HandBrake 1.6 adds AV1 video encoding, Quick Look support and more
The popular open source HandBrake video transcoder for Linux, Mac and Windows has been updated to version 1.6.
HandBrake 1.6 brings numerous new features and improvements, including support for AV1 video encoding, VP9 10-bit encoding, improved video scaling performance on Apple Silicon, Quick Look support, and more.
See the full changelog below.
HANDBRAKE 1.6.0
All platforms
General
● Added AV1 video encoding
● Added high bit depth and color depth support for multiple encoders and filters
● Added 4K AV1 General, QSV (Hardware) and MKV (Matroska) presets
● Added 4K HEVC global presets and updated related presets to use similar encoder settings
● Revised Web presets and renamed Creator, Email and Social
● VP8 presets removed
○ The VP8 video encoder is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release
○ Relatedly, Theora encoder is long deprecated and will be removed in a future release
● Other other preset versions
Video
● Added SVT-AV1 (software) and Intel QSV AV1 (hardware) video encoders
● Added 10-bit VP9 encoder
● Added 10-bit NVENC HEVC encoder
● Added support for NVDEC decoder.
● Added 10-bit VCN HEVC encoder
● Added H.264 levels 6, 6.1 and 6.2 for x264 encoder
● Added H.264/H.265 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 profiles for x264 and x265 encoders
● Added H.265 4:2:2 profile for Apple Silicon’s VideoToolbox encoder
● Added support for Intel Deep Link Hyper Encode (use multiple QSV media engines to improve performance)
● Fixed a long-standing issue where the slowest NVENC encoder preset caused encoding errors
● Removed support for Intel processors above 6th generation (Skylake) when using Intel Quick Sync Video
Filters
● Added Bwdif Deinterlace filter
● Improved auto-crop filter algorithm
○ Better accuracy in mixed-format content, e.g. both letterbox and full-size images
● Improved video scaling performance on Apple Silicon and ARM based systems
○ Use zscale format (zimg) by default and revert to sw scale if needed
● Improved multi-threaded performance (slightly) for the following filters on high core count systems
○ Comb recognition
○ Disassemble
○ Noise
— NLM stands for
● Updated the following filters to support more than 8-bit content and 4:2:2/4:4:4 chroma subsampling
○ Detelecine
○ Comb recognition
○ Disassemble
○ Shade of gray
○ Noise
— NLM stands for
— HQDN3D
○ Chroma Smooth
○ Sharpen
— Blurry
— LapSharp
Build the system
● Added support for building OpenBSD
● Added –cpu configure parameter to allow building the original CPU architecture
● Added –lto configure parameter to enable link time optimization
● Various bug fixes and improvements
Third party libraries
● Updated libraries
○ AMF 1.4.24 (AMD VCN encoding)
○ FFmpeg 5.1.2 (decoding and filters)
○ FreeType 2.12.1 (subtitles)
○ Fribidi 1.0.12 (subtitles)
○ HarfBuzz 4.4.1 (subtitles)
○ libass 0.16.0 (subtitles)
○ libbluray 1.3.4 (Blu-ray decoding)
○ libdav1d 1.0.0 (AV1 decoding)
○ libdvdread 6.1.3 (DVD decoding)
○ liblzma (xz) 5.2.6 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
○ libjpeg-turbo 2.1.4 (preview image compression)
○ libspeex 1.2.1 (Speex audio encoding)
○ libvpx 1.12.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding)
○ libxml 2.10.3 (generic)
○ oneVPL 2023.1.0 (Intel QSV encoding/decoding)
○ x264 164 r3100 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
○ x265 r12747 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)
○ zimg 3.0.4 (color conversion)
● New libraries
○ SVT-AV1 1.4.1 (AV1 encoding)
Linux
● Added many quality of life improvements contributed by community members
● Better parity with Mac and Windows GUIs
● Various bug fixes and improvements
● Updated translations
● Added new translations
○ Bulgaria (Български)
○ Finnish (Finland)
○ Georgia
Mac
● Quick Look support added to queue
● Various bug fixes and improvements
● Updated translations
● Added Japanese translation
Windows
● Various bug fixes and improvements
● Updated all translations
● Added new translations
○ Bulgaria (Български)
○ Dutch (Netherlands)
○ Poland (Polski)