HandBrake 0.9.3

Many transcoders, encoders and compressors do a pretty decent job, but only a few can do an excellent job for free.

Unlike most media convertors which have complex switches and settings to tweak before doing the job, HandBrake is an ideal and simple-to-operate video encoder to convert any video into multiple formats and containers for playback on portable media players. Use it for transcoding video into multiple MPEG-4 formats such as MP4, AVI, OGM or MKV. It was originally developed for BeOS and is now available for free under multiple operating systems — Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. One can select multiple sources such as DVD, AVI or MPEG and the program also features chapter selection, subtitles, cropping, scaling, frame rates and multi-channel audio.

The application also supports batch encoding, which means that you can select multiple files or chapters from a single DVD and leave the rest to the software to process.

It does a fine job of converting a DVD video into the most popular MKV format. HandBrake first scans the video or DVD chapters and titles before adding them to the list when you choose the source. Assign the task for the title to be encoded and specify the destination for the video to be stored. Choose the output container format (MKV, AVI, MP4, M4V or OGM) and you are ready to transcode your video. Various options that can be chosen are cropping, size, codec, frame rate, bitrates and audio codec (AAC, MP3, Vorbis and AC3) ranging from stereo, Dolby surround, Dolby Pro Logic II and multi-channel.

If these settings are tedious or confusing for the first time user, there are preset values which can be chosen from the right column. These presets are also built keeping in mind multiple media and gaming consoles. You can also create custom presets and save them to the list to save you from the trouble of setting up over and over again.

Basically, Handbrake 0.9.3 is a free and an ideal choice if you need a free and easy to use media encoder/convertor.

Download Handbrake here.