HandBrake Review: Free Video Conversion Without the Junk
The open-source transcoder shrinks, converts and archives almost any video – and version 1.11 adds pro formats like ProRes and DNxHR.
Minh OngSearch the web for "free video converter" and you will find a minefield of installers full of toolbars, watermarked exports and "Pro" upgrade nags. HandBrake is the antidote. The open-source video transcoder has been around for more than two decades, it is licensed under the GPL, and it has never shown an ad or asked for money. The current release is 1.11.2 from June 2026, a maintenance update for the 1.11 feature release that arrived in March. We looked at what HandBrake does well, where it can still frustrate newcomers, and who should download it today.
First impressions and installation
HandBrake is completely free, with no account, no trial limits and no bundled offers. On Windows there are separate downloads for x64 and Arm64 PCs. One thing has changed with 1.11: the Windows version now needs Microsoft's .NET Desktop Runtime 10.0, so if setup or the first launch complains, grab it from Microsoft's "Run Desktop Apps" section first. Version 1.11.1 also removed the earlier dependency on .NET 8.
The official system requirements are worth reading before you start. Windows 11 is fully supported, while Windows 10 (version 1909 or later) is now listed as deprecated. The documentation names AMD Ryzen and Intel Core 9th generation or newer as the reference processors and lists 16 GB of RAM as the minimum for transcoding SD and HD video, and 32 GB for 4K. The app itself needs only around 150 MB of disk space, and the window wants at least 1280x960 pixels – at 150 percent display scaling, a Full HD laptop screen gets tight.
Getting started is simple: click Open Source or drag a video file onto the window. You can also point HandBrake to a whole folder to batch-scan several videos at once. DVD and Blu-ray folders work too, but only without copy protection – HandBrake does not decrypt discs.
The workflow: source, preset, start
Once a source is loaded, the main window shows the toolbar with Open Source, Add to Queue, Start Encode, Queue, Preview and Activity Log, a Preset drop-down and a row of tabs: Summary, Dimensions, Filters, Video, Audio, Subtitles and Chapters. It looks intimidating at first, but you can ignore 90 percent of it. Pick a preset that matches your goal – the general presets like Fast 1080p30 are a sensible starting point for phones, tablets and web uploads – choose a destination file name at the bottom and click Start Encode. That is it.
The tabs are where HandBrake shows its depth. In Dimensions you crop black bars and scale the picture. Filters offers deinterlacing, decomb, denoise, detelecine, deblock, grayscale and colourspace conversion – handy for cleaning up old camcorder footage. The Video tab lets you pick the encoder (AV1, H.265, H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, VP8 or VP9) and choose between constant quality and average bitrate, plus variable or constant frame rate. If your PC has a supported graphics card or Intel Quick Sync, hardware encoders can speed things up considerably, at the cost of some efficiency compared with the software encoders.
Audio and subtitles are just as flexible. HandBrake encodes AAC, MP3, FLAC, AC3, E-AC3, Opus and Vorbis, and it can pass through original tracks such as AC-3, DTS, DTS-HD and TrueHD untouched. Subtitles in VobSub, CEA-608, SSA and SRT can be kept, burned in or added from a file. Before committing to a long encode, the Preview window lets you render a short clip to check the result.
The queue: set it and forget it
Converting a whole season or a folder of holiday clips is where the queue shines. Configure one video, click Add to Queue (the arrow next to it can add several titles at once), repeat, and then open the Queue window. Start Queue works through every job one after another, and the When Done drop-down tells HandBrake what to do once everything is finished. Each job shows a summary of its preset, encoder, filters, audio and subtitle settings, and you can edit or reset jobs before they run.
What's new in 1.11
Version 1.11 is aimed squarely at video editors and archivists. MOV joins MP4, MKV and WebM as an output container, and HandBrake gains ProRes and DNxHR encoders, complete with new Production presets in 2160p, 1080p and 540p proxy variants with 24-bit PCM audio passthrough. That makes it much easier to create edit-friendly intermediates or lightweight proxy files for a video editor.
AMD users get a 10-bit AV1 encoder via VCN and a new AV1 4K preset for Radeon 9000-series cards and newer. The project notes that the preset may report wrong output dimensions on 7000-series cards, which cannot be fixed in software. Audio now supports PCM encoding and passthrough as well as custom channel orders. For archiving, new Preservation presets pair the lossless FFV1 codec with FLAC or PCM audio. On Windows, the deprecated Intel HyperEncode option has been removed. The 1.11.1 and 1.11.2 updates fixed a crash when scanning PCM tracks on discs, a crash in 2-pass lossless x265 encodes and a memory leak in some 2-pass encodes, and improved queue behaviour when it pauses for low disk space.
How it compares
XMedia Recode is the closest free alternative on Windows: it supports even more output formats and simple editing tasks, but its interface is busier and it is Windows-only. FormatFactory covers audio, images and documents as well as video, which makes it more of an all-rounder but less of a precision tool. VLC media player can convert files in a pinch through its Convert/Save function, but it offers nowhere near HandBrake's control over quality, filters and batch jobs. If you want reliable, high-quality results with no strings attached, HandBrake remains the reference.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free, open source and completely free of ads or upsells
- Excellent presets for quick results, deep settings for experts
- Modern codecs including AV1, H.265 and now ProRes and DNxHR
- Powerful queue with batch scanning of whole folders
- Available for Windows on x64 and Arm64, plus Mac and Linux
Cons
- Interface is overwhelming for beginners
- Cannot handle copy-protected DVDs or Blu-rays
- Windows version requires the separate .NET Desktop Runtime 10.0
- No editing features beyond cropping, filters and chapter ranges
Our verdict
HandBrake is the best free video converter for Windows, and 1.11 makes it more relevant for creators by adding MOV output, ProRes and DNxHR. If you want to shrink phone videos, prepare clips for the web, convert old DVD rips or build an archive, download it without hesitation and start with the built-in presets. Absolute beginners who just want to change a file format with one click may find the interface intimidating, and anyone who needs to cut, trim or combine clips needs a video editor instead. For everyone else, there is simply no reason to put up with ad-ridden converters.
UpdateStar rating: 4.5/5
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About Author
Minh Ong
I can say that the Internet serves as an integral part of my life for over twenty years. It has provided me with the opportunity to embark on self-guided exploration across a myriad of subjects and continually enhance my personal growth. In 2017 I became an editor at UpdateStar. I am specialized in software reviews, tutorials and news with an emphasis on privacy and security. As a person I love to travel, enjoy music, indulge in adorable kitty videos and waste time on my favorite streaming platforms.