Video conversion and extracting audio from DVDs or movie files are activities that became more and more common over the years and the applications used for these tasks also evolved quite a lot. Sometimes, though, old school tools will best new comers and this just might be the case of the open-source XMPEG.

The program is designed for quick and high quality video conversions, but it can be used as well to grab and re-encode audio streams. The installation should take only a few moments to complete and allow you to start working on your videos.

The user interface is simple and to access the functions you have to right-click anywhere within the main window of the software. As you will immediately notice from the main menu, XMPEG supports DVDs as well as simple video files for input.

Once the file is loaded, you have access to audio and video tools and also the media player bundled in the application. There are the basic playback controls but also a very useful fine seeking bar for moving back and forth one frame at a time in a movie.

From the 'Video tools' window you can input the resizing settings, aspect, crop and luminance options. In case you do need to redimension the output, you have two filters at your disposal and the recommended one is HQ Bicubic, which also has customizable settings.

In the 'Audio tools' area you will be able to activate and configure the desired compression using a slider. Another useful enhancement you can apply is the sound normalization and all you have to do is input the desired level.

XMPEG does what it's supposed to do fast and without sacrificing anything in terms of quality. It helpsyou make your own videos and extract audio streams in minutes, with minimal efforts, so it's worth taking it for a test drive before deciding whether to add it or not to your utility belt.