HandBrake

What is HandBrake?

HandBrake was started in 2003 by the HandBrake Team to provide a simple way to encode video for playback on a wide range of devices. Over the years it has grown into a mature, cross‑platform tool with a large community of contributors and users. The latest release, 1.11.2, continues to add support for new codecs and improve performance.

The program is aimed at anyone who needs to convert videos for archiving, sharing, or playback on older hardware. It works well for hobbyists, content creators, and people who want to keep a clean library of compatible files.

Compared with Windows‑only tools like NinjaRipper, HandBrake feels more straightforward and less specialized. It focuses on general‑purpose transcoding rather than game‑specific extraction, but it offers a rich set of presets and a clean GUI that makes the process fast and reliable.

Best for: Converting personal video collections to device‑friendly formats.

Key features of HandBrake

• Supports over 200 input formats via FFmpeg
• Offers a wide range of output presets for devices
• Allows custom bitrate, resolution, and codec settings
• Includes advanced filters (deinterlace, denoise, crop)
• Batch encoding with queue management
• Keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation
• Export to multiple containers (MP4, MKV, WebM)
• Built‑in subtitle handling

Tips for Windows users

If you’re coming from NinjaRipper, note that HandBrake works with a wide array of file types, not just game captures. Use the "Presets" panel to choose a target device; the "Video" tab lets you tweak bitrate and codec. Shortcuts like Ctrl+S (save preset) and Ctrl+O (open file) speed up workflow. Unlike NinjaRipper’s focus on game assets, HandBrake’s batch queue allows you to process many files at once, saving time.

Recent releases

• 1.11.2 — June 7, 2026

  - Uses GtkFileLauncher to open files in sandboxed apps. - Added buttons to cycle through previews on summary page. - Added an option to change the UI display language. Fixed issues: - Fixed size calculation for disk space check.

• 1.10.0 — August 10, 2025

  - Added new "Social 10MB" presets - Improved metadata passthru, preserving additional metadata - Added an option to choose the encoder color range - Added an option to disable track names passthru and autonaming - SubRip/UTF-8 subtitles are now passed through…

• 1.9.2 — February 20, 2025

  - Allowed muxing NVENC AV1 and VCN AV1 in WebM container - Fixed a crash that could happen when a source contains chapters with no titles

• 1.9.1 — February 10, 2025

  - Fixed an issue that could happen when chapters titles are not UTF-8 - Improved support for SRT files with overlapping subtitles - Fixed AC3 and EAC3 extradata in MKV