HandBrake 1.0.0 Released After 13 Years Of Development (fossbytes.com)

HandBrake, popular open source video transcoder, has finally hit version 1.0.0 affter spending roughly more than 13 years in development. HandBrake 1.0.0 brings tons of new presets and support for more devices and file types. From a report: HandBrake 1.0.0 comes with new web and MKV presets. The official presets from HandBrake 0.10.x can be found under 'Legacy.' New Jason-based preset system, including command line support, has been added. The additional features of HandBrake are title/chapter selection, queuing up multiple encodes, chapter markers, subtitles, different video filters, and video preview. Just in case you have a compatible Skylake or later CPU, Intel QuickSync Video H.265/HEVC encoder support brings performance improvements. HandBrake 1.0.0 also brings along new online documentation beta. It's written in a simple and easy-to-understand language.You can download it here.

Comments

HOLY SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply can't believe this. Awesome news. Have used HandBrake for over a decade now. Though I wish they added more customizable features as MeGUI.

Re:HOLY SHIT

[fizzer06]

Handbrake 0.10.2 (x86_64) works great. I'll keep using it until the updated version hits the Linux Mint repository.

Re:HOLY SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Handbrake 0.10.2 (x86_64) works great. I'll keep using it until the updated version hits the Linux Mint repository.

You might want to keep using that. That need to roll mine back. Handbrake 1.0.0 has several annoyances in my opinion it's useless in my opinion, especially if you are trying to transcode many videos at once. Don't want all your videos in 1080, instead rather them be in 720, why don't the boxes automatically calculate when you change the width or height like before? Why do I need to calculate what size I want my video to be now? I'll be downgrading personally. This was change for the sake of change.

Re:HOLY SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they have "youtube" presets now? I find it mildly annoying that youtube keeps grumbling about my handbrake encodes (sync issues etc), but from various google searches nobody seems to know how to get handbrake to encode stuff in a way that youtube likes.

Handbrake has Windows Phone presets so why not youtube?

Beta versioning

[Dutch Gun]

Is there some obscure point of pride for remaining in "beta" versioning for that long? What's the point of that? It's been quite functional and stable for many years now. Understating your version number is no better than Chrome and Firefox's ridiculous version number race, IMO. Not a huge deal, of course. I just wonder why this is a thing.

Love Handbrake, but don't use it as often these days as I'm no longer buying and ripping my own DVDs or BluRays to my media server. Streaming is just too convenient.

Re: Beta versioning

[bn-7bc]

Well no there is no point in staying with a beta that long, unless of course it takes thet long to reach the oals you set for beeing feature complete, which iirc is the point of releasing v 1.0

Re:Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, the numbers shouldn't be arbitrary because the numbers are arbitrary.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something ironic about the fact that it got out of beta long after the media it originally supported went extinct - it's a little late. For the rest of us we weren't really looking at the fact that it's V0.9 as being remotely significant and we've been using it anyway. Alpha, Beta, Early Access, these terms are all pretty useless now. V1.0 used to mean it's out of beta, QAed and ready for release as a working product. We see game titles that need patches on day 0. These labels don't work anymore.

A version number is a monotonically increasing number. The only thing significant is that it goes up and only up. There's nothing significant about V1.0.

We should just use Linux epoch time for version numbers.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

same here my build i have now doesnt even have a dvd/cd and i do not have nor am i going to get an external. gaming is downloaded tv streamed(media computer) things have changed and have long ago tranfered my collection to digital.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

I use ISO 8601 dates for my versions. It tells you how long ago it was updated.

Re:Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not pride, it's a scapegoat for shitty programming and missing features.

handbrake falls under both categories - frequent crashes and glitches, and lack of file format support and other convenience features. neither of those is resolved (nor will ever be, due to MWOTHW development model).. expect 'beta quality' features and stability post-1.0.

Re:Beta versioning

[thegarbz]

but don't use it as often these days as I'm no longer buying and ripping my own DVDs or BluRays to my media server.

I use it more now than an ever. The switch to H.265 can save a lot of disk space so I use it to transcode some old under compressed stuff.

Then there's Skype for business. In MS's infinite wisdom the current version of Skype saves HUGE files even at the lowest quality when recording meetings, and yet the defaults for Sharepoint limit files to 50MB (the company I work for is too big to get something like this changed). None the less you can easily get a 1 hour meeting with powerpoint down to below 50MB in H.264 with the right massaging in Handbrake.

Re: Beta versioning

[TheRaven64]

There's something ironic about the fact that it got out of beta long after the media it originally supported went extinct

I'm still buying (and renting) DVDs. There's still no good replacement that works well across different platforms and isn't laden with DRM (DVDs technically have DRM, but it's so thoroughly broken that it may as well not exist).

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a pirate you can put 100s of movies that work well on nearly any given platform on a single thumb drive.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

*a pirate with low expectations and/or a high tolerance for low fidelity*

Re: Beta versioning

[jedidiah]

Well, they may or may not work well on a Mac. if the files in question aren't being tailored for the specific limitations of Apple's tools, a rube Mac user may have some difficulty. The same goes for Apple appliances (for the same reason).

The need to fall back on VLC was one of the thing that seemed funny to me when I dabbled in Macs.

Re: Beta versioning

[jedidiah]

Not everyone has the need or desire to be a thief. I will happily pay for my copy of a DVD of a movie released to theatres in 2016.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no. DVDs aren't very high quality to begin with and have lousy compression. I could encode a film on DVD into a 600MB file with h.264 video stream and 5 channel AAC audio stream and you would not be able to tell the difference. I could make the file even smaller if I used h.265 and Opus.

That would be about 200 DVD quality films that would fit on a single 128GB flash drive.

Re:Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

From the sound of it, Skype saves and streams ton of key frames. Makes sense because if your prediction gets off, you get weird artifacts from the compounding errors. When reencoding, there can be a lot of benefit from good predictions, especially if the background is static.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. Not everyone has the need or desire to support slimy corporations that perform blatantly anti consumer behaviour.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

There are over 35,000 deaths caused by motor vehicle collisions each year, a large number of them of them due to speed.

So , by your rational, if you are caught speeding (and therefore risking other people lives!!!), its OK to break your house and steal stuff.Or if you say piracy is not theft because no one has lost they copy, then how about we paint graffiti on everything you own. Nothing is taken, and some graffiti (Banksie) is valuable, so you have lost nothing.

No one forced you to go to the movies, buy DVDs, etc etc. Thats all choice. If you feel the business practices are unethical, then don't buy their products, that however does not then give you the right to pirate them.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

We should just use Linux epoch time for version numbers.

I actually quite like FILETIME for pretty much all timestamps when collecting data. 64 bit, 10M ticks/sec. It handles almost anything. I'm not sure why they started it referencing 1601 though. Then again with 64 bit, it might just be because they could. Still, linux epoch time is probably a tad more compact. Personally I'd rather date stamp things like 7/7/2016 and then if you absolutely need to differentiate the same day add a .1 or something.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are caught speeding, the taxman comes and takes his due.

So yes even though they do not technically steal what you own, they take your money which in the long run is the equivalent of breaking into your house and taking something of equal value as you where taxed (fined).

Also not sure where you where going with the whole graffiti anology, it makes no sense. However the difference is you will be physically modifying an object owned by a person, and in most scenarios it will lose value due to it. If you pirate, you are not defacing anything. The value of the movie is not reduced, modified or destroyed. In fact generally speaking, people who where willing to pay for product will do so if they have the means. Those that do not and those who do not think the asking price is worth it would have never paid in the first place. So nothing is lost and in fact it often times ends up generating more value in the long run because some people end up enjoying the work of the actor/director/ip and end up paying later for some of their other work.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like posting a one sentence comment with 3 typos.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

A version number is a monotonically increasing number. The only thing significant is that it goes up and only up.

Just like in Windows 98 and Windows 10.

Re: Beta versioning

[rtb61]

Why the fuck would it be stealing to copy your DVD collections to your hard disk drive, so you do not have to get up and down each time you swap content. Seriously talk about up tight freakazoid. So let me guess you believe if you want to watch it in the lounge room you buy one copy, if you want to watch it in the bedroom you buy another copy, own a media centre as well as a DVD player buy and download another copy, more that one person in the lounge buy a copy per person and oh yeah, if the copies die immediately after their non-warranty what like 30 days buy more copies and if you move to another country, buy more copies in that country, oh and just for fun, when hardware changes and you copies are no longer compatible buy them again. Never to forget you must also foolishly and idiotically worship the lame arse liars who appear in that content.

Re:Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

While HandBrake has released beta and release candidate versions in the past, it was never "in beta". The project switched to semver in version 0.10.0, and 0.10.1-0.10.5 were patch releases for bug fixes. 1.0.0 continues with semver, denoting a major release that is backwards-incompatible in some places.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

If years ago, I had bought a VHS tape of a movie and recently downloaded the same movie from a pirate site, would that be okay?

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

You are conveniently forgetting about DVD Upscalers that do an amazing job these days. They look better now than they did back in the CRT days.

Re: Beta versioning

[thegarbz]

There's something ironic about the fact that it got out of beta long after the media it originally supported went extinct - it's a little late.

H.265 is extinct? wait... What year is it? Did I miss something? Why is it late that a transcoder supporting a very current codec gets released?

Re: Beta versioning

[sakusha]

There's something ironic about the fact that it got out of beta long after the media it originally supported went extinct - it's a little late.

Be fair, it does a good job of transcoding. I tried using the previous version of Handbrake to transcode some video files that wouldn't play on my iPhone, it was good enough. But I use a Mac and the feature to add a batch of files all at once is missing from that version, so it was a bit inconvenient to set up a big encoding run one file at a time. Maybe they added it to this release. But ultimately since I'm on a Mac and I have Final Cut Pro, it's faster for me to use Compressor.app.

Re: Beta versioning

[Gr8Apes]

You either need some caffeine or a calming agent. He stated he'd be happy to pay for "my copy" of a movie. Nothing more, nothing less. I pay for copies as well, and then format shift them to whatever I need or desire. While I do believe piracy costs companies some money, I doubt it's even within a couple of orders of magnitude of what they claim. They'd be better off just providing a better experience for consumers instead of throwing away money on essentially useless DRM.

Re: Beta versioning

[Gr8Apes]

Disclaimer: I use Macs and Linux. "Fall back on VLC" seems an odd thing to say when windows required you to download every codec separately (do they still do that?) or... VLC (or a similar app). The only thing I have an issue playing are a couple of relatively unused and mostly defunct windows specific formats.

Re: Beta versioning

[Gr8Apes]

I believe that's been possible via the CLI for a long long time, like a decade. However, I don't run batches, because for whatever reason you can't select a configuration to pick the HD audio as a passthrough with a multiple language selection and subtitles in a preferred order automatically, only dropping those that don't exist. I convert everything to MPEG4 incurring an unnoticeable image degradation saving between 50 and 80% of the original source. I'll admit it is surprising when that 30GB source drops down to a little over 3GB, but side by side comparisons really don't reveal any noticeable differences, so I run with it. I still have the originals should it ever turn out I made a bad conversion choice.

I've never tried running it through FCP's Compressor.app. I've been meaning to try it out just for comparison. What's a sample conversion time?

Re: Beta versioning

[syntotic]

Hey! That sound so New York City... Do not speed, just stay in a restroom one extra minute and it is OK to break your house and steal stuff.

Re: Beta versioning

[syntotic]

Ah! We have TWO Microsofts... IT explains things.

Re: Beta versioning

[sakusha]

It would be difficult to judge by my encoding times, I'm using an antique Mac mini 2011 model with a 2.7Ghz i7. I have an SSD but encoding is CPU intensive so the CPU is the bottleneck. I haven't done any direct comparisons at similar encoding rates, the Compressor settings are so dissimilar that I'm not sure how I'd even compare them to Handbrake. But overall Compressor seems more flexible and faster. Apple pro apps tend to use multithreading very efficiently so they're fast on multicore computers like mine (i7 with 2 real cores, 4 virtual cores).

Re: Beta versioning

[Gr8Apes]

I'm running on multiple machines, including a quad core i7 mini and a 6-core 980x. Handbrake will encode a regular DVD between 150-212 fps depending upon source camera panning (more panning large change per frame shots drops me down to 150 fps or even lower in some circumstances) and BDs are between 25 and 50 fps. I've only done HD camera material via FCP before various upgrades to this machine and ran roughly an average 40 fps encoding rate from multiple sources to final BD master, for mostly framed non-panning content, which doesn't supply enough data points for me to state if it is faster or not. I do know handbrake can peg the hardware around 1100% (6 hyper threaded cores running at near 100%) FCP seemed to run at a similar rate, so it's merely a question of better algorithms and thread/process handling.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they may or may not work well on a Mac. if the files in question aren't being tailored for the specific limitations of Apple's tools, a rube Mac user may have some difficulty. The same goes for Apple appliances (for the same reason).

The need to fall back on VLC was one of the thing that seemed funny to me when I dabbled in Macs.

Mmm, yes, because Linux and Windows both automatically comes with every codec built-in. :rolleyes:

Re: Beta versioning

[sakusha]

Well that's another problem right there. My mini doesn't have a DVD drive, if I want to rip a DVD I have to use Remote Drive and link to my old G4 Windtunnel machine, the last machine I owned with an internal DVD drive. So I usually just copy the VOB to my local Mini and transcode it there. I don't know if that is any faster or slower, I have nothing to compare it to, I haven't ripped a DVD in years probably. In transcoding, Handbrake will peg the CPU but I don't recall exact fps, something around 100 I think. It's an old dual core i7, it's no speed demon. Jeez, I remember when I got a PowerPC G5 and I thought it was a fucking miracle that I was able to encode mpegs for DVDs in just a bit faster than 1x realtime. The G5 would kick out so much waste heat, my office temperature would get up to over 100F.

Re: Beta versioning

[Gr8Apes]

External powered 5.25 USB 2.0/3.0 case with an internal SATA connector to hold your favorite BD (DVD) Writer. Needs to be able to write at least DVDs to have OSX grant you full access to the drive's controller. Now you have BD/HD/DVD disk access anytime you want, on any machine you have that has USB 2.0 or greater.

Re: Beta versioning

[sakusha]

Yeah, I could do that easily enough but it's money I'd rather not spend. DVDs are kind of dead media now, that's where this branch of the discussion originated. I skipped the whole BD hardware era because BDRips are easy enough to find online. I used to do a lot of DVD mastering with DVD Studio Pro but I haven't touched it in years, everyone wants files for online delivery now. For the rare occasions I would ever need a DVD drive, the kludgy Remote Drive is good enough.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you do know that you can upscale video files too, right? And with higher quality than anything built into a DVD player.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't agree with industry practices! My opinion rules all! I can quote a couple of bad situations from the market that could plausibly be used to support my opinion!"

Does that about cover it? Your post I mean.

Re:Beta versioning

[thegarbz]

Makes sense because if your prediction gets off, you get weird artifacts from the compounding errors.

Most Skype based recordings are powerpoint presentations. Videos are incredibly static. Also the older Lync worked just fine creating wonderfully small recordings. It was only in Skype for Business that they screwed up the lowest quality defaults.

Re: Beta versioning

[Gr8Apes]

First, the case $20 on sale, at least around here plus the cost of whatever drive you wish to drop in it. That was purely to address the 'x' doesn't have drive 'y' statement.

Second, there's 2 or 3 issues with the online delivery, including quality, reliability, and availability. Streaming for me is a non-starter. The quality is too low overall compared to BD sources, or even DVD sources in some cases, audio especially. Then there's video quality. And finally there's the issue of copyright violations - downloading a BD rip is a definite ethical if not legal difference over ripping your own disk, whatever the *AAs want you to believe. In one case you paid for a copy, in the other no payment was made. In an ideal world, the content producers would have no rights over the copy you paid for.

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD's are digital

Re: Beta versioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Alpha, Beta, Early Access, these terms are all pretty useless now."

Ah, no they are not. You can quote Handbrake, Google and a couple of games that have played fast and loose with terminology. Now back in the real world, users need distinctions between software that is Not Ready For Prime Time, and software that is Ready As It Will Ever Be. Literally millions of applications follow versioning norms, and you quote 4 that do not? Great argument! Not.

"We should just use Linux epoch time for version numbers." Yeah, that will happen immediately after the Year of Linux on the Desktop. Which itself happens just after the heat death of the Universe.

Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's it do that ffmpeg doesn't?

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

A GUI.

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

For one, it doesn't require VFW.

Re: Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

winff

Re:Ok...

[jedidiah]

When I used it before, it didn't seem to do well with the prospect of converting 22 files at the same time. ffmpeg and some minor script fu is great for that.

Once you have your preferred options figured out, the GUI just mostly gets in the way.

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

The queuing system with recovery, saving of queues and pause works fine with the encoder option text field available for the preferred advanced options. The queues worked well enough in the previous version already, but the proper pause is the latest addition. The adding of whole directories in the queue at a time is nice for similar sources. But like it is with most things, once you go script you don't want to go back.

Re:Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

it rips subtitles for one

do some research

Breaking

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking: software package reaches arbitrary version number.

News at 11.

Re:Breaking

[Existential Wombat]

Update. News at 11.1.

Jason strikes again!

[djsmiley]

Thanks Jason!

You're the best!

Re:Jason strikes again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe an "auto-correct" mistake? But yes, that jumped out at me too.

Re: Jason strikes again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing Slashdot has editors.

Re: Jason strikes again!

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll learn that Jason isn't json affter they learn how many f's are in after...

Re: Jason strikes again!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Roughly more than" is pretty good too.

HandBrake no longer needed due to VLC on iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked HandBrake and used it in the day -- especially when I wanted a movie or two for a train or plane ride.

I no longer need HandBrake -- the cpu and gpu in my ipad air 2, running the latest version of VLC -- can view locally stored files or SMB network shared files and play them with no need for conversion -- standard MKV and MP4 files play without buffering or stuttering.

Re:HandBrake no longer needed due to VLC on iPad

[TheRaven64]

But VLC on the iPad doesn't include the GPL'd components, so you can't play back a DVD that's just copied but not re-encoded as something else, so you still need something like Handbrake if you want to play back ripped DVDs on your iPad.

Re:HandBrake no longer needed due to VLC on iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an interesting use case -- I am glad that HandBrake is available for those who need it.

A better occasion for 1.0 release

[Anonymous Coward]

would be in a few months when the AV1 bit-stream is finalized, and full support for both AV1 and Opus could be added to Handbrake.

Re:A better occasion for 1.0 release

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a good reason to hold up a release, IMHO. That's a good reason to do another release soon, once those features are implemented and tested.

Still optimized for Intel

[Billly Gates]

I find it astounding that an i7 2600 laptop running at 2.2 ghz can outperform an AMD 8350 at 4.4 ghz at Handbreak. Meanwhile in other tasks there are no such strange anomalies. My guess is they are using an Intel compiler and getting paid by Intel to make sure performance is crippled on AMD as handbreak is used a lot for benchmarks

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[citizenr]

Its called IPC, AMD sucks when it comes to real performance per clock as much as Pentium 4 did 10 years ago.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet I'm checking online benchmark comparisons between both processors. The old i7 takes the crown.

You need to understand Zen or Ryzen is the first AMD CPU series in a long time that can compete with the Intel high-end clock per clock. The CPU you have wasn't well received, even among the AMD camp.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

That generation of AMD is just crap at most everything, even an i5 2400 beats it at gaming..

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

OpenSource program gets paid by Intel to cripple AMD performance? This is your guess based upon poor performance of your CPU? Good grief....

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

Ryzen is also not the first AMD CPU that has claimed it's going to compete clock for clock with Intel too. As much as I'd like to see AMD actually do it I'm reserving my opinion until it's actually produced and in consumer's hands for testing. That said, I'm holding off a little bit on my planned SkyLake build to see if they've managed to pull it off. If they have it'll be good for everyone!

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Osgeld]

I find it astounding that my 4170 gets beat by a core2 quad ... and I actually paid for it

AMD has just been sucking ass in the cpu game, has been for a long time now, maybe zen, kind of doubt it though

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BigBuckHunter]

I find it astounding that an i7 2600 laptop running at 2.2 ghz can outperform an AMD 8350 at 4.4 ghz at Handbreak.

This likely has more to do with the compiler optimizations (and other optimizations) of libav 12.

I 'think' this is loaded as an external library, you you may wish to attempt to DL the source and compile with AMD centric optimizations and see what happens.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[drinkypoo]

Ryzen is also not the first AMD CPU that has claimed it's going to compete clock for clock with Intel too.

Remember when AMD's K7 came out and punched Intel in the nuts clock-for-clock? Pepperidge Farm remembers. It happened before. That doesn't necessarily mean it could happen again, though.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Billly Gates]

I know Intel overall is superior per clock tick.

Hairyfeet had a youtube video which showed someone upgrading from an AMD 8350 to an i7 4790K and you know what? Only a 2% difference! Reason being is the AMD had 8 cores and most video work can take advantage of multiple cores. Adobe Premiere showed slight favoring to the AMD cpu on some of the workloads and close to even on the rest.

Handbrake got caught taking money from Intel to use non IEEE compliant x87 FPU code and Intel optimizations so parts of the CPU are disabled when run on AMD systems to make Intels look faster.

For gaming yes Intel is better. For running multiple cores AMD has an 8 core ... ok actually Intel now has one too with Broadwell-E for a very expensive $1700 per CPU price which should beat the shit of an AMD but still.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember those days. I also remember when Itanium sunk like a rock and AMD x64 took off.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Billly Gates]

OpenSource program gets paid by Intel to cripple AMD performance? This is your guess based upon poor performance of your CPU? Good grief....

Oh really?

Yes it is not a vast conspiracy that intel cheats with some popular benchmarks.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

No Intel cheated at Handbreak and I doubt even a faster AMD Ryzen that is coming out can compare if the code slows down when an AMD cpu is detected.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just going to leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChfeWN_mUs

We in no way cripple the code on AMD hardware. It's simply that the hardware is significatly slower. If you see the Ryzen demo above, you'll see it actually outperformns Intel by a small margin on what we think is a comparble chip.

Both Intel and AMD have contributed code to HandBrake. We don't take sides in this battle. We want our softawre to run as fast as it can, on whatever platform your using.

Also, the main feature that Intel Contributed was the Intel QuickSync encoder. If your not using that feature, it has no impact on the x264 software encoder.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Raxxon]

Intel's had an 8core Desktop for a while now.... and there's the shiny new 10core that you're thinking of at that $1700+ price point. And those are actual cores before "HyperThreading" or whatever they're wanting to call it now gets taken into count... so 16 and 20 thread execution respectively. And yes, Desktop product, not Xeon product in desktop boards with wonky support.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't true for Blu-ray conversions to H.264. The FX-8350 beats the i7-3770k at this by one or two FPS.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[thegarbz]

Were they running QSV? Intel's internal GPUs support hardware H.264 encoding with Handbrake without any conspiracy theory needed.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[thegarbz]

Handbrake got caught taking money from Intel to use non IEEE compliant x87 FPU code

Source please. Every search for this turned up only a self referencing post to your comment.

What Intel did do is contribute QuickSync Video codecs to Handbrake which encode video using the hardware H.264 encoder in the Intel GPU. That is much faster than the AMD one which naturally is missing all of this.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[thegarbz]

Oh really [intel.com]?

Maybe you should read that article. And then maybe you should look into what Intel contributed.

It's kind of hard to "cripple" AMD hardware that AMD doesn't have. Intel contributed a QSV capable codec to Handbrake. AMD are more than welcome to do so too, the source is open and I'm willing to bet Handbrake people wouldn't complain if AMD finally gave people a hardware encoder + code that worked for it.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[thegarbz]

Or it has to do with the hardware encoder for which Intel provided the handbrake team some code.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no source. HandBrake has never accepted money from Intel. Period. We don't get paid for the work we do.

All our source code is public on GitHub. If there was anything malicious like this in there, it would be spotted pretty easily. It's not a huge code base.

AMD VCE is hopefully going to be added some day. We did have initial patches from AMD, but they've changed directions with their libraries and the GPUOpen project so someone needs to find the time to re-do all that work.

NVENC is also an option if it can be added in a GPL friendly way.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[drinkypoo]

The price delta for those CPUs is still massive, and their 4-core still wins for gaming because games don't have many threads.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. See the post by the handbrake dev. Intel contributes special intel-only library, group has no cycles to integrate AMD contributions and claim they want to rework them all anyway. Plain to see where all the effort is going. Just look at the code, read the comments.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel optimizations so parts of the CPU are disabled when run on AMD systems to make Intels look faster.

Just check your Handbrake encoding logs for the detected CPU functionality and you'll see the quoted statement being inaccurate or false. AMD-only additions like FMA4 are detected. Utilization of those features is another matter. AVX2 is not yet supported with AMD chips though, which may give Intel some advantage.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

And do you remember Intel coming right back? I don't think they can do it this time so if AMD actually has something they may be able to make it successful without a quick kick to the nutz from Intel. But I'm not going to believe it until I see it as they've cried wolf a few times now.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

I can get an 8 core for a grand and overclock it to the Moon with Broadwell E. Supposedly there's another E offering coming too. Multiple cores do indeed speed video work and I do lots of it - I use a VM that's given 10 cores and it flies. IF AMD has something that matches Broadwell E and doesn't cost a mint and Intel doesn't immediately bitch slap them via pricing or a new as-yet unreleased CPU then I'll buy AMD no question. More than once though AMD has made noises about new CPUs coming out that would make everyone swoon and failed to hit the mark. This time they're benching against Broadwell E and meeting or beating them at parity or near parity clock speeds. IF they can undercut on overall pricing and IF their CPUs have overclocking headroom (which they seemed to hint at) then I'm onboard. I'm agnostic about who builds the damn thing, hell I used to own stock in BOTH companies. I want to see a strong AMD competitor, so far though I'm reserved in my expectations having been burned by claims before. I'm interested enough though that I stopped my planned Skylake build and will wait for real tests in the real world before I pull the trigger on any parts. I wasn't even shooting for Broadwell level power either but I'll sure take it if I can! :-)

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

Yup, the ten core is expensive but the 8 core can be had for a grand and the 6 core at fairly reasonable prices IF you're willing to run a Broadwell E system. Intel is already talking about the next E systems and surprise - new socket! The E systems have generally had expensive mobo so I was going to skip it. IF AMD can undercut pricewise, can beat or meet Skylake, meet Broadwell E levels of performance (which should beat Skylake), then I might purchase. I need a new desktop and am interested so I'm rooting for them. Having been disappointed before though I won't be first in line. I'll almost certainly run an NVIDIA video card too lol

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

Sounds to me like he means that when run on Intel certain superior FPU functions come online that AMD doesn't get - well duh. AMD has some optimizations too I'm sure but the user base is smaller, it sounds like AMD stopped helping, and Intel actually has H.264 (and H.265?) functionality that make them superior currently. I'd like to have seen the Handbrake encoding test AMD demonstrated on Broadwell done on Skylake to see if the new instructions helped much. I will be looking for encoding speed when I decide on my next CPU, I currently offload to a VM with many cores but I'd like my desktop highly capable too.

Fingers crossed AMD does it but claiming that Handbrake has somehow taken money to gimp AMD is hilarious - it's not like this is one single cohesive person or entity, their mailing list and code are public!

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[BLKMGK]

Wow, that's a lovely article explaining how Intel CONTRIBUTED CODE to an OpenSource project!

They wanted this application that's heavily used to run fast on their CPUs so they contributed code that utilized H.264 speedups in their processor. Has AMD contributed the same? Does AMD have those speedups in their CPU? Do you think that the Handbrake team would turn down a reasonable OpenSource piece of code from AMD?

The answer is NO and if the leaders of the team tried it would be forked in no time flat and the changes incorporated. FFMPEG has done as much in the past and patches to their code came out that leveraged NVIDIA code so there's certainly precedent. In the end FFMPEG incorporated the NVIDIA speedups, that's how OpenSource works...

Tell me, who exactly do you think got "paid" by Intel? Handbrake isn't a commercial company, it's not a single person, it's a group working together much like Linux as a whole. Code was proposed, code was examined, code was accepted. Intel gets to tout that their spiffy instructions are an advantage and does so. I'll bet they aren't the only media encoder using those same speedups either. Vast conspiracy right? Let's hope Ryzen finally incorporates H>264 instructions and better yet H.265 please!

Now, did Intel cripple THEIR compilers? Yup, sure looks like it! I'd say that's a good reason to not use their compilers. Hell Microsoft got caught doing the same thing to DR DOS back in the day. This would be one of the reasons you benchmark on real data and applications rather than just synthetic benchmarks. If ryzen has spiffy instructions onboard AMD had better have been working with the various compiler programmers or their going to get stuck this time around too...

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

The HandBrake Team was actually discussing Ryzen just the other day. Hopefully it delivers! The idea that we wouldn't want healthy competition in this space is absurd—many of us are hardware geeks.

Again, no code to cripple AMD exists, and no money is flowing from Intel to the HandBrake project. Feel free to point out the source code in question on the official GitHub repository. You can't, because it's simply not true.

In the past, certain companies have contributed patches adding hardware-specific enhancements in an open manner, but never completed the implementations or fixed existing issues. Not integrating such work into the main code base is sensible in these situations, and is not preferential treatment.

We welcome performance-related contributions from AMD and others, assuming the feature(s) are compatible with HandBrake's goals, the code is clean and maintainable, and the HandBrake Team or an external individual/group is willing to maintain the code.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

This information is usually part of the encoder's logging, which HandBrake adds to its logging. What you're seeing is what x264, x265, etc., support; these are separate projects from HandBrake. That is to say, the only assembly code in HandBrake is for the NLMeans denoise filter and is SSE2. Should work everywhere.

> Intel optimizations so parts of the CPU are disabled when run on AMD systems to make Intels look faster.

Feel free to point out the source code in question on the official GitHub repository. You can't, because it's not true. No such code to cripple AMD exists, and no money is flowing from Intel to the HandBrake project.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using GCC. I don't know what they use on Windows, but feel free to compile it from source so there's no cheating.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[drinkypoo]

Yup, the ten core is expensive but the 8 core can be had for a grand and the 6 core at fairly reasonable prices IF you're willing to run a Broadwell E system. Intel is already talking about the next E systems and surprise - new socket!

That is literally five to ten times the price of the AMD chip right now, though. And the motherboard is twice as expensive, too. It's faster, but it's not that much faster.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to have seen the Handbrake encoding test AMD demonstrated on Broadwell done on Skylake to see if the new instructions helped much

The AVX2 has been there since Haswell, so the performance benefits versus Broadwell should come from memory bandwidth and other core improvements. Assuming we are talking about un-accelareted software encoding, of course. From my experience the larger core counts become usable as the resolution of the source increases. Have you got any anecdotes on how well the encoding process scales with HD, UHD and larger material?

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Ayanami_R]

For that task, yes, now try a game with a "main thread" that the AMD core can't run at full speed. You get one core at 100% while the rest run much slower waiting on "main thread" tasks to complete. Wait, it's not just games, but more programs work in this sort of manner. I'd rater have fewer, but much wider cores, than a bunch of not so wide ones that bottleneck on the "main thread."

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[Agripa]

I find it astounding that an i7 2600 laptop running at 2.2 ghz can outperform an AMD 8350 at 4.4 ghz at Handbreak. Meanwhile in other tasks there are no such strange anomalies. My guess is they are using an Intel compiler and getting paid by Intel to make sure performance is crippled on AMD as handbreak is used a lot for benchmarks

Last time I checked which was a few weeks ago, Intel's compiler and libraries still disable vector code paths based on the CPU manufacturer identification rather than feature flags.

Re:Still optimized for Intel

[cthulhu11]

I'm puzzled by the abstract's list of "new" features that have been there for at least a few years. But then, this is slashdot after all.

HandBrake 1.0.0 released! Woohoo!

[ClickOnThis]

Now I can finally get my 2003 Acura out of the driveway.

Piece of shit

[Hognoxious]

I've had no joy getting it to work on Centos. Plus it has a dependency on the gstreamer-plugins-bad package. Does that ring a bell?

For the corner case that mencoder & ffmpeg couldn't handle it's not worth it.

Re:Piece of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone else then:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/1.0.0/developer/install-dependencies-centos.html

Re:Piece of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had no joy getting it to work on Centos.

By "it" do you mean Handbrake in general or do you mean this particular version of Handbrake? If general, I've had it working just fine on Xubuntu on several computers for several years, so my anecdote cancels yours.

Plus it has a dependency on the gstreamer-plugins-bad package. Does that ring a bell?

No.

If you intend to make reference to something obscure or unlikely to be known/remembered by the people you're addressing, you might consider providing details or a descriptive reminder of some sort.

Re:Piece of shit

[Billly Gates]

I've had no joy getting it to work on Centos. Plus it has a dependency on the gstreamer-plugins-bad package. Does that ring a bell?

For the corner case that mencoder & ffmpeg couldn't handle it's not worth it.

CentOS is kind of old. Which is not a problem as that is more meant for servers. Have you tried getting it to work on a more desktop friendly up to date distro such as Linux Mint?

Re:Piece of shit

[thegarbz]

Plus it has a dependency on the gstreamer-plugins-bad package. Does that ring a bell?

Yeah it rings a bell. A set of plugins in need of a code review that provide functionality to other packages. Why don't you fix the problem by helping the gstreamer guys rather than criticising other software for not re-inventing the wheel.

Re:Piece of shit

[ebvwfbw]

Could upgrade to Fedora. You'd probably have an easier time. Don't use the gnome shit though. Install kde/plasma. A real desktop. Then set the cursor so focus follows mouse. Anything else is so 1980s, like Windows.

New version needs new hacks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the hack to get Bluray ripping under OS X for Handbrake 0.10.2 doesn't work on the 1.0.0 release. :(

No Auto Update?

[MichaelJ]

0.10.5 on MacOS does not believe any new updates are available.

Re:No Auto Update?

[Anonymous Coward]

Updates will be enabled after the initial rush on downloads is over, so as to not overload our servers.

Re:No Auto Update?

[Anonymous Coward]

0.10.5 on MacOS does not believe any new updates are available.

Then go pay a visit to handbrake.fr, download the 1.0.0 release, manually install it and shout "in your face" at your 0.10.5 as it's being overwritten.

Re:No Auto Update?

[MichaelJ]

Excellent, thank you.

Did they ever improve the decomb filter?

[Solandri]

After several days of trying different settings while attempting to digitize my old VHS tapes and DVDs, I gave up on HandBrake. The decomb/deinterlace filter they use to convert interlaced video to progressive is atrocious. Diagonal lines end up looking like jaggies in 1990s video games before anti-aliasing became a thing. It seems to be fine for progressive -> progressive conversions, but it was a huge waste of time for interlaced -> progressive conversions.

Re:Did they ever improve the decomb filter?

[Anonymous Coward]

We made the combing detection slightly more sensitive by default, and added an EEDI2 decomb preset that is slower and looks better (fewer jaggies).

Jason-based?

[Anonymous Coward]

JSON is like {"foo":"bar"}

Jason is like curly brace, quote, the foo, quote again, etc.

Re:Jason-based?

[hackwrench]

And here I was thinking that Jason was like Freddy, Nightmare on Elm Street, or Five Nights at, Pick your poison.

re: HandBrake 1.0.0 Released After 13 Years Of Dev

[rickyslashdot]

THANK YOU - - - Eric Petit (aka "titer" from his SVN repository username), Laurent Aimar (fenrir), Van Jacobson (van), John Allen (johnallen), Joe Crain (dynaflash), Damiano Galassi (ritsuka), Edward Groenendaal (eddyg), David Foster (davidfstr), Rodney Hester (rhester), Andrew Kimpton (awk), Chris Lee (clee), Chris Long (chrislong), Brian Mario (brianmario)Maurj (maurj), Mirkwood (mirkwood), Nyx (Nyx), Philippe Rigaux (prigaux), Jonathon Rubin (jbrjake), Scott (s55), John Stebbins (j45), Chris Thoman (huevos_rancheros), Mark Krenek (travistex), Kona "Mike" Blend (KonaBlend), David Rickard (RandomEngy), Tim Walker (Rodeo), Bradley Sepos (BradleyS), Maxym Dm (maxim_d33), and all the others that have assisted in this project ! ! ! ! !

https://github.com/HandBrake/H...

HANDBRAKE has been 'my friend' for many years, even as a beta, and has allowed me to view many videos without having to know anything (or very little) about the inner workings of transcoders / video-packages / 'container' details, etc.

Cheers to you and those like you that provide help for the semi-educated masses that need help converting videos from one format to another !

I cannot adequately express the level of admiration and respect I have for those of you that are providing services for the people, free of charge, and solely for your own gratification.

Best and Sincere Regards - - - and Happy Holidays
rickyslashdot

use cases?

[bazorg]

Given that there is this limitation imposed on the software authors:

It can process the most common media files and DVD/Blu-ray sources that don’t have any type of copy protection.

What is handbrake good for?

Re:use cases?

[jedidiah]

Something you've already decrypted with another tool.

Re:use cases?

[chill]

It can encode files to different sizes, aspect ratios and formats. It is frequently used as a companion to something like MakeMKV, which will do the actual ripping from media to file.

Re:use cases?

[drinkypoo]

I'm still using ye olde dvdbackup to rip DVDs from the commandline under Linux. When I want to watch a series but don't want to deal with flipping discs I just hook up my three external drives to my Linux box (which has one internal drive as well) and run four screens of it.

What's the blu-ray equivalent? I'm thinking about buying a blu-ray drive. Or finally replacing my antique BDP-S300 with something less crap, and stealing its drive. It just has a SATA drive in it, and apparently it works OK under Windows, let alone Linux.

Re:use cases?

[chill]

MakeMKV rips BluRay fine. I've ripped scores of them, then encoded to h.264 m4v files using Handbrake -- from Avatar to Downton Abbey. Just about any SATA BR player should work fine under Linux.

Lots of software like Kodi or OpenELEC will index and play series files just fine, looking up against thetvdb.com as long as you name them properly. I use "Name Season x Episode", like "Downton Abbey 1x02.m4v".

The next challenge is UltraHD -- 4K BluRay discs, which might take some time to get cracked.

Re:use cases?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use with mythtv to convert OTA HD-TV from mpg to mp4. Most useful for converting sporting events from 20-40GB files into something more manageable(5-8GB).

Re:use cases?

[rtb61]

It is also possible to add a little something something into handbrake and it will do it for you. I have to admit I am getting a bit slack in my old age and when it comes to porting my DVD contents to hard disk drive, rather that swapping disks I just download it from the internet, I already have license to the content and that is easier than swapping hundreds and hundreds of DVDs (don't even know how many but I can still remember not to buy the same content over again, well, mostly).

Re:use cases?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many HandBrake users are converting videos recorded on mobile devices such as phones, tablets, and action cams. Others are format shifting from AVI/MPEG and obscure formats. Some are using HandBrake to post-process production works such as films and educational materials.

Combined, this is a large chunk of the user base. Which may surprise some people, but not those of us who interact with them every day. Cheers.

Re:use cases?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're weird. HandBrake will read video from any DVD your system decrypts.
So if you're already able to play the DVD on your computer, HandBrake will transcode it just fine.
They just don't include any crypto libraries themselves. Why duplicate the effort?

Re:use cases?

[martinX]

What a PITA that was. I have it sorted now. I have Handbrake 1.0.1, VLC 2.2.4 and I replaced libdvdcss_2.x.x with libdvdcss_1.4.0

I was able to rip an encrypted Get Smart episode to h.264 and also to h.265 using Handbrake, and VLC could play them both back. Handbrake can also decode ProRes movs. Success!

Re:use cases?

[martinX]

If I pop a commercial DVD in my DVD drive, Handbrake won't decode it automatically. It relies on a third-party library, libdvdcss_1.4.0, to do that. Handbrake doesn't include decryption libraries to avoid hassles from The Man so they used to tell you to install VLC. Now VLC libraries don't decrypt anymore so you need to get the old decryption library.

Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

NEVER deploy version 1.0. Always wait until the first service pack. See you guys in 6 years!

Still no NVENC-support :(

[Gaygirlie]

Handbrake would be great otherwise, but the lack of support for NVENC really upsets me. I've been biding my time and hoping they'd change their minds about it, but that doesn't seem to be happening :(

I have a Xeon CPU, so no Intel QuickSync, and it's Haswell, so it wouldn't have HEVC-support for QSV anyways. I haven't found a single good video-transcoding and/or editing app that is both free or cheap and that does NVENC. MediaCoder is the closest to what I've found, but at $189 it just is a no-go for me.

Re:Still no NVENC-support :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't checked recently, but historically we could not add it because it required linking against Non-GPL license compatible code, which means we would not have been able to ship binaries with it included.

I know ffmpeg / libav now has supported. If it can be enabled without --non-free (to maintain GPL compatibility) we are open to patches to integrate this into HandBrake.

If someone wants to give it a shot, they are welcome to join #handbrake to speak to us about it. There isn't a huge interest in it among the developers, partly due to lack of Nvidia hardware, partly because we mostly prefer the software encoders but we are happy to welcome GPL complaint patches if there is a developer out there who is able to maintain/test it.

https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/issues/259

Same applies to AMD VCE for that matter. We did have patches a working build, but sadly AMD appears to have retired the SDK we were using in favour of the new GPUOpen approach, which invalidated our patch. So that'll need re-written. (Doesn't really bolster motivation when that kind of thing happens)

Re:Still no NVENC-support :(

[thegarbz]

I've been biding my time and hoping they'd change their minds about it, but that doesn't seem to be happening :(

I'm not sure adding non-GPL code to GPL code is something someone can just change their minds about.

Re: HandBrake 1.0.0 Released After 13 Years Of Dev

[Anonymous Coward]

You're welcome.

Denoise FTW on VHS

[Immerial]

One thing I've found to be very helpful on old VHS material brought in, is to use the temporal denoise filter in Handbrake. Something like HQDN3D 2:1:9:9 works pretty well. You might have to play with it more depending on how much noise you have vs. how much detail you want to keep.

HandBrake's nursery was BeOS

[Trilobyte]

HandBrake was, in its early life, one of the more exciting and useful apps on BeOS. I've always been happy that an app which began life on that alternative operating system has become so widely-used. It made a great pairing with the early VLC ports to BeOS.

Re: Merry day after Christmas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Trump voters are fucktards...