HandBrake (GUI) v0.10 RC 2

Ive been using handBrake to archive movies to a video server/hard drive and the results are as good as one can hope for. It uses X264 to transcode standard DVD video to one of two containers MP4 or my preference MKV.

There are a few useful choices for those who are moderately advanced in working with movie backups, but for me there are really only two that four important ones that Im interested which include: MKV container, 5:1 surround sound, subtitles, and chapters.

A onetime setback for those compressing to tight packaged containers has always been a lost of quality and extremely long re-encode times. This has not been proven an issue with handbrake which does little visual harm to the original with a choices to minimize it more with a larger file size, and its really quite fast. About 20 minutes on an overclocked Core2 Q9650.

Playback can be an issue if one is expecting to use typical DVD player such as PowerDVD, WinDVD and even ARcSofts TMT3 which Im currently using as my DVD/BD player. I also happen to have a copy of DiVx plus player and it works great with it including sifting through chapters. I suspect that other players such as VLC will also suffice, but I havent tried it yet.

In short, this is an excellent method of archiving small packaged movies using X264 which is free, and can arguably compete with or surpass the best commercial H264 encoders.

I am converting all my DVD's to Digital and placing on my external hard drive. This program works Excellent!!!!