Make:

Title says it all. There is no AVI or XVID support in the new version.

Reply to this comment

Posted by: Phillip Torrone on November 28, 2009 at 6:27 PM

AVI: AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display. Furthermore, HandBrake's AVI muxer is vanilla AVI 1.0 that doesn't even support large files. The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance.

XviD: HandBrake, these days, is almost entirely about H.264 video, aka MPEG-4 Part 10. This makes it rather...superfluous to include two different encoders for an older codec, MPEG-4 Part 2. When choosing between FFmpeg's and XviD's, it came down to a matter of necessity. We need to include libavcodec (FFmpeg) for a bunch of other parts of its API, like decoding. Meanwhile, XviD's build system causes grief (it's the most common support query we get about compiling, after x264's requirement of yasm). Since we mainly use MPEG-4 Part 2 for testing/debugging, and recommend only H.264 for high quality encodes, Xvid's undisputed quality edge over FFmpeg's encoder is inconsequential, while FFmpeg's speed edge over XviD is important to us.

Reply to this comment

They were right to drop it. XviD too, x264 is unbelievably better, though admittedly the encode times are much longer. Which is why they chose FFmpeg. A decision that makes a lot of sense when you compare it this way.
Want quality? x264.
Want speed? FFmpeg.
Want control over how everything is done? MEncoder. Period. There _is_ no other option that compares. Handbrake is _not_ about super-fine control over everything, it's about simplicity. In that light as well, this is the correct choice.

All in all a solid update, with a noticeable speed boost. Good to hear from the Handbrake crew, it's been quiet for a while.

Reply to this comment

Posted by: cyenobite2 on November 30, 2009 at 10:10 AM

Can anyone tell me what the difference is between the two? I can't seem to find any mention of it anywhere. GUI = Graphic User Interface? CLI?
Thanks!

Reply to this comment

Posted by: cyenobite2 on November 30, 2009 at 1:26 PM

ty

Reply to this comment