HandBrake can crop and resize videos as well as restore old and low-quality videos, but for more powerful editing tools you can try DaVinci Resolve, Shotcut or VSDC Free Video Editor, which are great free options. HandBrake is a cross-platform application, available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Let that run for a while, and you can transcode an entire TV series in one go.HandBrake is a free and open source tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. mkv to an MP4 using the General/HQ 1080p30 Surround preset:

Here's a very tiny bash script I use to do just that, converting any file that ends in. Then you can use it to loop over an entire directory-even recursively-and transcode all the video files within. with brew install -cask handbrake), download HandBrakeCLI, mount the downloaded disk image, and copy the executable into a system path: sudo cp /Volumes/HandBrakeCLI-1.5.1/HandBrakeCLI /usr/local/bin/ Assuming you're on a Mac and installed Handbrake already (e.g. You can queue videos up one at a time, which is nice, but more recently, as I've ripped more TV seasons onto my NAS, I've wanted to transcode 5, 10, or 20 files at a time.Įnter HandBrakeCLI. mkv files, which can have a hodgepodge of video formats inside, and are notoriously difficult to play back, especially on older or more locked down playback devices.īut Handbrake's achilles heel, as a GUI-first application, is in a lack of easy batch operation.

I've used Handbrake for years, to transcode practically any video file-including ripped DVDs and Blu-Rays-so I can watch the videos on practically any device.

Handbrake batch