Handbrake – Free DVD Ripper and Video Converter

The Handbrake is a program that converts videos in various formats, with the advantage of being a free open source tool. The program is compatible with devices such as Apple TV, iPod, iPhone, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP.

This software brings two new major features: compatibility with Blu-ray discs and the ability to edit the settings of a conversion directly from the files that are already in line to be processed. The interface is relatively simple and the menus are straightforward.

In one of the previous publications we provided step-to-step guidance on how to convert DVD to MPEG-4 format: http://freeware4review.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-to-convert-dvd-to-ipod-format.html. You can take a look.

But, this post will cover general capabilities of the utility, which can offer much higher functionality than this particular conversion.

Input:

Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or Blu-ray sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.

Outputs:

* File Containers: MP4 (M4V) and MKV

* Video Encoders: H.264(x264), MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 (libav), or Theora (libtheora)

* Audio Encoders: AAC, CoreAudio AAC/HE-AAC (OS X Only), MP3, Flac, AC3, or Vorbis.

* Audio Pass-through: AC-3, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC and MP3 tracks

Main features:

* Title / Chapter selection

* Queue up multiple encodes

* Chapter Markers

* Subtitles (VobSub, Closed Captions CEA-608, SSA, SRT)

* Constant Quality or Average Bitrate Video Encoding

* Support for VFR, CFR and VFR

* Video Filters: Deinterlacing, Decomb, Detelecine, Deblock, Grayscale, Cropping and scaling

* Live Video Preview

* Built-in presets for common devices

Supported platforms:

* Windows 32-bit and 64-bit

* Mac

* Ubuntu

Website: http://handbrake.fr/

Direct Downloads: http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php