HandBrake 1.8 open-source and cross-platform video transcoder application arrived today as a major update that finally brings a GTK4 port for Linux, as well as numerous other new features and improvements.
Coming a little over three months after HandBrake 1.7.3, the HandBrake 1.8 release introduces a GTK4 port of the UI for Linux users, along with recursive file scan support, refreshed app icons, new --clear-queue and --auto-start-queue flags, and support for drag-and-drop multi-file scanning.
Also for Linux users, HandBrake 1.8 updates the “Open Source” button to make the folder/batch mode more discoverable, updates many of the existing language translations, fixes miscellaneous bugs, and adds various other smaller improvements for a better experience.
For all supported platforms, HandBrake 1.8 introduces support for the FFV1 encoder, along with a new “Preservation FFV1” preset under the “Professional” category, support for multi-pass CQ with VP9, support for VP9 tunes, and Dolby Vision dynamic metadata pass-through for SVT-AV1.
It also adds VP9 and FLAC muxing support in the MP4 container, a TrueHD encoder, 88.2, 96, 176.4, and 192 kHz sample rates for TrueHD and FLAC encoders, AMF 1.4.33 for AMD VCN video encoding, oneVPL 2.10.1 for Intel QSV video encoding and decoding, SVT-AV1 2.1.0 for AV1 video encoding, x264 164 r3186 for H.264/AVC video encoding, x265 3.6 for H.265/HEVC video encoding, libdovi 3.3.0 for Dolby Vision dynamic metadata, libopus 1.5.2 for Opus audio encoding, libvpx 1.14.0 for VP8/VP9 video encoding, and FFmpeg 7.0 support.
On top of all that, HandBrake 1.8 improves Decomb’s speed by removing unneeded frame copies, improves Framerate Shaper metrics for high-depth frames, improves audio track selection by tracking “linked” audio tracks, and improves the libdovi package to make it possible to ship it in the Flatpak version of the app distributed on Flathub.
Among other noteworthy changes, this release removes timestamp jitters in the MP4 container when using a constant NTSC frame rate, removes support for importing legacy plist-based presets from older HandBrake versions, fixes overriding of subtitle settings, and fixes incorrect channel layout when encoding a 6.1 track to Opus.
HandBrake 1.8 also fixes pass-through of VobSub tracks that contain empty of fully transparent subtitle samples, an issue that prevented decoding VobSub tracks stored inside MP4 files, burn-in of SSA/ASS subtitles inside MKV files that have duplicated Read Orders, and processing of audio overrides to preset.
Check out the release notes on the project’s GitHub page for more details about the changes included in this release, from where you can also download HandBrake 1.8 as a Flatpak app that you can easily install on your GNU/Linux distribution using a graphical App Store like GNOME Software or Plasma Discover.
Last updated 8 hours ago