HandBrake for Mac

HandBrake for Mac is a free and open source tool for converting video files from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

It enables anyone to easily prepare their camera videos to be played on a wide variety of devices, including all versions of iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Android phones, Android tables and more.

Of course, the app fully supports one of the most popular video conversion processes of all time -transfer of movies from your DVDs to your hard drive by converting them to files in the MPEG-4 format. You can apply many great video filters (grayscale, detelecine, decomb, deinterlace, denoise, deblock), as well as set the video codec, quality and framerate, audio codec, mixdown, sample frequency rate and bitrate.

HandBrake was originally created in 2003 by the Eric Petit who made this app exclusively for the shortly lived BeOS operating system, but was shortly after ported to Windows, macOS and Linux (Ubuntu).

Petit continued being active on the development of the app until 2006 when he left and enabled its community to continue working on updates (originally made under the name “MediaFork”, but later renamed back to the app).

Today, after so many years and turbulent state of development, Handbrake for macOS still represents one of the most popular video conversion programs on the market, with support for many features that make conversion process easy and intuitive.

Even still, the tool remains to be 100% free and with regular updates continues to expand its capability to work with all currently popular video and audio codecs on the market.

Just a few of the reasons we think you'll love Handbrake:

Built-in Device Presets
Get started with the app in seconds by choosing a profile optimized for your device, or choose a universal profile for standard or high quality conversions. Simple, easy, fast. For those that want more choice, tweak many basic and advanced options to improve yours encodes.

Supported Input Sources
Hand brake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or BluRay sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.

Outputs

• File Containers: .MP4(.M4V) and .MKV
• Video Encoders: H.264(x264), MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 (libav), and Theora(libtheora)
• Audio Encoders: AAC, CoreAudio AAC/HE-AAC (OS X Only), MP3, Flac, AC3, or Vorbis
• Audio Pass-thru: AC-3, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC and MP3 tracks

Even more features

• Title / Chapter selection
• Queue up multiple encodes
• Chapter Markers
• Subtitles (VobSub, Closed Captions CEA-608, SSA, SRT)
• Constant Quality or Average Bitrate Video Encoding
• Support for VFR, CFR and VFR
• Video Filters: Deinterlacing, Decomb, Detelecine, Deblock, Grayscale, Cropping and scaling
• Live Video Preview

How to Use

Install by dragging the app to the Applications folder

Open HandBrake and load a video file

Choose a preset or customize encoding settings

Select output format and destination

Click "Start" to begin the conversion

Monitor progress in the bottom status bar

System Requirements

macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later

64-bit Intel or Apple Silicon (M1/M2) processor

At least 2 GB of RAM

100 MB of disk space for installation

Additional space for output files

PROS

• Supports many video formats
• Free and open-source software
• Batch encoding capability
• Advanced encoding settings available
• Regularly updated and maintained

CONS

• No built-in DVD decryption
• Interface may confuse beginners
• Limited video editing tools
• Encoding can be time-consuming
• Some presets may not fit all devices

Note: Requires 64-bit processor.

Also Available: Download HandBrake for Windows