Handbrake 0.9.4: Your best deal on Black Friday

Desperate for a deal after sleeping right through Wal-Mart's early-morning Black Friday frenzy? You're in luck. The best deal this holiday season may be just a download away.

(Credit: Handbrake)

That's right: Handbrake, arguably the world's best video transcoder, just hit version 0.9.4.

And boy, is it beautiful.

Handbrake has long been my go-to choice for ripping DVDs to my hard drive (saves battery life when watching videos while traveling and ensures my kids won't ruin the DVDs), but this particular version exceeds my expectations. Why? Because it delivers over 1,000 new enhancements while delivering better picture quality at a smaller file size and faster.

Or as the Handbrake developers say:

There's an old proverb in the video encoding world: "Speed, size, quality: pick two." It means that you always have to make a trade-off between the time it takes to encode a video, the amount of compression used, and the picture quality. Well, this release of HandBrake refuses to compromise. It picks all three.

This isn't hype. In my own use of the software during the past week, performance is noticeably faster, and picture quality is awesome.

Importantly, while the Handbrake developers have been hard at work over the past year to update the venerable video transcoder, the team owes a lot to developers from the x264 project:

A large portion of these speed, size, and quality improvements come to us for free, from the x264 project. The past year, like every year, has seen some massive improvements for that video encoding engine. As always, it has been further hand-optimized for better performance. But it has also gained new features like macroblock tree rate control and weighted P-Frame prediction.

This is how open-source development works: Handbrake focuses on what it does best (User interface, features like live preview, etc.) while leveraging the best of other project's strengths.

It's a recipe for a supereasy and very powerful transcoding experience. And at a 100 percent discount now through forever (Handbrake is open source and costs nothing to download), now is a good time to download it and let 'er rip, whether you run Mac (Intel 32-bit and 64-bit, plus PowerPC), Linux, or Windows.

[GadgetDon]

Love Handbrake, have ripped most of the DVDs in my collection (including a number of TV show collections, a separate file for each show). But, for those new to it - Handbrake can convert an unprotected DVD into a x.264 file, but since DVDs are protected, you need something that breaks that protect. I do my ripping on a PC, with AnyDVD from Slysoft.com (which is NOT free) to break the protection, and then Handbrake to copy. There are free alternatives, but none IMHO as easy or as up-to-date.

[Marcus Westrup]

It's too bad this new version no longer supports avi (or Xvid) - I understand why, but avi has a lot of support in small devices and home media players, where x264 is very rare.

[AndersLund]

I have to try it out. I had lots of problems with DVDs not being in av/audio-sync after conversion. They say sync has been improved, so I am hopeful. :-)

[rfelgueiras]

where are the presets for the PS3? I had to go hunting for the preview pain too... keeping the button on the lower right would have made more sense.

[David Turner]

They got rid of the PS3 &#38; Xbox 360 presents in this release. The developers made note of this in the release file. Apparently no one on the dev team has a ps3 or xbox 360 so they weren't able to test if the present even worked.<br />I believe the normal present should work fine for the PS3

[MyRightEye]

Still does not detect a whole bunch of my DVDs correctly. Only see one title on the disc, not the 9 that are there.

[tektaktyks]

fail

[shetaan819]

wheww....been waiting for this version for a while, can't wait to see the Blu-ray rips on AppleTV

[shetaan819]

wheww....been waiting for this version for a while, can't wait to see the Blu-ray rips on AppleTV

[ballmerisanape]

Handbrake + Mac the Ripper is a great combo!

[Ebraheem]

"Handbrake has long been my go-to choice for ripping DVDs to my hard drive".<br />I really don't understand. Isn't that why Hollywood companies sued Real Networks for? What's the difference between Handbrake and RealDVD? I'm probably missing something.<br /><br />Other than that, that's one great program! It's a shame I've never heard about it before.<br />That being said, the *worst* thing about open source software is how bad their advertising is, they mainly rely on the word of mouth. It's not completely their fault, but it's one point they should try to improve.

[sandor_f]

if no one is buying the software, how do you propose they **pay** for this advertising?

[gerrrg]

I don't want to break down my ISOs to the VOB/TS files...does handbrake work with ISO files directly, and convert them to H.264? Anyone?

[Remo_Williams]

mount the ISO as a virtual drive, then convert from there. yer welcome.<br />[CNET editor's note: Personal attack deleted.]

[aaanandhismini]

on a Mac, at least, if you have VLC in your apps folder, Handbrake will rip DVD's as well.

[klor5]

IMOHO Steal 'till your bum malfunctions! Or just do the done thing.Same,same! Only IMOHO?,did I mention this expression is simply and humbly an expression of my own contextual humble opinion? IMOHO?