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HandBrake updated to 0.9.9

Handbrake, Eric Petit’s incredibly useful open-source DVD ripping/conversion utility, has been updated to version 0.9.9.

The new version, a 9.1 megabyte download, offers the following fixes and changes:

General:
– Improved HandBrake pineapple icon by Matt Johnson.

– Improved Retina-resolution icons within the application, by Nik Pawlak (http://nikpawlak.com).

Core:
– Blu-ray (PGS) subtitle support.

– Works with Foreign Audio Search.

– Can be Burned-In.

– Can be passed through to MKV (but not MP4).

– Additional video framerates (30, 50, 59.94, 60 fps).

– Double framerate (“bob”) mode for the deinterlace and decomb filters.

– Better audio remix support.

– Additional mixdowns: 6.1, 7.1, 7.1 (5F/2R/LFE).

– CLI users should note 6ch becomes 5point1.

– Better-than-Stereo sources can be upmixed to 5.1.

– Discard one channel from Stereo sources.

– Mono (Left Only), Mono (Right Only).

– Allow the selection of higher audio bitrates where appropriate.

– Allow the selection of lower audio samplerates where appropriate.

– 8, 11.025, 12, 16 kHz.

– Audio dithering (TPDF) when converting to 16-bit FLAC.

– Use libavcodec for DTS audio decoding (instead of libdca).

– DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete support.

– All graphical interfaces: support for x264’s preset, tune and profile options alternative to the Advanced panel (which is still available).

– HandBrake-specific option to ensure compliance with a specific H.264 level.

Updated built-in presets:
– Take advantage of x264 preset/tune/profile support.

– Removed increasingly suboptimal and irrelevant Legacy presets.

– Assorted bug fixes and improvements to the core library (libhb).

Updated libraries:
– x264 r2273-b3065e6.

– Libav v9.6.

– libbluray 0.2.3.

Windows:
– User Interface has been re-written in WPF.

– Includes many small UI enhancements.

– Switched to .NET 4 Client Profile (smaller download for those who don’t have .NET 4 fully installed).

Mac:
– Assorted bug fixes including better support for Retina displays.

– Prevent sleep during encoding and scanning for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

– Drag & Drop files onto the Main window or application icon to scan.

– Nicer progress indication on the dock icon.

– Preview window improvements and bugfixes.

– Updated Growl to 2.0.1.

– Notification Center support (when Growl is not installed).

Linux:
– Assorted bug fixes and improvements.

– Use some system libraries rather than bundling (fontconfig, freetype, libxml2, libass, libogg, libvorbis, libtheora and libsamplerate).

Command Line Interface:
– Audio option (-a) will ignore invalid input tracks and encode with only the valid ones.

– Allow use of hh:mm:ss format when specifying p-to-p start/stop time.

Advanced audio options:
– Enable level normalization when downmixing (disabled by default).

– Disable audio dithering or select a specific algorithm.

HandBrake 0.9.9 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or later to install and run.

If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback, please let us know in the comments.