
HandBrake 1.2.0 Released - frereubu
https://handbrake.fr/news.php?article=42
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fireattack
Great software in term of both quality and active development, and I also have
very positive experience interacting with their dev/contributors (reporting
bugs etc.).

But not sure why this is on front page today, as it has been released almost a
month isn't it?

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cookiecaper
I've always been a little unclear on the barriers between Handbrake and its
dependencies. Does Handbrake maintain custom forks/patchsets that get applied
to ffmpeg, etc.? I knew Handbrake as a GUI for ffmpeg, and in my research, I
have come across one or two things that implied there was something unique
about their backend that wasn't yet upstream, but ultimately not much else.

Since you're familiar with the project's development, would you mind clearing
some of this ambiguity up for me? Thanks.

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_Gyan_
Handbrake applies about a dozen patches on top of the FFmpeg tree. See them at
[https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/tree/master/contrib/f...](https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/tree/master/contrib/ffmpeg)

Note that HB uses a release (4.1) rather than git master HEAD. So, some of
those patches may get rescinded with new ffmpeg releases.

Also, it's best to think of ffmpeg as having two parts: the libraries (codec,
format, ...) and the API controller which sets up the processing pipeline and
manages its run i.e. parsing the commnad line, registering input/output
streams, and executing the required operations. The latter for ffmpeg is in
fftools/. Handbrake implements its own top-level controller.

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NelsonMinar
This is huge: "Added support for AMD VCE and Nvidia NVENC hardware-accelerated
encoders". Shouldn't that mean 5-10x increases in encoding speed for your
average gaming Windows machine?

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izacus
Yes, but beware that those encoders don't come close to providing the same
quality at given bitrate. Unless you're in a huge hurry, you should stick to
x264 which will generate a significantly better looking video at the same
filesize.

~~~
IntelMiner
NVenc has gotten a lot better over the years. Using the "slowest" preset
definitely seems to give the best results

I encoded 1250GB~ of Star Trek: The Next Generation Blu Ray's to 355GB of
H.265/HEVC video, and I feel the result speaks for itself
[https://i.imgur.com/VklppOK.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VklppOK.jpg)

FWIW. Running the file through an i7-4790 would take roughly 4 1/2 hours

A GTX 1000 series does it in 4 minutes

~~~
slashink
NVENC on the Turing architecture (RTX2080/2070/2060) is at the highest quality
setting comparable to x264 fast. During complex scenes closer to faster. Older
architectures (Pascal etc) are worse.

Gold standard for H.264 quality/encode time/bitrate is still x264 medium /
slow.

For H.265, the situation is much different. x265 is far from as mature as x264
and frankly the licensing is such a mess that it looks like H.265 might
actually lose the war of next generation codec. Instead VP9 -> AV1 seems to be
the industry’s codec of choice with adaption from Google, Twitch and Facebook.
Also note Apple is back on the AV1 page.

~~~
doublepg23
I like messing around with ffmpeg from time to time, and while I love free
formats I have say VP9 is practically unusable for me, it just takes insane
amounts of encoding time. I'm unsure what hardware people are using for it,
especially when it hardly multi-threads...

~~~
slashink
That's all too true. However it's important to remember that when H.264
started to get public traction (this is back in 2005, when Apple started
pushing H.264 movie trailers), realtime CPU encoding was deemed impossible at
that point in time. It just wasn't realistic back in 2005 to produce H.264 on
a CPU, instead hardware encoders were used to accomplish the task.

Fast forward 10 years and basically every single laptop has hardware
accelerated H.264 encoding through Intel's QuickSync FFHW and desktops have it
through Nvidia. On top of that the software encoder (x264) is so fast that
it's possible to do it in realtime on a CPU.

There is a fair chance that VP9 will see the exact same pattern here. Today
CPU encoding is unfeasible, as you've noticed. However Intel is releasing VP9
encoding on their QuickSync encoder with newer CPU's and Nvidia will from my
guess have it either 1 or 2 GPU generations from now. Same goes for AV1 here.

It's also interesting too think that the age of these aggressive improvements
in CPU speed we've had over the past 14 years (from 2005) might come to an
end, where efficiency instead comes from specialised hardware, such as fixed
function hardware doing encoding on the chips, as NVENC/QuickSync does today.
I don't know if realtime AV1 encoding will be feasible on a consumer grade CPU
within the next 10 years, but i sure know it's hardware counterpart will be.

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LeoNatan25
One huge issue with HandBrake is the very deep 8bit pipeline limitation, which
is showing its age and lack of forward thinking. HandBrake is incapable of
properly encoding 10bit streams. Until that is fixed, I had no choice but to
find an alternative.

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dpg23
What content comes in 10-bit in the first place? HDR is just becoming a thing
and I'm pretty sure that's restricted to UHD Blu-rays.

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mroche
A significant amount of content coming from a recording monitor for
professional cameras, or in-camera itself, usually in ProRes/DNxHD form. Using
an NLE for transcoding is miserable, and ffmpeg doesn’t have the most
intuitive CLI syntax for people who just want quick buttons to press.

Pro-world also uses transcoders, and not everyone likes/is able to use Adobe
for that.

~~~
doublepg23
I'm surprised people working with professional footage don't have better tools
for that but fair enough.

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mroche
Oh, there definitely are better tools out there, I’m just saying where the
source material is coming from. Transcoding specific apps are relatively far
and few between, so we end up having to use use other apps for this at times.
Handbrake, ffmpeg, Apple’s Compression (is it still alive?), Adobe Media
Encoder, etc. Having to use DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, Medi Composer, etc
to create proxies or flip between formats is overkill and time consuming.

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coldtea
> _Apple’s Compression (is it still alive?)_

Yes. Why wouldn't it be?

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mroche
I haven’t been on Apple’s site in a long while (or on a Mac). Wasn’t sure how
Compression and Motion were faring since FCPX came out.

~~~
coldtea
FCPX has been going from strength to strength since the release, with a
constant stream of big updates, and winning lots of hearts back from the FCPX
backslash.

This is also interesting:
[https://offthetracksmovie.com/](https://offthetracksmovie.com/)

(Interesting factoid: the same person spearheaded and designed all of FCP,
FCPX, and Premiere)

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lysium
I have nothing to say but that I am pleased that such a great software is
still in active development. I've just updated! Thank you very much.

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bratao
Reading the changelog, one entry catch my eye: "Switched core decoding library
from Libav to FFmpeg"

Do anyone know who won the fight of this fork?

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m45t3r
Considering that mpv[1] recommends FFmpeg I would say FFmpeg won.

I say that because mpv is one of the projects that mostly use parts of FFmpeg
internals and also one of the first projects to use modern futures (and
deprecate older versions too).

[1]: [https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv#ffmpeg-vs-
libav](https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv#ffmpeg-vs-libav)

~~~
m-p-3
YouTube-DL also uses FFmpeg to remux or convert data streams when needed too.

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erlend_sh
Hands down one of the best pieces of software I’ve ever used. Never had any
problems with it, does what it says on the tin.

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idlern
I like Handbrake but wish it has the functionality of MakeMKV too

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alexgaribay
You can if you’re on macOS. You can make it to where handbrake can read the
Blu-ray.

[http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/directly-rip-and-
conv...](http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/directly-rip-and-convert-
bluray-disks-with-handbrake)

~~~
torstenvl
Will these libraries continue to work after the 60-day mark?

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alexgaribay
I’m unsure. I have a paid license for MakeMKV and it hasn’t been an issue for
me.

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walterbell
Does anyone have recommended settings for H.265 encoding of 1080p, which is
comparable in quality to H.264? The former seems less sharp, using default HB
presets.

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dylan604
Years ago when HandBrake started to ship without deCSS and use non-DVD
sources, we were finally allowed to use it at work as a UI for ffmpeg to make
mp4 files with x264. Due to lawyers, we were not allowed to use any software
that bundled deCSS. No VLC for us, but that was okay with its lack of frame
advancing.

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jmiserez
Couldn't you have forked it, removed the deCSS code and used that internally?
It's opensource after all, same with VLC.

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caoilte
Great software. Just wish I didn't need it so often.

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nvr219
I loved handbrake but haven't used it in a long time since I haven't bought a
DVD/blu ray in a long time.

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darkpuma
Not that _I_ would do this, but I've heard that sometimes people rent DVDs/BDs
from public libraries and then rip them..

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naikrovek
Yeah, but who would do that? There's no such thing as a pirate; those are
stories to scare little children and media company executives.

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dpg23
Lovely piece of software.

