HandBrake 0.9.4

Rip some of your favourite DVDs and store on your computer

HandBrake is an opensource tool that’s designed for one purpose – to backup your DVDs so that you can play them back from your computer. A Mac OS X version has been around for a while and will enable you to backup a DVD to the MPEG4 format, which is playable through QuickTime. With this in mind, any of your backed up DVDs will be playable through the new Apple TV system.

Note that HandBrake should not be used for pirating DVDs. It should only be designed for backing up DVDs that you own in your personal collection. Any backups should be kept for your own personal use and shouldn’t be used for broadcasting through public media.

Handbrake 0.9.4 can now include subtitle tracks that can be turned on or off. Previous versions had to render the subtitles onto the video so they were always there. This also means that multiple subtitle tracks can be included in a single video file.

A live preview gives a chance to see how the video encoding settings will look without having to copy the entire disc or file.

It is better at reading DVDs that were previously problematical and include different angles on discs with that feature. Support for AAC audio in Windows has been improved.

The settings for choosing the quality settings have been made much easier to use with a quality slider rather than demanding a bitrate. Some of the presets have been removed as they were not working properly.

A full list of changes can be found on the Handbrake website here. Downloads for Mac and Linux versions can be foudn on the download page.