Handbrake Still the Best DVD Converter, Now Handles Any Video Format
HandBrake, our favorite way to convert DVDs to iPod-ready video formats, has released a major upgrade that adds support for just about any video source format, not just DVDs. The new features come courtesy of the libavcodec and libavformat libraries, which are borrowed from the ffmpeg project.
If all that sounds too geeky for you, here’s the short version: Handbrake can now convert just about any video format into something that’s ready to load on your iPod, Apple TV and other video device.
Although we would call this a major update (and the first release after a long silence from the Handbrake team), the release numbers have been only incrementally bumped — the latest version is HandBrake 0.9.3. But don’t let the version number fool you, this is a major release and ffmpeg isn’t the only news. Handbrake on Linux has also been upgraded and now has an official GTK graphical interface — there’s even available as a binary for Ubuntu. And don’t think that the new UI means just a wrapper GUI for the command line features, in fact the Linux GUI of Handbrake now has full feature parity with the Mac interface.
Of course, if you’re thinking that all this good stuff can’t come without a price, you’re right. Due to infringement concerns, the latest version of Handbrake no longer has built-in DVD decryption. The code that handles the decryption circumvents the copy protection present on commercial discs, and therefore violates copyright laws like the DMCA. We’d argue that copying a movie you own from a DVD to your iPod or iPhone falls within the bounds of fair use, but current laws state otherwise.
However, before you freak out, bear in mind that all you need to do to get it back is install VLC, which still ships with the libdvdread library which handles the dirty work of decoding.
As Handbrake project administrator jbrjake explains in the app’s user forum, “HandBrake being libdvdcss-free is something that a developer asked for over a year ago, because it made him feel uncomfortable openly contributing to the project. At the time I promised him we would try to get rid of it, and while it took quite awhile, dynaflash found a way to do it on the Mac side that I feel works very well and doesn’t make the process any more difficult in regular usage.”
He adds that since the project is open source, anyone can still build the functionality into Handbrake. The decryption code will download from VLC’s servers rather than Handbrake’s.
“Basically, we’re wiping our hands of storing and providing the decryption code ourselves. It won’t be in HandBrake’s binaries and it won’t be on HandBrake’s servers,” he writes.
The latest version of Handbrake is, of course, a free download. For more details on what’s new and changed, check out the Handbrake announcement or look through the release notes in Trac.
Frankly, we were getting worried the Handbrake project had gone dormant, so the new version is welcome, not only for the added features, but just to assure us that our favorite video converter is indeed still alive and kicking.
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