HandBrake – It Just Converts Stuff
One of the things that really irks me when I want to watch a movie is the actual DVD. More often than not I am watching that movie by myself while traveling, and considering that my Dell Mini 10v netbook does not have a DVD drive and the extra weight and bulk from an external drive (not to mention the disc(s) that contain the movie) it only makes sense for me to have an easy-to-access non-disc solution. I have a hard drive large enough to store a few complete DVD’s, but that tends to take up a lot of space at nearly 8 GB per movie! And don’t even think about watching it on an iPod or video game console.
That’s where HandBrake comes into play. HandBrake is able to take nearly any video file or DVD and convert it to a major video format, such as AVI, MP4, and MKV with codecs such as h.264 and MPEG-4. For most purposes, it gets the job done. There are even presets for your device of choice, or universal presets that should work on most devices.
But being able to convert video files doesn’t set HandBrake apart from other conversion utilities, nor does that fact that it is completely free and open source. No, the reason I like it is because all of those features are available no matter your choice of Windows, Mac or Linux. Too often cross-platform apps don’t resemble each other very well, but HandBrake breaks that stereotype. You’ll be able to find the same look and feel on all three operating systems.
There are a few drawbacks to HandBrake. It’s no the prettiest program I’ve used, nor is it the most user-friendly; non-hardcore users will probably be intimidated, and the presets are not always optimal. DVD conversion is a one-way process, you can’t make a DVD from your video files. Copyrighted (otherwise know as DRM) videos will probably not be readable by HandBrake. Also, the fact that it hasn’t been updated in nearly a year is somewhat disconcerting.
Overall, though, I’ve been rather pleased with the program. I’m not saying it can meet every need, but it gets the job done for me, no matter what OS I am using at the time.
