Handbrake

[Zardon]

I know its not a 'high end' application but does anyone else find that Handbrake is actually one of the finest free pieces of software on the net? Another added point is the speed with which it converts video into other formats. Its extremely fast...

[FrancescoPontillo]

I use it once a week. It's the best piece of software for this kind of stuff. Just one thing I would add, which is the chance to cut pieces out of the output file: that would be very useful for cutting commercials and stuff.

[fluffychicken]

Gave it a shot tonight - its very impressive, quite quick. I was using IMTOO for my encoding.

[mkk]

Had no idea such a neat, free converter existed. Was already considering getting a smart phone or smaller tablet partly for video on-the-go. Looks like a keeper.

[Zardon]

Hey, a familiar face - MKK, good to see you. Hope life is treating you well. Let me know how you get on with Handbrake.

[mkk]

Previously I've converted a couple of films with some free 3GP converter to test the video limits of my Nokia music phone. It was a lot of trial and error but eventually I got some okay results. The phone only coped with 10-12fps and the little display had really bad angles, but the idea got me hooked. A couple of guys at work are into HTC's Android products and especially the new Desire smartphone with a 3.7" OLED screen has an impressive chip powering it. I'm waiting to see if some "smaller than IPAD" tablet will appear like the rumored HP Slate Mini, since I'm not really looking for a phone. Or I'll get me a HTC Desire and just use it on WiFi. When I buy something I now know what to convert video with, the excellent Handbrake.
It's great to see you're working on the net again.

[Zardon]

Originally Posted by mkk

It's great to see you're working on the net again.

Sincerely, thank you - my health was quite bad for a while and I landed a decent job in a design bureau but im glad to be back 'on the scene' (whatever that means).

I have to say the emails and messages I have received from a lot of people has really made me feel very good lately.

You need to add your avatar though, i saw it on DH for years and always recognised it immediately.

[FiggyG]

Definitely my favorite application. For the fastest speed, I use Ubuntu 10.04 x64. The Windows version is 32-bit only, which is probably the biggest thing hampering its performance. I just performed a quick test of the high profile encoding speed from mpeg2 to h264, identical settings.

Ubuntu 10.04 x64 avg frames/sec: 58
Windows Vista x64 avg frames/sec: 44

This is on a Phenom II x4 940 (3GHz) w/ 8GB of DDR2 800

[Zardon]

Thats quite a difference in performance - I haven't actually used the Windows version in about a year.

[Comp Ali]

Will try it later , honestly though most video converters I tried are just a carbon copy from each others , the same layout with different themes.