HandBrake

What's new in this version:

General:
Switched core decoding library from Libav to FFmpeg:
- Fixes numerous sources previously unreadable or otherwise broken
- Facilitates a number of the improvements and features in this release and planned for the future

Removed deprecated Legacy presets:
- See the list of compatible replacements on GitHub

Updated official presets to use stereo instead of DPL2 mixdown:
- Avoids potential spatial positioning issues with the current DPL2 algorithm and wide pans in source material
- Limited in impact since DPL2 decoding has not been in widespread use for years
- Updated official presets descriptions to revise compatibility and mention recently released devices
- Updated official presets to rename Fire TV to Amazon Fire
- Added Amazon Fire 720p30 and Chromecast 1080p60 presets
- Added {creation-date} and {creation-time} to automatic file naming

Video:
- Fixed an issue decoding Blu-ray titles where the aspect ratio is unknown (assume 16:9)
- Fixed an issue encoding video with very short frame durations (less than 0.00285s or greater than 350 FPS)
- Improved extradata handling to accommodate all codecs
- Added support for decoding TIFF/LZMA video

Audio:
- Fixed potential decoding issue for audio lacking an explicit channel layout (intelligently guess the layout)
- Fixed a potential crash during audio probe
- Improved resampling to allow dithering for all codecs (only where necessary)
- Improved quality of the default AAC encoder on non-Mac platforms (FFmpeg AAC), no longer experimental
- Improved bit rate constraints to allow Opus as low as 6 kbit/s per channel
- Added support for up to 7.1 channel AAC encoding (note that FDK AAC/HE-AAC do not support 6.1)
- Added support for E-AC3 audio in MP4 container
- Added Speex audio decoder

Subtitles:
- Fixed a potential crash where an SRT file cannot be opened
- Added support for SRT files using periods instead of commas to delineate fractions

Command line interface:
- Fixed inability to override preset subtitles burn setting (native and none are now valid values for --subtitle-burned)

Build system:
- Fixed Linux packaging with an out-of-tree build directory
- Fixed Windows graphical interface build script signing tool location
- Removed --enable-local-* and associated contrib libraries; please see the documentation for dependencies help
- Updated to mingw-w64-build 4.1.0 with gcc 7.3.0, continuous output (keep alive), and miscellaneous improvements
- Improved support for building with Xcode 10
- Improved support for building on FreeBSD 11, 12, and 13
- Improved Flatpak packaging for Linux (numerous fixes and improvements, no longer experimental)
- Improved configure.py to always use the Python executable found by configure
- Added script for creating Flatpak manifests
- Added support for selecting a compiler via the CC environment variable
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

Third-party libraries:
Removed libraries:
- Libav 12.3 (decoding and filters)
- yasm 1.3.0

Updated libraries:
- libopus 1.3 (Opus audio encoding)
- x264 157 r2935 (H.264/AVC video encoding)
- x265 2.9 (H.265/HEVC video encoding)

New libraries:
- FFmpeg 4.1 (decoding and filters)
- liblzma (xz) 5.2.4 (LZMA video decoding, e.g. TIFF)
- libspeex 1.2.0 (Speex audio decoding)

Windows:
- HandBrake now requires .NET Framework 4.7.1 or later (installer offers download if missing)
- Fixed mixdown selection where the specified mixdown in the selected preset is not available
- Fixed audio sample rate of 48 kHz being selected where Auto was the specified behavior
- Removed preferences option to show the advanced tab (deprecated and slated for removal)
- Removed options menu from queue in favor of contextual menu
- Improved layout to better support localization
- Improved error handling when adding items to the queue
- Improved multi-instance queue recovery to avoid loading queue files from the wrong instance
- Improved filters layout and controls
- Improved video quality slider by allowing it to grow with window size and setting x264/x265 granularity to 0.5
- Improved SRT import default browse location (open source video location)
- Improved keyboard shortcuts by making Ctrl-S open the destination save dialog (start encode is now Ctrl-E)
- Added additional keyboard shortcuts for various actions
- Added initial localization support and German translation
- Added support for AMD VCE and Nvidia NVENC hardware-accelerated encoders
- Added automatic queue archiving and option to select an archived queue for recovery (archives are removed after 7 days)
- Added support for recovering specific queue files on start using --recover-queue-ids=<id1,id2,...>
- Added additional controls to passthru audio tracks to configure audio fallback parameters
- Added ability to drag and drop SRT subtitles files onto the main window
- Added option to disable preview image on summary tab
- Added option to disable checking for update on start in portable mode
- Added stop encoding confirmation dialog
- Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements