What HandBrake does
HandBrake is a free, open-source video transcoder available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It converts video from a wide range of input formats into two widely compatible container formats: MP4 (also saved with the M4V extension) and MKV. The project is developed by a volunteer team and released under the GNU General Public License, making the full source code publicly auditable. At its core, HandBrake reads video from files, unencrypted DVDs, and unencrypted Blu-ray discs, then re-encodes the footage using modern codecs including H.264, H.265 (HEVC), AV1, VP9, and several others. Audio tracks can be passed through unchanged or re-encoded in formats such as AAC, MP3, AC3, and FLAC. Subtitle tracks — including SRT files and image-based formats from optical discs — can be embedded or burned into the output. HandBrake ships with a built-in preset system covering common output targets such as streaming services, mobile devices, and general-purpose archiving. These presets handle codec selection, resolution scaling, and quality settings automatically, which suits users who do not want to configure encoding parameters manually. Users who do want fine control can adjust frame rate, deinterlacing filters, noise reduction, crop settings, chapter markers, and audio track layout individually. A batch queue lets users line up multiple source files or titles and process them sequentially without manual intervention. On systems with compatible graphics hardware, HandBrake can also use GPU-accelerated encoding paths to reduce encoding time while the CPU remains available for other work. This page links to the full offline installer for HandBrake, sourced directly from the project's official GitHub releases page. To avoid modified or bundled versions, always download from the official publisher at the domain shown on this page.
