HandBrake Changelog

What's new in HandBrake 1.7.3

Feb 11, 2024

General:
Fixed formatting leading zeros for timestamps in logs
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Video:
Fixed an issue that could potentially cause incorrect detection of source FPS value (#5677)
Subtitles:
Fixed tx3g to SSA subtitles conversion
Linux:
Fixed the "All Files" open file dialog filter to really show all files
Fixed an issue where adding a new default audio track automatically set the gain to -20 dB
macOS:
Fixed a regression introduced in HandBrake 1.7.2 by the workaround for VideoToolbox crashes on Sonoma
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Windows:
Improved security hardening of loading of DLL files within libhb by limiting search scope (#5724)
Improved keyboard navigation on Chapters tab (#5679)
Fixed an issue that could cause encodes to appear stalled when process isolation is turned on
Fixed an issue that could prevent QSV decode from being used when a system also has a non-Intel GPU
Fixed an issue where the drive label was not always correctly detected (#5711)
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

New in HandBrake 1.7.2 (Dec 24, 2023)

New in HandBrake 1.7.1 (Nov 25, 2023)

New in HandBrake 1.7.0 (Nov 16, 2023)

General:
Added Apple VideoToolbox hardware presets
Updated Creator presets
Disabled interlacing detection and removal; assume creators are working with progressive sources by default
Updated Social presets
Target higher quality and frame rate over shorter durations, without interlacing detection and removal
Better suited for modern social sharing of short live action clips and screen/game captures
Removed Email presets in favor of revised Social presets
Please stop sending videos via email or use the new Social presets
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Video:
Added AMD VCN AV1 encoder
Added NVIDIA NVENC AV1 encoder
Added support for SVT-AV1 multi-pass ABR mode
Added support for preserving ambient viewing enviroment metadata
Added QSV Rotate and Format filters
Improved performance on arm64 / aarch64 / Apple Silicon architectures
Latest FFmpeg provides faster HEVC decoding, 30% faster bwdif filter
New SVT-AV1 assembly optimizations provide up to 4x increase in performance
Improved video conversion speed by removing unneeded frame copies for better memory efficiency
Improved Dolby Vision dynamic range metadata pass through
Supported encoders: x265 10-bit
Supported profiles and cross-compatibility IDs: 8.4, 8.1, 7.6 (base layer only, converted to 8.1), 5.0
Improved HDR10+ dynamic range metadata pass through
Supported encoders: x265 10-bit, SVT-AV1
Improved QSV support on Linux (#4958)
Updated NVENC to not use multi-pass by default; user configurable advanced option
Renamed 2-pass encode option to multi-pass (#5019)
Fixed Intel QSV encoder outputting green video in some cases (#4842, #4876)
Fixed pixel format conversion slightly altering colors when using a 10-bit hardware encoder (#5011)
Fixed scan failures by using swscale instead of zscale when source resolution is not mod 2
Fixed incorrect PAR when reading from an anamorphic AV1 video track
Removed an artificial bitrate limit on VP9 CQ mode
Command line interface:
Renamed --two-pass to --multi-pass and --no-two-pass to --no-multi-pass, removed -2 (#5019)
Fixed automatic cropping enabled despite using preset with cropping disabled (#5055)
Audio:
Fixed low volume level when downmixing ac3 and eac3
Fixed left-only and right-only mono mixdowns (#3533, #5054)
Subtitles:
Fixed locale settings potentially causing incorrect decimal separator in SSA headers
Fixed a potential issue affecting zero-duration subtitles
Build system:
Added Meson build system for the Linux GUI
Third-party libraries:
New libraries:
libdovi 3.2.0 (Dolby Vision dynamic range metadata)
Updated libraries:
AMF 1.4.30 (AMD VCN video encoding)
FFmpeg 6.1 (decoding and filters)
FreeType 2.13.2 (subtitles)
Fribidi 1.0.13 (subtitles)
HarfBuzz 8.2.2 (subtitles)
libass 0.17.1 (subtitles)
libdav1d 1.3.0 (AV1 video decoding)
liblzma (xz) 5.4.5 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
libopus 1.4 (Opus audio encoding)
libjpeg-turbo 3.0.1 (preview image compression)
libvpx 1.13.1 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
libxml 2.11.5 (general)
oneVPL 2023.3.1 (Intel QSV video encoding/decoding)
SVT-AV1 1.7 (AV1 video encoding)
x264 164 r3107 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
x265 r12776 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
zimg 3.0.5 (color conversion)
zlib 1.3 (general)
Linux:
Added drag and drop support for video scanning
Added support for native file choosers via xdg-desktop-portal
Added Queue > Add All menu option
Added XML chapter import and export
Added bit depth and HDR information to video summary
Added option to pause encoding when switching to battery power or when power save mode is activated
Added automatic file naming options: {codec} {bit-depth} {width} {height} {modification-date} {modification-time}
Updated Queue, Activity, and Presets windows to no longer float on top of the main window
Updated existing translations
Removed obsolete update checker
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Mac:
Added support for drag and drop of multiple files at once
Added support for selecting multiple files at once in the Open Source dialog
Added support for recursive folder scanning in the Open Source dialog
Added support for VideoToolbox H.265/HEVC, H.264/AVC, ProRes, and VP9 hardware decoders on macOS 13 and later
Enable/disable in the Preferences > Advanced tab always or full path only
Using hardware decoders on modern devices may decrease CPU usage and thus speed up some filters and encoding
Added GPU accelerated Crop & Scale, Rotate, Pad, Yadif, Bwdif, Chroma Smooth, Unsharp, Lasharp, Grayscale filters
Added "Same as source" destination option that automatically sets the destination path to the source path
Improved SVT-AV1 encoding performance by up to 4x on Apple Silicon Macs
Improved automatic file naming Preferences UI and added new options: {width} {height} {quality_type} {encoder_bit_depth} {modification-time} {modification-date} {codec} {encoder} {encoder_bit_depth} {preset}
Improved handling of security scoped bookmarks
Fixed Chroma Smooth tune options
Fixed Deblock Filter custom string field
Fixed an issue that prevented the VideoToolbox "speed" preset from being used
Fixed the file size display on the queue statistics window when file size info is not available
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Added new translations
Korean (한국어)
Bulgarian (Български)
Updated existing translations
Windows:
Added support for drag and drop of multiple files at once
Added support for selecting multiple files at once in the Open Source dialog
Added support for recursive folder scanning in the Open Source dialog
Enable/disable in Preferences > Advanced
Added support for excluding file extensions when opening files in batch mode
Default exclusions are common image, subtitles, and text file extensions; edit list in Preferences > Advanced
Improved Preview window native video playback to support most containers and codecs
Modern codec support requires Microsoft Codec Packs from the Microsoft Store
Improved automatic file naming Preferences UI and added new options: {width} {height} {quality_type} {encoder_bit_depth} {modification-time} {modification-date} {encoder} {encoder_bit_depth} {preset}
Improved Queue window UI to optionally show additional status information on the left progress panel
Improved Presets panel
Manage Presets button replaced with a menu of discrete options for quicker access to functionality
Added an option to display the description for the selected preset
Added the ability to clone a preset (create a new preset based on an existing one)
Improved Add Selection window to make sorting feature more discoverable
Improved Process Isolation reliability
Fixed automatic file naming when using physical drive sources (#4859)
Fixed Title Specific Scan for physical drive sources (#4921)
Fixed an potential issue that could cause an unmodified preset to display as "modified" (#4909, #4908)
Fixed an potential issue where changes to queue order were not retained (#4922)
Fixed an Audio tab issue where using a non-fallback encoder could lead to duplicated tracks (#5012)
Fixed an issue where swapping graphics cards might cause hardware presets to be incorrectly shown as disabled
Fixed a potential crash on startup related to Windows Notifications Service failures (#5097)
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Added new translations
Czech (česky) (partially complete)
Greek (Ελληνικά) (partially complete)
Estonian (Eesti) (partially complete)
Basque (Euskara)
Finnish (Suomi) (partially complete)
Updated existing translations

New in HandBrake 1.6.1 (Jan 24, 2023)

New in HandBrake 1.6.0 (Dec 29, 2022)

All platforms:
General:
Added AV1 video encoding
Added high bit depth and color depth support to various encoders and filters
Added 4K AV1 General, QSV (Hardware), and MKV (Matroska) presets
Added 4K HEVC General presets and updated related presets to use similar encoder settings
Revised Web presets and renamed to Creator, Email, and Social
Removed VP8 presets
The VP8 video encoder is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release
Related, the Theora encoder is long deprecated and will be removed in a future release
Miscellaneous other preset revisions
Video:
Added SVT-AV1 (software) and Intel QSV AV1 (hardware) video encoders
Added VP9 10-bit encoder
Added NVENC HEVC 10-bit encoder
Added VCN HEVC 10-bit encoder
Added H.264 levels 6, 6.1, and 6.2 for the x264 encoder
Added H.264/H.265 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 profiles for the x264 and x265 encoders
Added H.265 4:2:2 profile for VideoToolbox encoder on Apple Silicon
Added support for Intel Deep Link Hyper Encode (leverage multiple QSV media engines to increase performance)
Fixed longstanding issue where slowest NVENC encoder preset caused encoding failures
Removed support for Intel CPUs older than 6th generation (Skylake) when using Intel Quick Sync Video
Filters:
Added Bwdif deinterlace filter
Improved Autocrop filter algorithm
Higher accuracy on mixed aspect ratio content, e.g. both letterbox and full frame pictures
Improved video scaling performance on Apple Silicon and ARM-based systems
Use zscale (zimg) by default, falling back to swscale where necessary
Improved multithread performance (slightly) for the following filters on high core count systems
Comb Detect
Decomb
Denoise
NLMeans
Updated the following filters to support higher than 8-bit content and 4:2:2/4:4:4 chroma subsampling
Detelecine
Comb Detect
Decomb
Grayscale
Denoise
NLMeans
HQDN3D
Chroma Smooth
Sharpen
UnSharp
LapSharp
Build system:
Added support for building for OpenBSD
Added --cpu configure parameter to enable building for native CPU architecture
Added --lto configure parameter to enable link time optimization
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Third-party libraries:
Updated libraries:
AMF 1.4.24 (AMD VCN encoding)
FFmpeg 5.1.2 (decoding and filters)
FreeType 2.12.1 (subtitles)
Fribidi 1.0.12 (subtitles)
HarfBuzz 4.4.1 (subtitles)
libass 0.16.0 (subtitles)
libbluray 1.3.4 (Blu-ray decoding)
libdav1d 1.0.0 (AV1 decoding)
libdvdread 6.1.3 (DVD decoding)
liblzma (xz) 5.2.6 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
libjpeg-turbo 2.1.4 (preview image compression)
libspeex 1.2.1 (Speex audio decoding)
libvpx 1.12.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
libxml 2.10.3 (general)
oneVPL 2023.1.0 (Intel QSV encoding/decoding)
x264 164 r3100 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
x265 r12747 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
zimg 3.0.4 (color conversion)
New libraries:
SVT-AV1 1.4.1 (AV1 encoding)
Linux:
Added many quality of life improvements contributed by community members
Improved parity with the Mac and Windows graphical interfaces
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Updated translations
Added new translations:
Bulgarian (Български)
Finnish (Suomi)
Georgian (ქართული)
Mac:
Added Quick Look support to the queue
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Updated translations
Added Japanese translation
Windows:
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Updated all translations
Added new translations:
Bulgarian (Български)
Dutch (Nederlands)
Polish (Polski)

New in HandBrake 1.5.1 (Jan 11, 2022)

New in HandBrake 1.5.0 (Jan 10, 2022)

Video:
Fixed an issue on older Intel CPUs causing the CLI to fail to initialize (#3924)
Updated video engine to preserve chroma sample location information
Updated Intel Quick Sync to use the Intel oneAPI Video Processing Library (oneVPL)
Audio:
Fixed MP2 audio sources not utilizing the fallback encoder when pass through is disabled (#3863)
Fixed FFmpeg AAC audio encoder quality mode scale range (#1295)
Subtitles:
Fixed an issue with captions pass through durations (#3764)
Build system:
Fixed multiple potential race conditions in Flatpak build process
Updated mac-toolchain-build script with newer tool versions
Third-party libraries:
Updated libraries:
FFmpeg 4.4.1 (decoding and filters)
FreeType 2.11.1 (subtitles)
Fribidi 1.0.11 (subtitles)
HarfBuzz 3.1.2 (subtitles)
Jansson 2.14 (JSON architecture)
libass 0.15.2 (subtitles)
libdav1d 0.9.2 (AV1 decoding)
libjpeg-turbo 2.1.2 (preview image compression)
libogg 1.3.5 (Xiph codecs support)
libvpx 1.11.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
zimg 3.0.3 (color conversion)
Mac:
Requires macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later
Fixed potential issues where encoding process could get stuck on efficiency cores in some cases
Fixed an issue with automatic naming not applying correctly
Fixed main window not being shown upon editing a job in the queue
Updated queue statistics tab to include average encoding speed and percent of original file size
Added "Move to top" and "Move to bottom" to the queue context menu
Added a stop breakpoint to the queue, set when stop after job is selected and may be reordered (#2572)
Added native support for the VideoToolbox API, enabling advanced features such as frame multi-pass, mastering display and content light metadata, and chroma location; the previous implementation via FFmpeg's libavcodec has been removed
Added Corsican (Corsu) translation
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Updated translations:
Simplified Chinese (简体中文)
French (Français)
German (Deutsch)
Italian (Italiano)
Portuguese (Português)

New in HandBrake 1.4.2 (Oct 4, 2021)

New in HandBrake 1.4.1 (Aug 17, 2021)

All platforms:
General:
Fixed a crash when using "Align AV" on Intel based systems. (#3683)
Fixed a crash when reading certain DVD's with missing VOB files
Hardware Encoding:
Fixed an issue with QuickSync accelerated Crop/Scale generating incorrect aspect ratios (#3236)
Fixed a crash after a subtitle scan when using the QuickSync encoder. (#3741)
Subtitles:
Backport some libass patches which should correct some issues with font and font-weight selections. (#3736)
Fixed an issue that could prevent 3rd party software handling HandBrake files with dvb subtitles.
Command line interface:
Fixed a regression that prevented upscaling when using -w and -h (#3746)
Linux:
Added: flatpak permission to show bookmarks in file dialogs (#3748)
Mac:
Fix an issue where the Quality Slider was being ignored when using the VideoToolbox encoder. (#3751)
Fixed an issue where incompatible hardware presets could be selected.
Windows:
Windows UI builds are now available for ARM64 devices. (Named arm64 or aarch64 in the download section)
Added upgrade notices to the installer welcome page advising of .NET Desktop Runtime 5 requirements and to complete existing queue. (#3693)
Added support for software rendering which can be enabled to workaround issues with Variable Refresh Rate and 3rd party software causing rendering corruption (#3755)
Added a new preference to define how the preset toolbar button renders the preset list. (#3697)
Fixed a crash which would prevent all user settings from loading in some circumstances.
Fixed "Reset Settings" button in preferences. Certain settings were not reset correctly. (#3726)
Fixed issues with the built-in updater that may cause it to fail to run the installer if the app was not running as admin.
Fixed an issue that required and app restart to apply changes to the max simultaneous encodes setting.
Fixed an issue with Audio Defaults fallback encoder quality/bitrate/mixdown settings would not display correct values (#3739)
Fixed an with QSV multi-instance support where multiple Intel GPU's are used.

New in HandBrake 1.4.0 (Jul 18, 2021)

All platforms:
General:
The HandBrake engine is now 10 and 12bit capable. Please note that not all filters support 10 and 12 bits. Using an 8bit filter will cause the pipeline to run at 8bit. Please see the documentation for more information.
HDR10 metadata will be passed through from the source file if present.
Static Previews that are generated during file scans are now stored in compressed jpeg format (previously stored as YUV420). Temporary disk space usage and disk writes are massively reduced. This uses libjpeg-turbo
Filters:
New Filter: Chroma Smooth
New Filter: Colourspace Selection.
New Filter: Support for QuickSync hardware accelerated Crop/Scale when using full path.
Hardware Encoding:
New Encoder: Media Foundation:
For Windows based ARM64 devices powered by Qualcomm Chipsets.
Updates to the AMD VCN encoder:
Quality tuning for VCN's constrained vbr rate control mode. Results are the same or better than cqp mode, and bit rate is much more predictable.
Included optimised H265 presets for 1080p and 4K content.
Updates to the Intel QuickSync encoder:
Minor performance improvement by skipping VFR and Crop/Scale filters when they are not required.
Overhauled memory management including improved zero-copy support where software filters are not used which should also improve performance.
Audio:
MP2 Audio Passthru support.
Subtitles:
New General purpose subtitle decoder
Added support for DVB Subtitles (Passthru and Burn-In)
Added support for EIA608 Closed Captions.
Replaced current decoders for PGS, SRT and SSA with those in ffmpeg. This should correct a number of rendering issues on Burn-In
Reduced default CC burn-in font-size.
Third-party libraries:
The following 3rd party libraries have changed:
ffmpeg 4.4
AMF 1.4.18 (AMD VCN encoding)
nv-codec-headers 11.0.10.1 (Nvidia NVENC encoding)
libmfx 1.34
freetype 2.10.4
fribidi 1.0.10
harfbuzz 2.8.1
jansson 2.13.1
libass 0.15.1
libbluray 1.3.0
libdvdnav 6.1.1
libdvdread 6.1.1
dav1d 0.9.0
libvorbis 1.3.7
libvpx 1.10.0
x264 161 r3043
x265 3.5
zimg and libjpeg-turbo are new dependencies.
General UI Updates (Applies to Windows, macOS and Linux):
The "Dimensions" tab has been redesigned:
The Rotate and Flip filter has been moved from the filters tab.
Added support for padding
Added support to control the resolution limit.
Added limited support for upscaling
Support for Apple Silicon (macOS only)
Support for running multiple simultaneous jobs.
Support eyetv packages with .ts enclosed media file
Improved Security Scoped Bookmarks management
Minor improvements and fixes for macOS 11
Updated Sparkle Updater library.
Updated translations (levels of completeness vary)
Improved UI navigation:
Added two menu items to quickly switch between titles
Improved undo/redo support
Drag & drop import/export support in the presets popover
Preference Updates:
Added a preference to control whether the current edited preset should be re-applied when changing title

New in HandBrake 1.3.3 (Jun 14, 2020)

New in HandBrake 1.3.2 (May 4, 2020)

New in HandBrake 1.3.1 (Jan 6, 2020)

New in HandBrake 1.3.0 (Jan 6, 2020)

All platforms:
General:
HandBrake is now translated into many more languages
Redesigned queue UI
Removed Windows Mobile presets
See the list of compatible replacements on GitHub
Improved log output by silencing many lines at standard log level
Improved quality of Gmail presets slightly
Added Playstation 2160p60 4K Surround preset (supports PS4 Pro)
Added Discord and Discord Nitro presets
Video:
Updated Intel Quick Sync Video to use Direct3D 11 API
Updated minimum title scan duration to only apply to disc-based sources like Blu-ray and DVD
Improved detection of MPEG-1 video in program streams
Improved interface to FFmpeg avfilter and color handling
Improved Nvidia NVENC constant quality encoding slightly by not setting qmin and qmax
Replaced pp7 Deblock filter with FFmpeg Deblock filter
Added support for reading Ultra HD Blu-ray discs (without copy protection)
Added support for reading AV1 via libdav1d
Added encoding to WebM container format
Added Chroma Smooth filter (CLI only)
Added zero-copy path for Intel QSV encoding removed in a previous release
Added support for Intel QSV low power encoding (lowpower=1)
Added support for AMD VCE encoding on Linux via Vulkan
Added ability to select x265 encoder level and Fast Decode tune
Audio:
Updated audio resampling code to use FFmpeg swresample instead of libsamplerate
Added source audio bit rate to tracks list
Added ability to select unknown language tracks
Added automatic track name pass through
Subtitles:
Added ability to import external SSA/ASS subtitles
Added ability to select unknown language tracks
Added automatic track name pass through
Command line interface:
Added additional unit aliases to --start-at and --stop-at, notably seconds and frames
Build system:
HandBrake now builds with libnuma on Linux
Fixed Python bytestrings causing newlines to be ignored in build output
Fixed Xcode ignoring make jobs parameter and utilizing all CPU cores (macOS only)
Updated configure to enable most hardware encoders by default where appropriate by platform
Updated all scripts for compatibility with Python 3
Updated mac-toolchain-build script with newer tool versions many improvements
Updated mingw-w64-build script with mingw-w64 6.0.0, GCC 9.2, and many improvements
Improved compatibility with GCC 9 and recent Clang releases
Improved compatibility with recent Xcode releases (macOS only)
Improved host/build semantics
Improved namespace isolation
Improved handling of all options passed to configure
Improved configure help output
Improved detection of missing executable dependencies during configure
Added support for building on NetBSD
Added --harden configure parameter to enable buffer overflow protections
Added --sandbox configure parameter to enable sandbox build target on macOS
Added --enable-gtk4 configure parameter to build with GTK 4 instead of GTK 3
Added summary of build options to configure output
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Third-party libraries:
Removed libraries:
libsamplerate (audio resampling)
Updated libraries:
AMF 1.4.9 (AMD VCE encoding)
bzip2 1.0.8 (general)
FDK AAC 2.0.1 (AAC audio encoding, must compile from source)
FFmpeg 4.2.1 (decoding and filters)
FreeType 2.10.1 (subtitles)
Fribidi 1.0.7 (subtitles)
HarfBuzz 2.6.4 (subtitles)
Jansson 2.12 (JSON architecture)
libbluray 1.1.2 (Blu-ray decoding)
libdav1d 0.5.1 (AV1 decoding)
libdvdnav 6.0.1 (DVD decoding)
libdvdread 6.0.2 (DVD decoding)
libiconv 1.16 (character encoding support)
libmfx (Intel QSV support)
libogg 1.3.4 (Xiph codecs support)
libopus 1.3.1 (Opus audio encoding)
libvorbis 1.3.6 (Vorbis audio encoding)
libvpx 1.8.1 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
libxml2 2.9.9 (general)
nv-codec-headers 9.0.18.1 (Nvidia NVENC encoding)
x265 3.2.1 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
Mac:
HandBrake now requires OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later
HandBrake is now sandboxed and uses the macOS hardened runtime
Updated priority for low-priority threads on macOS to avoid potential stalls in future macOS
Added preference to disable preview image on summary tab
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Updated translations:
German
Added translations:
French
Italian
Russian

New in HandBrake 1.2.2 (Feb 24, 2019)

New in HandBrake 1.2.1 (Feb 18, 2019)

New in HandBrake 1.2.0 (Dec 24, 2018)

All platforms:
General:
Switched core decoding library from Libav to FFmpeg
Fixes numerous sources previously unreadable or otherwise broken
Facilitates a number of the improvements and features in this release and planned for the future
Removed deprecated Legacy presets
See the list of compatible replacements on GitHub
Updated official presets to use stereo instead of DPL2 mixdown
Avoids potential spatial positioning issues with the current DPL2 algorithm and wide pans in source material
Limited in impact since DPL2 decoding has not been in widespread use for years
Updated official presets descriptions to revise compatibility and mention recently released devices
Updated official presets to rename Fire TV to Amazon Fire
Added Amazon Fire 720p30 and Chromecast 1080p60 presets
Added {creation-date} and {creation-time} to automatic file naming
Video:
Fixed an issue decoding Blu-ray titles where the aspect ratio is unknown (assume 16:9)
Fixed an issue encoding video with very short frame durations (less than 0.00285s or greater than 350 FPS)
Improved extradata handling to accommodate all codecs
Added support for decoding TIFF/LZMA video
Audio:
Fixed potential decoding issue for audio lacking an explicit channel layout (intelligently guess the layout)
Fixed a potential crash during audio probe
Improved resampling to allow dithering for all codecs (only where necessary)
Improved quality of the default AAC encoder on non-Mac platforms (FFmpeg AAC), no longer experimental
Improved bit rate constraints to allow Opus as low as 6 kbit/s per channel
Added support for up to 7.1 channel AAC encoding (note that FDK AAC/HE-AAC do not support 6.1)
Added support for E-AC3 audio in MP4 container
Added Speex audio decoder
Subtitles:
Fixed a potential crash where an SRT file cannot be opened
Added support for SRT files using periods instead of commas to delineate fractions
Command line interface:
Fixed inability to override preset subtitles burn setting (native and none are now valid values for --subtitle-burned)
Build system:
Fixed Linux packaging with an out-of-tree build directory
Fixed Windows graphical interface build script signing tool location
Removed --enable-local-* and associated contrib libraries; please see the documentation for dependencies help
Updated to mingw-w64-build 4.1.0 with gcc 7.3.0, continuous output (keep alive), and miscellaneous improvements
Improved support for building with Xcode 10
Improved support for building on FreeBSD 11, 12, and 13
Improved Flatpak packaging for Linux (numerous fixes and improvements, no longer experimental)
Improved configure.py to always use the Python executable found by configure
Added script for creating Flatpak manifests
Added support for selecting a compiler via the CC environment variable
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Third-party libraries:
Removed libraries:
Libav 12.3 (decoding and filters)
yasm 1.3.0
Updated libraries:
libopus 1.3 (Opus audio encoding)
x264 157 r2935 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
x265 2.9 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
New libraries:
FFmpeg 4.1 (decoding and filters)
liblzma (xz) 5.2.4 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
libspeex 1.2.0 (Speex audio decoding)
Mac:
HandBrake now requires OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later
Removed preferences option to show the advanced tab (deprecated and slated for removal)
Fixed minor display issues on macOS 10.14 Mojave
Fixed queue toolbar icon not updating
Removed Growl in favor of native system notifications
Updated Sparkle automatic update library
Improved handling of invalid presets
Improved layout to better support localization
Improved preview border alignment on high density displays
Improved automatic naming to avoid updating when unrelated settings change
Improved criteria for showing destination overwrite warnings
Improved stop encoding confirmation dialog
Improved notifications to no longer play sounds when alerts are disabled
Added initial localization support and German translation
Added initial support for VideoToolbox (hardware-accelerated) encoding
Added support for Dark Mode in macOS 10.14 Mojave (new Dark Mode toolbar icons require building with Xcode 10 on Mojave)
Added Touch Bar support to various windows and dialogs
Added Finder progress bar to files currently encoding
Added Show Source in Finder to queue contextual menu (renamed Show in Finder to Show Destination in Finder)
Added validation for custom filter parameters
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

New in HandBrake 1.1.2 (Sep 10, 2018)

New in HandBrake 1.1.1 (Jun 19, 2018)

New in HandBrake 1.1.0 (Apr 10, 2018)

GENERAL:
Improved AppleTV 4K support
Many bug fixes and improvements
Improved user interface:
Redesigned main window for consistency and usability; overall flow is top to bottom, left to right
Added new preset controls directly in main workflow
Added new summary tab for overview of settings at a glance
Updated interface icons to support high resolution displays
New and improved official presets:
Added new presets for Vimeo and YouTube
Added new 2160p/4K device presets for Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku
Added new Production presets for post-production video editing workflows
Added additional 2160p/4K Matroska presets
Improved Intel QuickSync Video support:
Added Linux support (experimental)
Added 10-bit H.265/HEVC encoding support for Kaby Lake and newer CPUs
Added support for multiple GPUs via D3D11 encode path
VIDEO:
Added new Unsharp and kernel-based Laplacian LapSharp sharpening filters
Added CSM prefilter option to NLMeans filter
Added support for mobile device orientation via auto-rotation container flag
x265 10- and 12-bit encoders are now included by default; additional dll files are no longer required
COMMAND LINE INTERFACE:
Added support for adaptive streaming (SPS and PPS before IDR frames) via the --inline-parameter-sets parameter
Added --json parameter to output scan/status information in JSON format, useful for scripting
Audio sample rate parameter --arate now accepts "auto" as a valid value
BUILD SYSTEM:
Added support for FreeBSD 11.1 (must compile from source)
Added support for compiling on Windows under MSYS (experimental, slow)
Updated to mingw-w64-build 3.1.1 with support for mingw-w64 5.0.3 and gcc 7.2.0
Update mac-toolchain-build to add NASM 2.13.2 (now required for x264)
Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
THIRD-PARTY LIBRARIES:
Updated libraries:
FDK AAC 0.1.5 (AAC audio encoding, must compile from source)
FreeType 2.8.1 (subtitles)
HarfBuzz 1.7.2 (subtitles)
Jansson 2.10 (JSON architecture)
LAME 3.100 (MP3 audio encoding)
Libav 12.3 (decoding and filters)
libass 0.14.0 (subtitles)
libbluray 1.0.2 (Blu-ray decoding)
libdvdnav 5.0.3 (DVD decoding)
libdvdread 5.0.3 (DVD decoding)
libiconv 1.15 (character encoding support)
libmfx (upstream API 1.23)
libogg 1.3.2 (Xiph codecs support)
libopus 1.2.1 (Opus audio encoding)
libsamplerate 0.1.9-35-g02ebb9f (audio resampling)
libtheora 1.1.1 (Theora video encoding)
libvorbis 1.3.5 (Vorbis audio encoding)
libvpx 1.6.1 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
libxml2 2.9.4 (general)
x264 155 r2893 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
x265 2.6 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
zlib 1.2.11 (general)
MAC:
Added option to configure low disk space warning level
Improved support for VoiceOver navigation
Many other bug fixes and improvements

New in HandBrake 1.0.7 (Apr 10, 2017)

New in HandBrake 1.0.3 (Feb 26, 2017)

New in HandBrake 1.0.2 (Jan 23, 2017)

New in HandBrake 1.0.1 (Dec 30, 2016)

New in HandBrake 1.0.0 (Dec 26, 2016)

General:
New online documentation at https://handbrake.fr/docs
Completely overhauled the official presets
New general use presets for broad compatibility
New device presets, now more up-to-date for common devices
New web presets
New Matroska (MKV) presets, including VP9 video with Opus audio
Official presets from HandBrake 0.10.x are still available under "Legacy"
New JSON-based preset system including command line support
New JSON-based API for interacting with libhb
Improvements to audio/video sync engine to better handle difficult sources
Many miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements (over 1700 code commits!)
Video:
VP9 video encoding via libvpx
Intel QuickSync Video H.265/HEVC encoder
Requires Intel Skylake or newer CPU
Ultra HD / 4K color pass through (support for BT.2020)
Additional standard frame rate selections in the graphical interfaces
New Auto anamorphic mode maximizes storage resolution, replaces Strict anamorphic mode
New Pad filter (command line only for now)
New Decomb/Deinterlace filter settings and improved defaults
Rotate filter now available in all graphical interfaces
New NLMeans filter tunes Tape and Sprite for analog tape recordings and vintage video games, respectively
Assembly optimizations NLMeans filter improve performance up to 10%
Assembly optimizations in x264 encoder improve performance for faster presets by 5-10%
x265 encoder quality improvements, especially when using tune grain
High bit depth encoding support via external shared libraries (video pipeline is still 8-bit 4:2:0)
x264 10-bit
x265 10-bit and 12-bit
Audio:
Opus audio encoding/decoding via libopus
Passthru now supports E-AC-3, FLAC, and TrueHD audio formats
Subtitles:
Improved subtitles rendering for some languages via HarfBuzz
Miscellaneous subtitles improvements
Command line interface
Presets can now be imported and exported from the command line and are compatible with the graphical interfaces
Queue exported from the graphical interfaces can now be imported by the command line interface (Linux and Windows only for now)
Build system:
Add scripts to manually build and install Mac and MinGW-w64 (compile for Windows on Linux) toolchains
Add support for multiple source URLs for third-party downloads
Add SHA256 hash verification for third-party downloads
Add configure parameter to disable or filter allowed third-party downloads (see configure --help)
Use HTTPS everywhere; the few cases where a third-party does not provide packages over https, handbrake.fr does
New targets on Mac to install and uninstall after building
Add flatpak packaging support (experimental)
Third-party libraries:
Updated libraries
FreeType 2.6.5 (subtitles)
Fontconfig 2.12.1 (subtitles)
FriBidi 0.19.7 (subtitles)
Libav 12 (encoding/decoding/muxing)
libass 0.13.2 (subtitles)
libbluray 0.9.3 (Blu-ray decoding)
libmfx v6.0.0 (Intel QuickSync Video encoding/decoding)
libvpx 1.5.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
x264 148 r2708 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
x265 2.1 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
New libraries:
HarfBuzz 1.3.0 (subtitles)
libopus 1.1.3 (Opus audio encoding)
Updated all tooltips
Added undo/redo support to the graphical interface
Improved drag and drop support
Added Open Recent to the File menu
Added Add Titles to Queue... to the File menu (batch queueing)
Preview prompts to open in an external application when the internal player does not support the format
Preview now displays volume and audio/subtitles language selection during playback
Picture and Filters settings are now part of the main window
Settings are preserved when selecting a new title (instead of reloading the last selected preset)
Improved support for importing/exporting comma-separated (.csv) chapter markers
Queue is now automatically paused when available disk space is low
When Done action can now be changed directly from the Queue window
When Done notification is now interactive (reveals the encoded file in Finder)
Activity Log window is now searchable (press "?"+"f" to activate)
XQuartz is no longer required for subtitle burn-in
Updated Sparkle software update library
Enabled DSA signature checking for improved security
Usability improvements
Miscellaneous bug fixes

New in HandBrake 0.10.5 (Feb 11, 2016)

New in HandBrake 0.10.4 (Feb 10, 2016)

New in HandBrake 0.10.3 (Jan 23, 2016)

New in HandBrake 7406 Nightly (Aug 21, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7404 Nightly (Aug 19, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7402 Nightly (Aug 18, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7401 Nightly (Aug 14, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7400 Nightly (Aug 13, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7399 Nightly (Aug 12, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7398 Nightly (Aug 11, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7396 Nightly (Aug 7, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7390 Nightly (Aug 6, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7389 Nightly (Aug 3, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7388 Nightly (Jul 31, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7385 Nightly (Jul 30, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7382 Nightly (Jul 29, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7378 Nightly (Jul 27, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7375 Nightly (Jul 25, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7371 Nightly (Jul 24, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7368 Nightly (Jul 23, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7352 Nightly (Jul 20, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7349 Nightly (Jul 11, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7347 Nightly (Jul 7, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7333 Nightly (Jun 30, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7331 Nightly (Jun 29, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7315 Nightly (Jun 25, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7313 Nightly (Jun 24, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7306 Nightly (Jun 22, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7302 Nightly (Jun 18, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7301 Nightly (Jun 17, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7295 Nightly (Jun 15, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7294 Nightly (Jun 12, 2015)

New in HandBrake 0.10.2 (Jun 10, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7277 Nightly (Jun 8, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7276 Nightly (Jun 5, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7273 Nightly (Jun 4, 2015)

New in HandBrake 0.10.2 Beta (Jun 1, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7252 Nightly (Jun 1, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7237 Nightly (May 29, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7231 Nightly (May 28, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7224 Nightly (May 26, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7220 Nightly (May 25, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7217 Nightly (May 22, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7214 Nightly (May 21, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7212 Nightly (May 20, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7209 Nightly (May 19, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7207 Nightly (May 18, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7164 Nightly (May 9, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7160 Nightly (May 7, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7157 Nightly (May 5, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7156 Nightly (May 4, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7141 Nightly (May 1, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7132 Nightly (Apr 29, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7131 Nightly (Apr 28, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7128 Nightly (Apr 27, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7124 Nightly (Apr 25, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7122 Nightly (Apr 24, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7111 Nightly (Apr 22, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7105 Nightly (Apr 20, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7088 Nightly (Apr 14, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7084 Nightly (Apr 11, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7075 Nightly (Apr 10, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7073 Nightly (Apr 8, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7063 Nightly (Apr 6, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7048 Nightly (Apr 4, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7042 Nightly (Apr 3, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7031 Nightly (Mar 31, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7029 Nightly (Mar 30, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7025 Nightly (Mar 28, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7023 Nightly (Mar 27, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7013 Nightly (Mar 26, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7010 Nightly (Mar 25, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7009 Nightly (Mar 24, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7008 Nightly (Mar 21, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7007 Nightly (Mar 20, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7004 Nightly (Mar 19, 2015)

New in HandBrake 7000 Nightly (Mar 18, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6995 Nightly (Mar 17, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6993 Nightly (Mar 16, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6984 Nightly (Mar 13, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6983 Nightly (Mar 12, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6982 Nightly (Mar 10, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6980 Nightly (Mar 9, 2015)

New in HandBrake 0.10.1 (Mar 9, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6971 Nightly (Mar 7, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6967 Nightly (Mar 6, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6963 Nightly (Mar 4, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6962 Nightly (Mar 3, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6960 Nightly (Mar 2, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6945 Nightly (Feb 27, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6944 Nightly (Feb 26, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6941 Nightly (Feb 25, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6939 Nightly (Feb 24, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6937 Nightly (Feb 23, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6933 Nightly (Feb 21, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6926 Nightly (Feb 19, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6920 Nightly (Feb 18, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6915 Nightly (Feb 17, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6910 Nightly (Feb 16, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6897 Nightly (Feb 13, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6896 Nightly (Feb 12, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6886 Nightly (Feb 9, 2015)

New in HandBrake 0.10.1 Beta (Feb 9, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6874 Nightly (Feb 7, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6873 Nightly (Feb 5, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6837 Nightly (Jan 31, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6826 Nightly (Jan 29, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6817 Nightly (Jan 27, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6798 Nightly (Jan 23, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6783 Nightly (Jan 22, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6775 Nightly (Jan 20, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6752 Nightly (Jan 15, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6747 Nightly (Jan 14, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6739 Nightly (Jan 13, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6695 Nightly (Jan 8, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6688 Nightly (Jan 6, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6685 Nightly (Jan 5, 2015)

New in HandBrake 6678 Nightly (Dec 31, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6675 Nightly (Dec 30, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6654 Nightly (Dec 27, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6651 Nightly (Dec 24, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6642 Nightly (Dec 23, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6614 Nightly (Dec 20, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6605 Nightly (Dec 18, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6604 Nightly (Dec 18, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6603 Nightly (Dec 18, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6602 Nightly (Dec 18, 2014)

New in HandBrake 6601 Nightly (Dec 16, 2014)

New in HandBrake 0.10.0 (Nov 24, 2014)

CORE:
Removed mcdeint deinterlace and decomb modes. This relied on the snow encoder in libav which has been was removed by upstream.
Bug fixes and Misc Improvements.
Choice of Scalers:
Lanczos: This is currently Handbrake's default scaler and will remain so.
Bicubic (OpenCL) (Experimental):
Currently only available in OpenCL form so requires a AMD or Intel GPU supporting OpenCL 1.1 or later. Nvidia GPU's are not currently supported.
When downscaling, up to 5% performance improvement can be achieved. No benefit when not downscaling.
Small loss in quality over the Lanczos scaler.
Denoise:
hqdn3d filter now accepts individual settings for both chroma channels (Cr, Cb)
New NlMeans denoiser. This is very slow, but results are significantly better than hqdn3d.
Presets:
Added Windows Phone 8 Preset
Updated Libraries:
x264 r2479-dd79a61
Libav v10.1
libbluray 0.5.0
Libavformat is now used for muxing instead of mp4v2 and libmkv:
"Large File Size" checkbox has now bee removed for mp4, as the new muxer will transition to 64bit files automatically.
mpeg2dec has also been replaced in favour of using libav
The LibAV AAC encoder is now the default as FAAC has been removed:
This encoder is adequate for most, but until it improves a bit further, we have enabled support for the FDK-AAC encoder also.
This FDK option is a temporary measure until the LibAV encoder improves.
Note that FDK-AAC is much slower and will likely bottleneck the encode process, but will produce better quality audio.
H.265 encoder:
Using x265 v1.4
This encoder is still early in it's development, so is missing many H.265 features and optimisations.
Added VP8 Encoder (using libvpx):
Available in MKV files only.
Mac:
Build system updates to compiled under OS X 10.9
Automatic audio and subtitle track selection behaviors which can be stored per preset.
Improvements to Auto-Naming feature.
Misc UI enhancements.
Bug fixes
Command Line Interface:
Basic support for return codes from the CLI. (0 = No Error, 1 = Cancelled, 2 = Invalid Input, 3 = Initialization error, 4 = Unknown Error")
Bug fixes and Misc Improvements

New in HandBrake 0.10.0 RC 1 (Oct 27, 2014)

New in HandBrake 0.9.9 (May 20, 2013)

GENERAL:
Improved HandBrake pineapple icon by Matt Johnson
Improved Retina-resolution icons within the application, by Nik Pawlak
CORE:
Double framerate ("bob") mode for the deinterlace and decomb filters
Assorted bug fixes and improvements to the core library (libhb)
Allow the selection of higher audio bitrates where appropriate
Audio dithering (TPDF) when converting to 16-bit FLAC
Blu-ray (PGS) subtitle support:
works with Foreign Audio Search
can be Burned-In
can be passed through to MKV (but not MP4)
Additional video framerates:
30, 50, 59.94, 60 fps
Better audio remix support:
additional mixdowns: 6.1, 7.1, 7.1 (5F/2R/LFE) CLI users should note 6ch becomes 5point1
better-than-Stereo sources can be upmixed to 5.1
discard one channel from Stereo sources: Mono (Left Only), Mono (Right Only)
Allow the selection of lower audio samplerates where appropriate:
8, 11.025, 12, 16 kHz
Use libavcodec for DTS audio decoding (instead of libdca):
DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete support
All graphical interfaces: support for x264's preset, tune and profile options:
alternative to the Advanced panel (which is still available)
HandBrake-specific option to ensure compliance with a specific H.264 level
Updated built-in presets:
take advantage of x264 preset/tune/profile support
removed increasingly suboptimal and irrelevant Legacy presets
Updated libraries:
x264 r2273-b3065e6
Libav v9.6
libbluray 0.2.3
MAC:
Assorted bug fixes: including better support for Retina displays
Prevent sleep during encoding and scanning for Mountain Lion
Drag & Drop files onto the Main window or application icon to scan
Nicer progress indication on the dock icon
Preview window improvements and bugfixes
Updated Growl to 2.0.1: Notification Center support (when Growl is not installed)
COMMAND LINE INTERFACE:
Audio option (-a) will ignore invalid input tracks and encode with only the valid ones
Allow use of hh:mm:ss format when specifying p-to-p start/stop time
Advanced audio options:
enable level normalization when downmixing (disabled by default)
disable audio dithering or select a specific algorithm

New in HandBrake 0.9.8 (Jul 18, 2012)

New in HandBrake 0.9.7 (Jul 16, 2012)

New in HandBrake 0.9.6 (Feb 29, 2012)

Encoders:
Video:
updated libx264 (revision 2146)
MPEG-2 encoder (from libavcodec)
advanced options support for libavcodec encoders format
Audio:
audio gain control (increase/decrease audio volume)
updated libogg (1.3.0) and libvorbis (aoTuV b6.03)
new AAC encoder (from libavcodec) (considered experimental) (supported mixdowns: Mono/Stereo/Dolby, 5.1 will come later) (should be on par with faac in terms of quality, sometimes better)
FLAC encoder (16-bit, MKV container only)
Mac OS X: HE-AAC encoding support, via Core Audio
quality-based variable bitrate encoding support works with: Lame MP3, Vorbis, Core Audio AAC only implemented in CLI and Linux GUI
AC3 encoder: set Dolby Surround flag in stream parameters when mixdown is Dolby Surround or Pro Logic II
Audio Passthru:
DTS Passthru to MP4 container (in addition to MKV) (supported by e.g. VLC, MPlayer)
DTS-HD Passthru (MP4, MKV containers)
MP3 Passthru (MP4, MKV containers)
AAC Passthru (MP4, MKV containers) (known issue: Magic Cookie not passed through from MPEG Program/Transport streams, which will break playback in e.g. QuickTime Player)
Auto Passthru: one encoder, multiple codecs lets you define allowed codecs (from supported passthru codecs) lets you pick a fallback encoder if passthru is not possible
Muxers:
start MKV clusters with a video keyframe whenever possible should improve seeking and DLNA streaming
bug fix: use ISO 639-2 bibliographic form for MKV language codes
bug fix: fix crash due to division by zero in MP4 muxer
bug fix: fix muxing of Closed Captions. Improper interleaving broke playback on some players
Decoders:
Video:
updated libav* libraries from Libav (http://libav.org/) (v0.7-1696-gcae4f4b, late October 2011) frame-based multithreading for H.264, VP8 10-bit decoding support for H.264, DNxHD Apple ProRes decoding support
improved average framerate detection
duplicate frame detection for improved frame drop decision (CFR/PFR)
new Same as source, Constant Framerate option for devices that don't support variable framerate automatically picks a constant framerate closest to the detected average framerate
bug fix: fix problem when resolution changes in the middle of a video stream
Audio:
Blu-ray: make TrueHD, DTS-HD and E-AC3 Secondary Audio streams available for decoding and/or passthrough
bug fix: libavcodec-decoded streams can now be decoded multiple times previously, multiple decodes of the same source tracks weren't possible and audio output tracks had to be dropped
bug fix: fix audio screech at beginning of some audio tracks when decoding AC3
bug fix: fix DTS decoder audio volume (was too low)
bug fix: garbled audio when decoding DTS-HD audio from MKV containers
bug fix: fix support for DTS-HD High Resolution Audio in MPEG Transport streams
Subtitles:
updated libass (0.10.0)
improved handling of subtitles with overlapping timestamps
improved handling of DVD subtitles without Stop Display commands
SSA subtitles are now passed through to MKV without conversion to SRT/UTF-8
bug fix: fix rendering problem with SSA subtitles when no font is embedded in the source video
Demuxers:
improved MPEG Program/Transport stream support support for MPEG-1 Program streams support for HD-DVD EVOB streams improved handling of Transport streams that have no PCR
WTV container support (via libavformat)
bug fix: files with more than 20 tracks (video, audio, subtitles etc.) are now supported
bug fix: some QuickTime MOV files were misdirected as MPEG Transport streams
bug fix: fix detection of TrueType font attachments that don't have the correct MIME type
Filters:
new, much improved decomb filter (but slower) new settings are default old settings become decomb "Fast"
Presets:
improved "Normal" preset (much faster, similar file size and quality)
removed obsolete legacy presets
added new device presets for Android phones/tablets recent and/or powerful devices recommended
Mac OS X:
DVD decryption:
VLC 2.x or later will not work for DVD decryption and is therefore unsupported as of HandBrake 0.9.6
libdvdcss is now the preferred method for DVD decryption already works with HandBrake 0.9.5 a .pkg installer is available from Videolan: http://download.videolan.org/libdvdcss/last/macosx/
Build system:
support for Xcode 4 and Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion"
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" no longer supported
Mac OS X GUI:
OS X 10.7 Lion support:
bug fix: Live Preview window widgets updated to work under Lion
bug fix: fixed positioning of widgets in the Audio panel under Lion
Other:
wider main window providing more room for various widgets
Windows GUI:
Preview window:
complete redesign
support for VLC or the system default video player
dropped built-in QuickTime playback support
Other:
much improved control over the default audio and subtitle tracks selected (see Options)
ability to set the minimal title length that will show up during a scan (see Options)
several other usability improvements
installer now has a silent option for easier network installs (launch the installer with /S)
Linux GUI:
Audio panel:
new advanced audio options section for gain and audio track names
dynamic range compression and samplerate moved to advanced audio options
Other:
minor UI tweaks and usability enhancements
Miscellaneous:
Target Size is gone, and isn't coming back Don't bother complaining on the forums
CLI: support for x264 presets, tunes and profiles new --x264-preset, --x264-tune and --x264-profile options
DVD: fix issues with some discs (e.g. True Grit, Thor, Transformers 3)
DVD: improved main feature detection
updated libbluray (0.0.1-pre-213-ga869da8, late May 2011)

New in HandBrake 0.9.5 (Jan 4, 2011)

New in HandBrake 0.9.4 (Nov 25, 2009)

New build system - HandBrake has a new, much improved compilation system, which allows easy 64-bit and parallel builds, as well as providing easy extendability for future improvements to the application. 64-bit builds tend to perform approximately 10% better than their 32-bit brethren. There is no Snow Leopard magic here: the performance gains can also be realized on Intel Macs running 10.5, as well as Linux systems.
Soft subtitles - HandBrake can now include subtitle tracks that can be turned on and off, instead of rendering them onto the video track permanently (which also reduces video compression). This means you can include Closed Captioning data from DVDs and TV broadcasts, or find SRT text subtitle files on the 'net and include them. When using the Matroska container, you can also store the graphical subtitle images (VobSubs) from a DVD as a separate track. An added benefit is that multiple subtitle tracks can be included in the same output video.
Live preview - Ever wished you could test HandBrake settings before spending hours on a full encode? Now, you can.
The picture settings and preview sheet has been broken out into a filters and picture settings inspector, and a preview window. The preview window can show you still frames from your source, like always. But it also lets you start to encode a short clip from the current preview with the currently selected settings, and view the results right there inside of HandBrake.
Better input support, for DVD and non-DVD sources alike - HandBrake now uses a better DVD reading library called libdvdnav. This means it can now read some DVDs it had trouble with before, and it can also select different angles on a DVD. As well, some bugs in underlying libraries have been patched.
For non-DVD sources, HandBrake now offers improved transport stream support, especially for high definition sources. A number of decoding bugs have been resolved as well, so Windows users will no longer need fear AAC audio, nor Mac users fear VC-1 video.
Constant quality encoding - No more looking for the perfect bitrate for a source--HandBrake is migrating to quality-based encoding. This means that instead of telling encoders to use a specific size and vary quality to meet it, we tell the encoder to vary size to meet a given quality level. Overall quality improves, since bits are spent only when they are needed, and are saved when they are not. While this means output size is somewhat unpredictable, the results in picture quality speak for themselves.
As part of this change, the quality slider has been made more prominent, and now works off the quality values used by the video encoders, instead of a confusing, custom, percentage scale.
Another result is that 2-pass encoding is not needed. A single pass at a constant quality provides just as much compression efficiency as two passes at an average bitrate.
Presets - There are no more presets for the PSP, PS3, or Xbox 360. Quite frankly, they didn't work well. None of the development team members own the devices, so testing was minimal and support was nonexistent. Keeping up with the firmware vagaries and ambiguous specifications of these devices was not fun--we get enough of that from Apple's kit, and those we all have around to test on. The new "Normal" preset should work perfectly fine on any device that supports standard Main Profile H.264 with AAC-LC audio in an MP4 file, which the PS3 and 360 ostensibly do.
There are no more Film, Animation, or Television presets. Instead of a confusing series of content-targeted presets, there is now a single, constant quality, High Profile preset with automated filtering and all the H.264 bells and whistles. This preset should work on the PS3 and 360 too, although we make no promises.
It is now possible to import individual presets in all the graphical interfaces, and to export them as well, in the Mac and Linux GUIs.
Focus on what we do best - As we've had on our roadmap for quite awhile now, one of our goals for version 0.9.4 was to refocus on HandBrake's key strengths and to remove dead weight. As part of this process, several containers and a codec have been removed from HandBrake.
AVI: AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display. Furthermore, HandBrake's AVI muxer is vanilla AVI 1.0 that doesn't even support large files. The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance.
OGG/OGM: HandBrake's OGM muxer is just as out of date. It hasn't been actively maintained in years either, and it too lacks support for HandBrake's best features. It requires conditionals to work around missing functionality too...only this one gets tested so infrequently the conditionals were never even put in the code, so it just fails when you try to do anything advanced. This one is not coming back either. And yes, we're aware of HTML 5. For patent-free muxing, HandBrake still has Matroska, which is a much better container anyway.
XviD: HandBrake, these days, is almost entirely about H.264 video, aka MPEG-4 Part 10. This makes it rather...superfluous to include two different encoders for an older codec, MPEG-4 Part 2. When choosing between FFmpeg's and XviD's, it came down to a matter of necessity. We need to include libavcodec (FFmpeg) for a bunch of other parts of its API, like decoding. Meanwhile, XviD's build system causes grief (it's the most common support query we get about compiling, after x264's requirement of yasm). Since we mainly use MPEG-4 Part 2 for testing/debugging, and recommend only H.264 for high quality encodes, Xvid's undisputed quality edge over FFmpeg's encoder is inconsequential, while FFmpeg's speed edge over XviD is important to us.
Audio-video synchronization has been further improved.
HandBrake can now pass-through DTS audio from a source when encoding to the Matroska container, just like it has previously for AC3 audio.
Mac users can now encode AAC audio using OS X's Core Audio, rather than using the open source libfaac. Core Audio offers far superior audio quality.
A new custom anamorphic mode allows precise control of all parameters, for power users.
Decomb now offers an optional, slower, better quality deinterlacing method called EEDI2.
Library updates for (besides x264) FFmpeg, libtheora (1.1), libmp4v2, libfaac/faad, libvorbis, and libmkv.

New in HandBrake 0.9.3 (Nov 24, 2008)

New in HandBrake 0.9.2 (Feb 20, 2008)