If you’ve ever dreamt of converting your favorite video file to any desired format, then this is right the article for you. Users spend plenty of hours to learn all those freeware that are of no use, but Handbrake is an excellent tool to convert video files into different formats. Read below to know about how you can use Handbrake to convert video file.

Many a time you will feel that a magic trick should be there to convert your favorite video file to the MP3 format. You may also be annoyed at times when you invest your internet bandwidth to download a free video converter and it pops-up with a ‘format not supported error’. First of all, let’s assume that you’ve tried an online video converter to convert your files, and it failed. But this doesn’t mean that it’s the end of your wish of converting video files on your iPod or MP3 player. You can try millions of video converters available over the web for free or in paid versions to meet your video-audio conversion needs. You can still find many applications to convert video files, but in this tutorial we will only focus on Handbrake- a free and open-source multithreaded transcoding app.

Why choose Handbrake?

Handbrake is a trusted and reliable video converter fulfilling the video conversion needs of users from over ten years. The freeware is one of the best applications for converting the formats of video files. Its clean and virus-free interface assures no attached strings or shady offers. Therefore, it is ensured that you will only download what you see. The software is available for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu OSes with a GUI interface or as a command line tool support. (This tutorial will use the Windows GUI version)

A Quick Look at the Program

Handbrake is undoubtedly one of the best free video converter programs you’ll ever come across in the market. The top panel of the software contains six buttons to manipulate essential functions like adding a job to the task list as well as a simple ‘Start’ button apart from an option to open the source file. You can easily spot the Source and Destination features located under this tab.
Source displays information about your source file like title, chapter, time (seconds), or frames, while the Destination helps to choose to store the final location of the converted file. You can also use the ‘Output’ settings to customize your video and audio quality, apart from adding subtitles, and much more.

Steps to convert any video file to any format using Handbrake video converter

In this tutorial, we will consider a user, who wants to play the file in a Google Chrome tab to cast it on his TV. The issue is that the file won’t play because Chrome doesn’t support its format because the source file is.MKV or Matroska file format. It is true that an .MKV file may play perfectly in an all-in-one solution, but it meets resistance from other players like Windows Media Player and Chrome. Hence, this step-by-step guide will deal with converting the .MKV file to an.MP4 file. To begin the conversion, follow these steps:

1. Select the source file by clicking on the ‘Source’ button and choose ‘Open File’ from the dropdown menu.

2. Browse your file system to locate it, and then select it. Click on the ‘Open’ button to add the source file to the software and make it ready for conversion.

3. Proceed further only if you see the file you’re converting gets listed under the ‘Source’ heading.

Note: This tutorial will not make any adjustments in the Output Settings and perform a straight conversion from ‘.MKV’ to ‘.MP4’ file.

4. The next step is to click on the ‘Browse’ button to select the file Destination and choose a location for a new or converted file.

5. Fill in the name of the file and then select the desired format in which you want the file to get converted (here, .MP4.).

6. Save the source file into the desired location and click on the ‘Save’ button.

7. Come back on Handbrake’s main window, and click on the ‘Start’ button to start the transcoding job.

8. The Wizard will show you the progress bar to give an estimate about the file conversion time, be patient and let the tool finish the conversion.

9. Once the file completes the conversion process, it will be saved on your defined location, and you can then play it in Chrome.

Conclusion

The wizard may take a few seconds, minutes, or hours to complete the file’s transcoding. It majorly depends on the size of your file and speed of your PC, you can call tech support for Internet PC speed Test. It is recommended to timely check progress bar and bottom of the application window, to ensure that the conversion is in the process and hasn’t stopped due to some errors. The progress bar will show the percent complete rate along with the time remaining data to confirm that the process is running. Once you’re converted it to.MP4 format, you can play it on any video player, phone, tablet, and even on big screen TV. Handbrake is quite easy to use, risk and virus free, and produces desirable results with no additional plug-ins. Millions of users are using the software and it is far better than installing any poor quality application on your PC.