The latest HandBrake package can be downloaded from Softpedia

Aug 22, 2014 12:52 GMT  ·  By

HandBrake, a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs, has just reached version 0.10 Beta 1.

The latest stable release of HandBrake was 0.9.9 and users assumed that the coveted 1.0 release was almost upon us. It turns out that the developer has other plans for the software. Now, a 0.10 Beta 1 version is out and packs a huge number of changes and improvements. It's safe to say that, in fact, we are pretty far off from seeing the coveted 1.0 version anytime soon.

HandBrake can be used to convert video files from nearly any format, it's free and open source, and it's available in multiple platforms.

"Get started with HandBrake in seconds by choosing a profile optimised for your device, or choose a universal profile for standard or high quality conversions. Simple, easy, fast. For those that want more choice, tweak many basic and advanced options to improve your encodes," say the developers on the official website.

The application supports a large number of formats including MP4(.M4V), .MKV, H.264 (x264), MPEG-4, MPEG-2 (libav), Theora (libtheora), AAC, CoreAudio AAC/HE-AAC (OS X Only), MP3, Flac, AC3, Vorbis, AC-3, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC, and MP3 tracks.

According to the changelog, Intel QuickSync Video Encode / Decode support has been added (only on the Windows platform for now), DXVA Hardware Decode support (experimental) has been implemented, Lanczos is now the application's default scaler, Bicubic (OpenCL) is also available, the hqdn3d filter now accepts individual settings for both chroma channels (Cr, Cb), a New NlMeans denoiser has been implemented, the Windows Phone 8 Preset has been added, the x264 r2431-ac76440 library has been added, Libav has been updated to version 10.1, and libbluray is now at version 0.5.0.

Also, Libavformat is now used for muxing instead of mp4v2 and libmkv, the “Large File Size" checkbox has now been removed for mp4, mpeg2dec has also been replaced in favor of using libav, the LibAV AAC encoder is now the default as FAAC has been removed, the H.265 encoder has been added, the VP8 Encoder has been added (using libvpx), the mcdeint deinterlace and decomb modes have been removed, and the application now requires GTK+3.

More details about this release can be found in the official announcement.

Download HandBrake 0.10 Beta 1 for Linux Download HandBrake 0.10 Beta 1 for Windows Download HandBrake 0.10 Beta 1 for Mac OS

Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.