HandBrake GUI Roundup

I previously posted all of this information in a thread at the Ubuntu forums, but I wanted to post it here, too, so I could update it as new versions/information arise. This is a list of all of the GUIs/frontends (that I know of) for HandBrake, along with information regarding features/limitations and development progress for each.

1. GHB is the official GTK GUI that is included with the HandBrake source code (currently just available in the SVN repository). It was written by a swell guy known as JohnAStebbins from the HandBrake forums and it's nearly on par with the OS X GUI in features. However, some people have trouble getting it to compile. On Ubuntu, it requires at least Hardy. (you can download 32-bit and 64-bit deb binaries from here or you can compile from source using HandBrake's official SVN repository [directions here]).

2. qtHB (aka qHandBrake) is an early, yet promising GUI based on the official QT4 HandBrake code that languished in SVN until a HandBrake forums user known as gonza updated it recently. It is still in early development and not yet included in the official SVN code, but it is nearly as complete as GHB and significantly easier to compile (fewer dependencies). (You can read about it here or download and compile it using my instructions here).

3. HandBrakeGTK (aka RippedWire) is a port of a Windows CLI wrapper that requires mono-devel to run. It has a bug that causes it to not pass advanced x264 options to the CLI, which is a total deal-breaker for me. However, its queue feature works well, so it can be useful for batch rips if you don't mind using baseline AVC. It also works well with other codecs, such as xvid, that don't suffer from the adv. x264 opts bug. Another advantage is that you can easily update the HandBrakeCLI backend without affecting the graphical frontend. RippedWire does not appear to be in active development. (read about its history here or download it here. 64-bit users can try this one, which I built from the author's mono project files on my 64-bit system [just install mono-devel, move the executable into the same directory as your HandBrakeCLI binary and type mono HandBrakeGTK.exe]).

4. gHandBrake is a GTK CLI wrapper written from scratch by a guy that goes by Derrik81787. I later added x264 options to it, but I'm a terrible programmer and it ended up really unstable. Derrik seems to have dropped the project because his site for it is gone (Update: he's too busy with classes to work on it now but plans to revisit development in the future), but I would love to see someone tweak the code for better stability (the big issue appears to be with malloc, which I know nothing about; leave a comment if you'd like to pitch in). The major advantage to this frontend is that it is really easy to compile and it has very simple dependencies, unlike the official GTK GUI. (read about it here or download it here).

If you have anything to add, or if you have any corrections, please leave me a comment.

Read More

CPU-optimized Backend for gHandBrake

Edit: The original author of gHandBrake's site appears to be down and I haven't heard from him since I submitted code to add most of the advanced x264 options to the interface, so I decided to offer my updated version right here (64-bit binary plus source code) until further notice. If you need to compile it for a 32-bit system, I have a list of dependencies for HandBrake here, and precompiled binaries of Yasm Debian/Ubuntu systems here. If you have any problems with any of it, just let me know in the comments and I'll try to help.

You can also download the unmodified gHandBrake (fewer features, but more stable) here. This package includes both the source tarball and a precompiled 64-bit deb binary for Ubuntu/Debian users.

Original post: I've been trying out gHandBrake, the excellent new GTK frontend for HandBrake. It's very early in development, so it doesn't have many of the advanced options--such as advanced x264 options--implemented yet but it seems quite solid and will eventually be a great replacement for HandBrakeGTK/RippedWire, which is basically just an incomplete port of the Windows GUI (of note, HandBrakeGTK does not actually pass advanced x264 options to the commandline).

Unfortunately, the precompiled binaries offered by the author do not appear to utilize HandBrake's processor-specific optimizations, so I decided to offer an optimized 64-bit build of the backend that would:
Download link

To use it, just download and extract, then replace the old ghandbrake-backend with the newer version. In a console, you would type (assuming it was extracted to your desktop):

sudo mv -f ~/Desktop/ghandbrake-backend /usr/bin

Since switching to the updated backend, my average encoding speed went from ~40 fps to ~115 fps, but YMMV.

Of course, if you compiled gHandBrake yourself from source, you would already have the optimizations included as long as you had the yasm assembler installed when you compiled. If you want to go this route, I have a precompiled yasm binary that recognizes SSE3 instructions in my previous post.

Please leave me a comment if you have any questions or concerns.

Read More