May 20th, 2013GENERAL:
· 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
July 18th, 2012· Corrects a few crash bugs that showed up in 0.9.7
July 16th, 2012· Fixes a couple of common issues and adds a new preset for the AppleTV 3 and tweaks the existing iPad preset to support up to 720P.
February 29th, 2012Encoders:
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)
January 4th, 2011Core Library:
· BluRay disc structure support (No decryption support)
· Updated Libraries (x264, ffmpeg)
· SSA Subtitle support (Including burn-in)
· MP3 audio now supported in MP4 files (Note: Limited Player compatibility)
· VOBSUB subtitle now supported in MP4 files (Note: Limited Player compatibility)
· Updated Presets for newer devices and better quality
· AC3 encoding support
· Many Bug fixes and other small improvements
· Improved DVD Main Feature detection (when using dvdnav)
· Universal audio downmix support (all audio types can be downmixed)
All GUIs:
· Updated x264 Advanced Panel
· Video Quality Slider drops % value and only shows RF for x264
· Batch Scan (Scan Multiple files at once NB: Does not include multiple VIDEO_TS folders / Image files)
· Peak framerate option (Capped VFR)
· Many Bug fixes
· Many Tweaks to improve usability
· Ability to edit queue jobs
· Point-to-Point encoding (second or frame start and end times)
Mac GUI:
· New Audio Panel supporting >4 Audio Tracks
· VLC detection in /Applications and ~/Applications
Windows GUI:
· Encode Status in GUI (CLI window is now always hidden)
· Improved Auto-Naming for Destination file name
· Drag / Drop Video onto Main Window to scan
Linux GUI:
· Multiple instance support (run multiple copies of ghb at once)
· Many Bug fixes and UI improvements
November 25th, 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.
November 24th, 2008· Better PMT processing
· Basic underlying support for live previews (encode from a seek point for a set number of frames)
· Better searching for IDR frames in H.264 streams
· Preset changes (iPhone goes CRF, some old Apple presets resurrected as Legacy)
· Assorted bug fixes
February 20th, 2008· AC3 in MP4 support
· Multi-track audio support for Apple devices
· Better handling of audio discontinuities
· More flexible, "loose" anamorphic
· Variable frame rate encoding
· MP4 optimization for progressive downloads
· Dynamic range compression for encoding from AC3 audio
· Ability to encode an audio stream and pass it through at the same time
· iPhone-compatible anamorphic (pasp atom)
· Robust program and transport stream support
· Better handling of DVD read errors from invalid VOB units
· Detects and works around missing end of cell markers
· Recovers from loss of signal in a stream
· Drops subtitles less often
· Keeps chapter markers in better sync and prevents duplicates
· Better handling of B-Frames
· Tunes FIFO sizes by CPU count
· Finally squashes the bug that cut off the end of movies
· Preset changes
· Standardizes on standard out for progress and standard error for everything else.
· Correct channel counts when passing AC3 audio to Matroska
· Tag MP4 files as encoded with HandBrake
· No more merging short chapters
· Newer copies of x264,
· VBV 2-pass patch for x264
· Sets keyframes for x264 by frame rate.
· Support for >2GB MKV files in Linux
· Code audio languages in a way QuickTime understands
· Better subtitle positioning
· Fewer crashes in 2-pass encoding
· Leopard Only
· Sparkle
· Reads .eyetv files as well as .dvdmedia files
· Much better queue
· More white space
· Code restructuring
· Activity window logging, complete with a "black box recorder" for crashes
· Ability to open a single title for a DVD instead of scanning the whole thing
· Warns people when they try to queue up two files with the same name
· Maintains picture filter states between jobs
· .xib Interface Builder files SVN can track
· Switches to NSImageView for previews, so no more useless OpenGL effects
· Temporary loss of localizations for foreign languages (the old system was broken anyway)
· Separate filter settings for every queued job
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