DynaFlash Tech

NOTE: As of 4/18/2010 Developer Snapshots have been replaced by the Nightly Builds.

So, while the latest HandBrake public release 0.9.4 is now coming up on its 5 month anniversary it is worth mentioning that the HandBrake project is … less than regular or even prompt with public releases. This is obvious to any regular HandBrake users. Part of this is due to the fact that in true OSS fashion HandBrake is developed by volunteer developers on their own free time … time which is pretty much limited to whenever they can find it which can be sporadic at best. It is also further complicated by trying to coordinate three Graphical User Interfaces (gui’s) … ie Mac, Linux, Windows and one Command Line Interface as well as the associated documentation that is expected of a “Public Release”. Coordinating all of this is rather monumental for a project with limited resources like HandBrake however what most people do not realize is that there are things going on “behind the scenes” that the average HandBrake user might not be aware of.

The HandBrake Trac: I suspect that most users are not aware of the Trac which is available for anyone to read. This documents everything that is changed in the HandBrake codebase. As you can plainly see by viewing the trac link above, HandBrake developers are actually quite busy advancing the software …. sometimes contrary to popular opinion.

Developer Snapshots: While anyone is welcome to compile the latest HandBrake svn revision (would be the most recent Trac commit) from source, it was recognized that A.) many users do not know how to compile code and B.) really do not want to. So the HandBrake Devs decided to create Developer Snapshots and announce them on the HandBrake forums . These are ready to download binaries of HandBrake in all of its flavors sans up to date documentation. The idea was that these might be unstable but were quicker to put out than public releases and would give developers valuable feedback for bugs … etc. ( though in common practice tend to be more stable than the last public release but as usual your mileage may vary). These “Developer Snapshots” are svn revisions decided by the HandBrake Devs to be pretty much stable and having general UI parity so deemed stable enough to release to the users. This also means however that some developer agreement and coordination is necessary to produce these.

Nightly Builds: As of late it was realized that the very cutting edge of HandBrake code was still not available to those wishing to run HandBrake on the “ragged edge” of development. So, in response the HandBrake project now has nightly builds available to the public. Now these builds are computer generated by the HandBrake servers each night from the latest code committed to the svn. This is as close to current HandBrake as you can get without actually compiling the code for yourself. It’s exciting but also can be risky as it will have the latest code with all of its improvements but also with all of its faults ( usually corrected in the next nightly).

I can tell you that I do all of my personal video encoding using the latest HandBrake svn ( which is pretty much mirrored in the nightlies) and rarely if ever have trouble. Having said that as it says in the nightly post … do not expect support for nightlies. They are computer generated at a given time (4 am. in France) and may or may not contain errors, issues or whatnot.

My Point: Given the rather large time spans between “Official Public Releases” of HandBrake do not draw the conclusion that the project is languishing or dead … in fact far from it as is evidenced by the Trac Timeline. If you wish to play it safe then use the latest public release. However if you wish to “walk on the wild side” the HandBrake project aims to offer what you want … Good, Bad or Otherwise!