Ever since I started with motion design, and trying to get the best picture out of  compression, I’ve gone for the MOV format, in h264 compression. Just because it gave good pictures, and low file size. But for those who has used quicktime and the MOV format you know that on Windows PC the gamma is way off, and apple hasn’t seemed to care to fix it.

That’s why I’m now changing format. My brother introduced me to HandBrake. A real easy setup for compressing video files and also ripping DVDs. You even get some good presets, and thats rare. The formats is MP4 and MKV, and two different video codecs h264 and MPEG-4. The MPEG is no good.

The only drawbacks I see is that you can’t switch audio-innput and some audio-compression from After Effects (AE) dosen’t work (ACC).

I’m still getting used to the program but the end result are great. If you have pictures with clean gradients, you have larger problems with MOV h264, than with MP4 h264. I do use MOV animation codec from AE still.

And in the end, the file size is so low, that you can’t believe the quality. And the compression is fast. If you’ve ever used QuickTime Pro you know that can take a while.

That’s my thoughts on HandBrake.

Note: the logo is butt ugly! :P

Second note: Did I say it’s free? :)