the hype is deserved.

    To play back the files, VLC Media Player for Windows,
    and its beta for Android, both claim to support H.265.

    1. VLC Media Player for Windows doesn’t play H.265
      files. Gave an error message and no video, just audio.
      I’m guessing VLC for Android beta doesn’t either.

      DVDFab Media Player, DivX Player are free software
      that claim to play back H.265 files.

      1. It may not have when you typed this, but it certainly works fine now.

  4. Used to use this tool years ago. But I haven’t needed to convert a video file since i’ve owned a WDTV Live box. Never ran into a video I can’t play 🙂

    1. I tend to use Handbrake to shrink the file size of 720p videos I shoot with my camera before uploading them to YouTube. It takes less time to convert the files before uploading than it does to upload the enormous original files.

      1. I’m going the other way, since my phone has 64GB internal storage and I have 50mbit up I’m tending to upload the 60mbit/s UHD video that comes out of the phone straight to youtube 😛 only irritating device is the shield tablet, it records to the measly 16GB internal storage only :/

        1. I guess bloggers who need to upload videos while at events would have slow mobile broadband. Also, I hear WiFi is often unusable during these events.

    2. I’m converting videos more often now than before due to the trend of decreasing internal storage and more limited external storage options of newer devices. Also, I do watch videos on my phone and other mobile devices outside my house.

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