HandBrake 0.9.6 released
After more than a year of development, the cross-platform video transcoder HandBrake has been released. Among many improvements that are included within this new version is the new (but still experimental) AAC encoder which comes from libavcodec and should be on par with FAAC in terms of quality, even sometimes better! This means that HandBrake can be now considered fully free and does not need to be altered in any way in order to be included in the official repositories.
To make this new version available on Trisquel, run 'sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases' from Terminal and update repositories with 'Update Manager'.
More information can be obtained from a 'Web Upd8' article, here:
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/02/handbrake-096-released-video-transcoder.html
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As long as HandBrake contains the non-free FAAC encoder (which I assume is still part of HandBrake) it can not be included in Trisquel without being altered.
I saw this too as well. Does the new AAC encoder replace FAAC or is it supplemental?
Debian/Sid lists handbrake-gtk (0.9.6-0.0) as containing libfaac0.
Parabola have blacklisted the package.
Handbrake listed the inclusion of the faac encoder as a critical bug nearly 2 years ago due to licensing issues but it hasn't been addressed as yet.
You are all right and I apologize. I just realized that the proprietary FAAC encoder is still included! It is a shame but it is good to know that this issue is being actively worked on. Here is a screenshot which shows FAAC on the drop-down list of audio encoders:
https://trisquel.info/files/handbrake-faac.png
Since HandBrake is included on the list of crowd-funded tasks, will this new version be included in the official repositories soon?
I wish all of you a nice day!
When comparing encoding performance and output quality, which one is better? I ask because if ffmpeg is on the same level or better, then the removal of FAAC should happen very soon. If FAAC is better, then I can understand their decisions to keep it in there until they get ffmpeg on the same level.
Its a shame the software contains non-free components and is keeping it out of the Trisquel ecosystem. It really is a handy tool and great for beginners to convert files.
I presume that it's been packaged without libfaac0? That's what Parabola has done.
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Actually Parabola didn't do that which is why it is blacklisted.
I saw the comments on the bug list from Nicolás Reynolds back in January where he was going to make a package without faac.I assumed that had happened.
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Handbrake is in Dagda.
Unfortunately, Handbrake on Trisquel simply uses its own encoders including FAAC so it needs to be repackaged. I opened in the past a bug report regarding this:
http://trisquel.info/en/issues/4237
I can confirm this. Please change the priority of this bug to critical, because it is non-free software.
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Done. I actually thought that a normal priority was better when I opened the bug since the software can be used without using the non-free encoder (you can use other audio encoders such as Vorbis and you can even encode to entirely free formats if you also choose Theora for the video codec). However, the issue hasn't been fixed and 5 months have passed so it's best to upgrade the priority to critical.
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Handbrake is in Dagda.
Unfortunately, Handbrake on Trisquel simply uses its own encoders including FAAC so it needs to be repackaged. I opened in the past a bug report regarding this:
http://trisquel.info/en/issues/4237
UPDATE: According to aloniv's bug-report (which is from 2011-Oct-30), the HandBrake packages included in the official repositories also contains the non-free FAAC encoder (and this issue does not got resolved to these days). This means that the packages from this PPA are not "less free" than the official packages available in Trisquel. You can safely upgrade to this new version which contain the additional FFmpeg-AAC/FLAC audio encoders and many other improvements until this issue is get resolved. Do not forget to remove this PPA after that time.
I know with some copyrighted software like Firefox that in order to distribute your custom build, you cannot call it Firefox and that's why there is Icecat, Iceweasel, and Abrowser.
Does this apply to Handbrake as well? Now that 0.9.6 has support for ffmpeg's AAC encoder as an option, it would be nice to see a modified version of it for Dagda and Brigantia as soon as possible removing FAAC. Heck, if you want to backport it to older releases as well, the source is at https://launchpad.net/~stebbins/+archive/handbrake-releases/+packages
This is something I would really like to see and one less PPA or GetDeb repository for me to add.
I just converted a DVD with libdvdcss2 into an MP4 file with x264 and ffmpeg AAC encoder using one of the Android presets. It was only a short DVD (30 minutes long) and have been playing it in the background with VLC. Haven't heard any problems with the audio yet so the encoder, even though they say it is experimental, worked fine for me. Heck, the DVD was scratched to hell too.
For "the best" quality per filesize, use x264+Vorbis+Matroska(MKV).