Encoding Video with Handbrake

Handbrake encodes video (DVD or BluRay) to various types of video formats, such as H.264. This test used these settings.

Handbrake is processor intensive, but isn’t smart enough to use all 12 cores on a 12-core Mac Pro, see Optimizing Handbrake for a workaround to fully exploit a 12-core system.

The 2011 MacBook Pro acquitted itself very well here, cutting the encoding time nearly in half over the 2010 model, a very big deal for those working with video.

Test machines used my preferred SSDs, see the test configuration. Hard drive users will see slightly degraded results over those shown here.

Time in seconds, lower is better