Handbrake, Eric Petit’s incredibly useful open-source DVD ripping/conversion utility, has been updated to version 0.9.9.
The new version, a 9.1 megabyte download, offers the following fixes and changes:
General:
– Improved HandBrake pineapple icon by Matt Johnson.
– Improved Retina-resolution icons within the application, by Nik Pawlak (http://nikpawlak.com).
Core:
– Blu-ray (PGS) subtitle support.
– Works with Foreign Audio Search.
– Can be Burned-In.
– Can be passed through to MKV (but not MP4).
– Additional video framerates (30, 50, 59.94, 60 fps).
– Double framerate (“bob”) mode for the deinterlace and decomb filters.
– Better audio remix support.
– Additional mixdowns: 6.1, 7.1, 7.1 (5F/2R/LFE).
– CLI users should note 6ch becomes 5point1.
– Better-than-Stereo sources can be upmixed to 5.1.
– Discard one channel from Stereo sources.
– Mono (Left Only), Mono (Right Only).
– Allow the selection of higher audio bitrates where appropriate.
– Allow the selection of lower audio samplerates where appropriate.
– 8, 11.025, 12, 16 kHz.
– Audio dithering (TPDF) when converting to 16-bit FLAC.
– Use libavcodec for DTS audio decoding (instead of libdca).
– DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete support.
– All graphical interfaces: support for x264’s preset, tune and profile options alternative to the Advanced panel (which is still available).
– HandBrake-specific option to ensure compliance with a specific H.264 level.
Updated built-in presets:
– Take advantage of x264 preset/tune/profile support.
– Removed increasingly suboptimal and irrelevant Legacy presets.
– Assorted bug fixes and improvements to the core library (libhb).
Updated libraries:
– x264 r2273-b3065e6.
– Libav v9.6.
– libbluray 0.2.3.
Windows:
– User Interface has been re-written in WPF.
– Includes many small UI enhancements.
– Switched to .NET 4 Client Profile (smaller download for those who don’t have .NET 4 fully installed).
Mac:
– Assorted bug fixes including better support for Retina displays.
– Prevent sleep during encoding and scanning for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
– Drag & Drop files onto the Main window or application icon to scan.
– Nicer progress indication on the dock icon.
– Preview window improvements and bugfixes.
– Updated Growl to 2.0.1.
– Notification Center support (when Growl is not installed).
Linux:
– Assorted bug fixes and improvements.
– Use some system libraries rather than bundling (fontconfig, freetype, libxml2, libass, libogg, libvorbis, libtheora and libsamplerate).
Command Line Interface:
– Audio option (-a) will ignore invalid input tracks and encode with only the valid ones.
– Allow use of hh:mm:ss format when specifying p-to-p start/stop time.
Advanced audio options:
– Enable level normalization when downmixing (disabled by default).
– Disable audio dithering or select a specific algorithm.
HandBrake 0.9.9 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or later to install and run.
If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback, please let us know in the comments.