Today we are taking a little look at a piece of software called, HandBrake. No, this does not have anything to do with your car! This is a free-to-use video transcoder that is open source and it is packed with a lot of really neat features that those who like to play around with video editing will find very useful.
How to Download Handbrake
To download Handbrake you need to click on the Download button that you will find located at the end of this review.
The Program Review
The basic idea of what HandBrake is offering is that it is here to make your life much easier. There have been a ton of video formats over the years and with this, you can take a video that is one kind of format and convert it to another. This can be really handy if you have some old videos on your computer that you want to “modernize” so that they work with most modern media players.
To start with this supports pretty much any device. If you look down the list it is just staggering what is on offer here. Android, Fire TV, Apple TV, PlayStation, and a ton more can be selected. For people who are not super technically minded, you can use a “universal” profile that is there to make video converting easy and quick.
For those that want to be a bit more hands-on, you do have some very deep advanced options. You can even take stuff off a DVD or a Blue-Ray as long as it does not have copy protection. If it does have copy protection, I am not 100 percent sure what will happen. If it is a file on your computer though, pretty much anything is fair game for the HandBrake program to convert.
When you are converting your video, you can pick from numerous options. These options range from having a peak or steady framerate to the overall quality. The file you are using may dictate what the quality will be like. However, those who love to be more hands-on with this will get a real kick out of the many different options that they can play around with here.
For me personally, the thing that I found very useful with this program was making my own DVDs for my son. On our computer, we have a bunch of shows from the 80s that I grew up with which he loved. Some of these shows such as Paw Paw Bears and Count Duckula are hard to come by, so being able to make him DVDs was great.
You may be thinking can’t you just do that on Windows? Yes, I can, but in my experience, that is a pain in the butt and hit or miss if it works. With this, I can have a title screen, chapters and make it a pretty high-quality thing. Those who like to have their family movies and stuff like that on a physical format or even in a higher quality digital format will love this.
As the HandBrake program is free to download and use, I do not see any reason why you would not want to try it. If you have some old video files on your computer that you would like to modernize this program is ideal. Also, if making DVDs or just organizing your video files is something that you want to do, this has you covered.
