Top Handbrake Alternatives and Overview

HandBrake is an open-source, cross-platform software program that is designed to convert video files from one format to another or simply put, a video transcoder. This free application has been in development since 2003 and is still being regularly updated with new features and support for newer file formats. While it originally was developed for BeOS only, its compatibility was later extended to Windows, Linux, and macOS.

It is, in its present state, one of the most powerful video conversion tools with a feature set that is at par at, or even exceeding, most of the premium solutions available in the market. The software itself is completely free. It is also very smart at utilizing system resources, resulting in extremely fast and high-quality video conversions.

Faster and smarter video transcoding

The video conversion is usually a very resource-intensive and time-consuming task, even when done on a fairly powerful computer. This is basically because the programs used generally cannot utilize the system resources efficiently. HandBrake, on the other hand, was designed while keeping this in mind.

It uses a very powerful hardware acceleration method on certain codecs where it can be used, completing the conversion in short time with fairly high-quality results. It can only use this encoding method on those processors having onboard SIP blocks. Other than choosing the encoding method and the output format, users can also change the bitrate of the output and its quality.

A feature-set that puts premium software to shame

HandBrake has been in development for a long period of time, and has had many forks and merges over its history. This has ensured that the number of features has only increased over the years. With a streamlined interface, faster functionality and several inputs and output format support including DVDs and CDs input, HandBrake demolish all its competitors in a contest of features and pure functionality. It also is powerful enough to process batches of files at once, and its functionality can be enhanced by external scripts.