HandBrake 0.9.5 adds new presets, some Blu-ray support

After more than one year in development, the HandBrake Project developers have announced the arrival of version 0.9.5 of their open source multi-threaded video transcoder. HandBrake is a popular cross-platform program for converting various formats to several other formats, such as an MPEG-4 video file using the .avi, .ogm or .mkv containers. The video transcoder features subtitle support, chapter selection, picture de-interlacing, cropping and scaling, and multiple built-in presets, such as AppleTV and iPhone.

HandBrake 0.9.5 features support for MP3 audio and VOBSUB subtitles in MP4 files, updated presets for new devices and improved quality, AC3 encoding support, a peak frame rate option and support for Blu-ray disk structure – Blu-ray decryption is not supported. DVD Main Feature detection has also been improved when using dvdnav. Other changes include updated Libraries (x264, FFmpeg), SSA Subtitle support, Point-to-Point encoding, batch file scanning and a variety of bug fixes, as well as user interface (UI) improvements.

HandBrake 0.9.5 on Mac OS X 10.6. Platform-specific changes include a new Audio Panel that supports more than 4 audio tracks on Mac OS X, Applications folder VLC detection and multiple instance support. On Windows, Encode Status is now shown in the GUI and Auto-Naming for destination file name has been improved. The Linux version has also undergone improvements with the addition of multiple instance support, as well as several UI updates.

Additionally, the latest Mac OS X version no longer officially supports the PowerPC (PPC) processor architecture. The developers say that, due to limited resources and time, development of a PPC compatible version "simply isn’t feasible". Those using older hardware are advised to continue running version 0.9.4.

Further information about the update, including a full list of changes, can be found in an annoucnement post on the HandBrake forums and in the change log. Handbrake 0.9.5 is available to download for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux from SourceForge. A user guide is also provided. HandBrake is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

(crve)