A major update to HandBrake, the cross-platform and open-source video transcoder, is now available for download.
HandBrake 1.7.0 brings several new features that will benefit users on Windows and macOS, as well as a host of Linux-specific buffs.
Buffs. I do seem to use that word an awful lot of late…
New features in Handbrake 1.7, as well as more other general changes everyone gets to enjoy (hardware dependant), include:
- AMD VCN AV1 encoder
- NVIDIA NVENC AV1 encoder
- Support for SVT-AV1 multi-pass ABR mode
- Support for preserving ambient viewing enviroment metadata
- QSV Rotate and Format filters
- NVENC no longer uses multi-pass by default (option remains)
- 2-pass encode option renamed to multi-pass
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
ARM and Apple Silicon performance improvement:
- Faster HEVC decoding thanks to the latest FFmpeg
- SVT-AV1 assembly optimizations deliver a 4x increase in performance
If you regularly convert videos on Linux using this app (as I was recently; I went through a spate of ripping BluRays in MakeMKV then squashing the giant MKVs it proceeded down to more reasonable file sizes) this update also includes:
- Improved QSV support
- Drag and drop support for video scanning
- Support for native file choosers via xdg-desktop-portal
- Queue > Add All menu option
- XML chapter import and export
- Bit depth and HDR information in video summary
- Option to pause encoding when power saver activated
- Automatic file naming options
- Queue, Activity, & Presets windows behaviour tweaks
For more details see the official v1.7.0 changelog on GitHub.
Download HandBrake 1.7
HandBrake 1.7 is available to download for Windows, macOS, and Linux from the HandBrake website, or from its GitHub page.
Linux users can also install the HandBrake Flathub package, which is not yet updated at the time of writing but will be available shortly.
Don’t need the latest version? You can install an older version of HandBrake from the Ubuntu repos by running a simple sudo apt install handbrake command, or getting it graphically using your preferred package manager frontend.