The popular open source video conversion app Handbrake has gotten another major update — its first in two years — in the form of Handbrake 1.1. The latest version adds some significant polish to the user interface, and brings new presets for encoding 4K video for playback on Apple’s latest Apple TV, along with other 4K-capable devices, of course.
The UI refresh is the most significant change Handbrake has been through in a long time, eliminating the old-school “drawer” layout for presets in favor of a dropdown menu, and rearranging the settings to read from top to bottom and left to right for a much more logical workflow. A new “Summary” tab also provides a view of all of your settings at a glance, eliminating the need to click across multiple tabs. The result is a significant streamlining of the app which should help to make it much more approachable for new users. There are also improved presets for encoding videos specifically for YouTube and Vimeo, and a whole collection of 4K presets for Apple TV, 4K, ChromeCast Ultra, Fire TV, and Roku, as well as a 2160p60 Matroska H.265 preset.