Handbrake has been one of the most popular DVD rippers on the Mac platform. It’s free and open source (what’s not to like!). Of course, there are a few more applications cropping up every now and then (and we’ll see how that goes), but by an large, Handbrake has been king. And now they’ve gone ahead and added universal file input.

What seems like a minor point update is in fact a major improvement to the overall usability. Handbrake now accepts AVIs, MOVs, MKVs, and whatever else Quicktime on your Mac can read. They have done this by incorporating the same ffmpeg engine that VisualHub used, which is one of the best out there. 

In fact, the changelog states over 600 changes and should definitely have accounted for a 1.0 or at least a 0.9.5 release. Everything from chapters, multiple tracks, encoding engines and a multitude of bug fixes have gone through this release. I can only wonder what 1.0 will bring to the table.

Personally I haven’t used Handbrake so I can’t say much for its functionality. However, looking at the features list (and ignoring the cluttered UI), I can certainly say that Handbrake is a worthy competitor to the growing video encoders on the Mac. Download the ~6MB application and give it a spin.