HandBrake 1.2.0 Released With Apple VideoToolbox Hardware-Accelerated Video Encoding, TouchBar Support, Dark Mode, More

The popular HandBrake video encoding app has been updated with Apple VideoToolbox Hardware-Accelerated Video Encoding, TouchBar Support, Dark Mode on macOS Mojave, and much more.

The HandBrake Team is pleased to announce the release of HandBrake 1.2.0. This release includes improved support for opening sources previously unreadable; new official presets for Amazon Fire and Google Chromecast devices; AMD VCE, Nvidia NVENC, and Apple VideoToolbox hardware-accelerated video encoding; Touch Bar support on macOS; Dark Mode support on macOS 10.14 Mojave; initial localization support on Mac and Windows including German translation; and much more.

Check out the full changelog below. You can download HandBrake for free from here.




What's New in This Version:
All platforms
General
- Switched core decoding library from Libav to FFmpeg
- Fixes numerous sources previously unreadable or otherwise broken
- Facilitates a number of the improvements and features in this release and planned for the future
- Removed deprecated Legacy presets
- See the list of compatible replacements on GitHub
- Updated official presets to use stereo instead of DPL2 mixdown
- Avoids potential spatial positioning issues with the current DPL2 algorithm and wide pans in source material
- Limited in impact since DPL2 decoding has not been in widespread use for years
- Updated official presets descriptions to revise compatibility and mention recently released devices
- Updated official presets to rename Fire TV to Amazon Fire
- Added Amazon Fire 720p30 and Chromecast 1080p60 presets
- Added {creation-date} and {creation-time} to automatic file naming
Video
- Fixed an issue decoding Blu-ray titles where the aspect ratio is unknown (assume 16:9)
- Fixed an issue encoding video with very short frame durations (less than 0.00285s or greater than 350 FPS)
- Improved extradata handling to accommodate all codecs
- Added support for decoding TIFF/LZMA video
Audio
- Fixed potential decoding issue for audio lacking an explicit channel layout (intelligently guess the layout)
- Fixed a potential crash during audio probe
- Improved resampling to allow dithering for all codecs (only where necessary)
- Improved quality of the default AAC encoder on non-Mac platforms (FFmpeg AAC), no longer experimental
- Improved bit rate constraints to allow Opus as low as 6 kbit/s per channel
- Added support for up to 7.1 channel AAC encoding (note that FDK AAC/HE-AAC do not support 6.1)
- Added support for E-AC3 audio in MP4 container
- Added Speex audio decoder
Subtitles
- Fixed a potential crash where an SRT file cannot be opened
- Added support for SRT files using periods instead of commas to delineate fractions
Command Line Interface
- Fixed inability to override preset subtitles burn setting (native and none are now valid values for --subtitle-burned)
Build system
- Fixed Linux packaging with an out-of-tree build directory
- Fixed Windows graphical interface build script signing tool location
- Removed --enable-local-* and associated contrib libraries; please see the documentationfor dependencies help
- Updated to mingw-w64-build 4.1.0 with gcc 7.3.0, continuous output (keep alive), and miscellaneous improvements
- Improved support for building with Xcode 10
- Improved support for building on FreeBSD 11, 12, and 13
- Improved Flatpak packaging for Linux (numerous fixes and improvements, no longer experimental)
- Improved configure.py to always use the Python executable found by configure
- Added script for creating Flatpak manifests
- Added support for selecting a compiler via the CC environment variable
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements
Third-party libraries
- Removed libraries
- Libav 12.3 (decoding and filters)
- yasm 1.3.0
- Updated libraries
- libopus 1.3 (Opus audio encoding)
- x264 157 r2935 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
- x265 2.9 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
- New libraries
- FFmpeg 4.1 (decoding and filters)
- liblzma (xz) 5.2.4 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
- libspeex 1.2.0 (Speex audio decoding)

Linux
- Fixed Blu-ray title name being set to device name (e.g. sr0) when scanning raw devices
- Fixed Blu-ray default destination file names to no longer include MPLS number
- Fixed an issue with queue state not being updated properly on reload
- Fixed various issues importing presets
- Updated most translations
- Added initial support for GTK 4
- Added ability to customize activity window font size and increased default from 7 to 8
- Added destination overwrite protection (append number to file name on conflict)
- Added {source-path} to automatic path setting
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

Mac
- HandBrake now requires OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later
- Removed preferences option to show the advanced tab (deprecated and slated for removal)
- Fixed minor display issues on macOS 10.14 Mojave
- Fixed queue toolbar icon not updating
- Removed Growl in favor of native system notifications
- Updated Sparkle automatic update library
- Improved handling of invalid presets
- Improved layout to better support localization
- Improved preview border alignment on high density displays
- Improved automatic naming to avoid updating when unrelated settings change
- Improved criteria for showing destination overwrite warnings
- Improved stop encoding confirmation dialog
- Improved notifications to no longer play sounds when alerts are disabled
- Added initial localization support and German translation
- Added initial support for VideoToolbox hardware-accelerated encoding
- Added support for Dark Mode on macOS 10.14 Mojave (new Dark Mode toolbar icons require building with Xcode 10 on Mojave)
- Added Touch Bar support to various windows and dialogs
- Added Finder progress bar to files currently encoding
- Added Show Source in Finder to queue contextual menu (renamed Show in Finder to Show Destination in Finder)
- Added validation for custom filter parameters
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements


Windows
- HandBrake now requires .NET Framework 4.7.1 or later (installer offers download if missing)
- Fixed mixdown selection where the specified mixdown in the selected preset is not available
- Fixed audio sample rate of 48 kHz being selected where Auto was the specified behaviour
- Removed preferences option to show the advanced tab (deprecated and slated for removal)
- Removed options menu from queue in favour of contextual menu
- Improved layout to better support localization
- Improved error handling when adding items to the queue
- Improved multi-instance queue recovery to avoid loading queue files from the wrong instance
- Improved filters layout and controls
- Improved video quality slider by allowing it to grow with window size and setting x264/x265 granularity to 0.5
- Improved SRT import default browse location (open source video location)
- Improved keyboard shortcuts by making Ctrl-S open the destination save dialog (start encode is now Ctrl-E)
- Added additional keyboard shortcuts for various actions
- Added initial localization support and German translation
- Added support for AMD VCE and Nvidia NVENC hardware-accelerated encoders
- Added automatic queue archiving and option to select an archived queue for recovery (archives are removed after 7 days)
- Added support for recovering specific queue files on start using --recover-queue-ids=
- Added additional controls to passthru audio tracks to configure audio fallback parameters
- Added ability to drag and drop SRT subtitles files onto the main window
- Added option to disable preview image on summary tab
- Added option to disable checking for update on start in portable mode
- Added stop encoding confirmation dialog
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements