The release of the new version of the popular multithreaded transcoding of video files from one format to another Hand Brake 1.4.0A version that comes after almost two years of development and in which a large number of improvements have been made, including the graphical interface of the application, support for Apple M1, among other things.
For those who do not know about this application, they should know that it is geared for multithreaded transcoding of audio and video files, this is a multiplatform application so it can be used in OS X, GNU / Linux and Windows..
HandBrake uses third-party libraries, such as FFmpeg and FAAC. Handbrake it can process most common multimedia files and any source. The program can transcode BluRay / DVD video, copies of the VIDEO_TS directory and any file whose format is compatible with the libavformat and libavcodec libraries of FFmpeg / LibAV. The output can be generated containerized files such as WebM, MP4 and MKV, AV1, H.265, H.264, MPEG-2, VP8, VP9 and Theora codecs can be used for video encoding, for audio - AAC, MP3, AC-3, Flac, Vorbis and Opus.
Main new features of HandBrake 1.4.0
In this new version Improvements have been made to the HandBrake engine to support 10-bit and 12-bit encoding per color, including HDR10 metadata forwarding. It should be noted that not all filters support 10 and 12 bits.
Another of the changes that stands out is the extended functionality related to the use of mechanisms of hardware acceleration for Intel QuickSync chip encoding, AMD VCN and Qualcomm ARM, plus support for Apple devices based on the M1 chip was added.
On the part of the encoder updates AMDVCN, in which a aquality setting for restricted vbr speed control mode by VCN. The results are equal to or better than in cqp mode and the bitrate is much more predictable and also iIncludes optimized H265 presets for 1080p and 4K content.
Encoder updates are also highlighted Intel Quick Sync, in which a mminor performance improvement by omitting VFR and Crop / Scale filters when they are not necessary and especially in the gRevised memory version that includes improved zero copy support where no software filters are used, which should also improve performance.
On the other hand it is mentioned that provided the ability to use HandBrakeCLI in devices with Qualcomm chips ARM64 shipped with Windows, as well as improved subtitle handling, plus the GUI has been improved for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Finally, if you want to know more about it, you can check the complete changelog by going to to the following link.
How to install Handbrake on Ubuntu and derivatives from PPA?
For those who are interested in being able to install this new version, they can do so from the application's PPA where we can obtain the application updates in a faster way, than compared to the previous method.
For this we are going to open a terminal and we are going to execute the following commands.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases
We update our list of repositories with:
sudo apt-get update
And finally we install the application with:
sudo apt-get install handbrake
How to install Handbrake from snap?
Now if you don't want to add repositories to your system and you have the support to install applications in snap format, you can install HandBrake with the help of this technology, you just have to open a terminal and execute the following command:
sudo snap install handbrake-jz
If they want to install a release candidate version of the program, they do so using this command:
sudo snap install handbrake-jz --candidate
To install the beta version of the program, use this command:
sudo snap install handbrake-jz --beta
Now if you already have the application installed by this method, to update it just execute this command:
sudo snap refresh handbrake-jz