One of the more appealing features is its ability to handle different aspect ratios. In addition to standard formats such as 4:3 and 16:9, users can also opt for special formats. Some DVDs and/or MPEG-2 videos use unusual aspect and pixel ratios, resulting in what more experienced users know as the "long face" effect. This can also be corrected in XMPEG 4.2a.

The cropping and letterboxing features were particularly useful. These options permit you to easily crop the image and to effectively remove useless black edges. The best way to monitor the results is to consult the output pad.

You have to be an expert to see it, but the French programmers have relied heavily on the effective DVD2AVI-MMX interface, which we've already met in the eponymous tool. Don't be misled by the "MMX" suffix, though. The DivX codec 4.11 is most certainly optimized for use with SSE - "DVD2AVI MMX" is merely an application routine! So the moral of this particular story is that, if you wish to convert from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, both the codec and the utility are responsible.