If you’ve noticed, I keep writing about Apple lately. Well, I converted a couple of people to OSX, and that I have a couple of Brand New MacBook Pros for sale. So I’m just writing on the apps which I use really often so the newbie can pick up fast.
Well, not all of us live in the USA, which also means that not all of us are entited to iTunes or downloading videos and paying 3.99USD for them and the works. So that kind of leds to a huge void in movies in your iTunes, iPod or when you want to impress your friends with front row with your Apple Remote.
So comes HandBrake to the rescue. HandBrake as usual, is FREE and open-source (like VLC), and is a multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder. It supports a bunch of inputs, and converts them to many formats:
- File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
- Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
- Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)
Now this is a big deal. Because I have a huge bunch of *.avi files in my computer, and HandBrake is able to convert them to a format *.m4v readable by my iPod Touch, or any of the many presets already included, even XBox360, AppleTV or PS3. That’s really great, because it means the void by not being able to download movies via iTunes because there is no store is also well, half gone (almost anyway). And it also means movies on the go.
Anyway, if you haven’t done so already, you need to download HandBrake. Its pretty awesome stuff.
