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HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

handbrake.fr

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Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#91
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you don't have to be an engineer to use it, but if he's really claiming to know nothing about encoding, that's quite the contradiction.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. In fact, I can very easily see a lawyer clicking the "fast convert" (or similar) checkbox, not realizing that doing so compromises the encoding quality. For all I know, that setting is the default.

But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible.

How many excuses do people have? It seems to be widely acknowledged that prosecutors widely railroad and use unethical and even illegal tactics against defendants and that this is a problem. It also seems to be the idea that black defendants tend to be disproportionately on the receiving end of this behavior and that is a problem. And yet there's astounding difficulty connecting these things. A lot of people I've seen here and all other social media platforms seem to be hoping Kyle gets convicted and the prosecutors are not held to account because he is white and they think a black boy would have been convicted.

This is called (racist, but also) cutting off your nose to spite your face. Kyle being sent to jail by unethical prosecutors will not help the next black boy who is unethically prosecuted or wrongfully convicted.

Hold them to a high standard. Do not find excuses for them, they must be made to justify their own actions. If they are going to use technology to prosecute somebody and they don't know how the technology works, that is not an excuse it is incompetence and highly unethical at best.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#92

For when you want to downsample a video to send to the defense team.

A very versatile tool indeed. Good to hear it's find a footing the legal field, and a testament to handbrake's incredible UI/UX that even completely non technical users have no problem with it

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#93
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because https://twitter.com/lego_operator/status/1461077353476628488 which is relevant to a high profile trial contention.

That would be a very poor standard for newsworthiness on this site.

The reason for it being in the public consciousness today is immaterial really in terms of relevance for HN discussion purposes, and since it's an interesting piece of software it's quite on topic here

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#94
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does MakeMKV have some sort of magic fairy dust that allows them to rip blu rays? It seems weird to me that a random closed source tool on the internet does this, and the fact that ffmpeg can’t do it after all these years feels really weird.

No fairy dust, but you do need to re-flash the firmware on your bluray drive to make it work. As far as I know bluray drive manufacturers (and there's a handful at most at this point) have tried to disable ripping. MakeMKV has been around a long time, works well and it's not what I would call a "random" closed source tool.

OK, so is it basically a community effort coalesced around keeping up with DRM and obfuscation by funneling all the effort into one project which, in order to stay ahead of the industry, can’t reveal how it does what it does? Cuz that, while an unfortunate situation, would be something I could totally understand.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#95
post #11

Doesn't ffmpeg provide similar functionality?

I find ffmpeg more intuitive. Handbrake only has presets, and it pre-fills so many options for you. Why can't I just have "original" everything, just change the format? I don't want any changes except codec, but with Handbrake I don't feel confident it's not going beyond that.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. In fact, I can very easily see a lawyer clicking the "fast convert" (or similar) checkbox, not realizing that doing so compromises the encoding quality. For all I know, that setting is the default.

But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible. How many excuses do people have? It seems to be widely acknowledged that prosecutors widely railroad and use unethical and even illegal tactics against defendants and that this is a problem. It also seems to be the idea that black defendants te…

> But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible.

I don't understand. Are you saying that my idle speculation somehow grants positive evidence to the claim that there's been prosecutorial misconduct in the case?

The fact that you or I can identify a likely source of error doesn't mean that (1) that is, in fact, the source of error, or (2) that the prosecutor is aware of it. The rest of your post is overly wrought given the information we actually have.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible. How many excuses do people have? It seems to be widely acknowledged that prosecutors widely railroad and use unethical and even illegal tactics against defendants and that this is a problem. It also seems to be the idea that black defendants te…

> But if he did click that button and now is trying to say that the defense might have caused the video to be converted to a lower quality then ignorance is no longer plausible. I don't understand. Are you saying that my idle speculation somehow grants positive evidence to the claim that there's been prosecutorial misconduct in the case? The fact that you or I can identify a likely source of error doesn't mean that (…

No, I am not saying that.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#99
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the defense's email client might have compressed the video automatically (not how it works) On the contrary, this is exactly how it works. The biggest pain point in sharing high quality photo or video content in 2021 is that every single service insists on quietly compressing or transcoding your content. Some, like iMessage, even do it inconsistently depending on things like current format and file size. To make ma…

Wouldn't it be the sender's email client or server that does the compression? The defense was the recipient.

You can email video content as an attachment from outside of gmail to a gmail address, and gmail will compress the video. I don’t know why, but I’ve had it happen to me multiple times. I send around S3 links because even Dropbox messes with your content (though not the downloadable file) when you share a link.

Re: HandBrake – An open source video transcoder

#100
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/lego_operator/status/1461077353476628488 This seems to be why.

To expand: It was discussed extensively in the Rittenhouse court case today that the prosecution provided the defense with a much lower quality of a particular video file (one that was also possibly cropped) than what the prosecution possessed. The prosecution contends this was an accident and the transcoding occurred when they AirDropped it from one phone to another and then emailed it from their personal Gmail acco…

>"The prosecution contends this was an accident and the transcoding occurred when they AirDropped it from one phone to another and then emailed it from their personal Gmail account."

And I have bridge to sell. It is tampering with the evidence. If prosecution was ever criminally charged for their misdeeds and fucking up person's lives as the result they would straighten out in no time. Meanwhile they keep abusing their position with no recourse.

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