I have tried several different techniques using loads of different software to rip chapters of a DVD directly to wmv. It seems that it has to be done in several stages, with a final stage of AVI to WMV as windows media encoder seems to crash every time I give it a .vob or .mpg file to convert.

I tried using dvd decrypter to create .vobs for each chapter in IFO mode but ended up with sound de-synchronisation despite the framerate etc being set correctly. After trying a lot of other programs (all open source) such as dvdx (crashed creating .wmv with my required resolution of 720×576) I ripped the dvd using Nero to one big .mpg then used Sony Vegas to cut it into chapters. I saved these chapters out as .mpg hoping to convert directly to .wmv using Windows Media Encoder 9 but the encoder would crash opening them.

Eventually I gave up and saved the mpg files as raw avis using virtualdub with the mpeg 2 plugin from fccHandler. I then used a great batch script from Tech Recipes to convert these avi files to the wmv format I was after.

So steps I used were: DVD > Nero conversion to one big mpeg > Sony Vegas manual chapter splitting and saving as mpeg > virtualdub mpeg2 conversion to raw avi > batch conversion of avi to wmv.

There must be a better way of doing this but every known way of doing it either didnt allow me to save out the chapters or caused audio synchronisation errors. I know Nero can see the chapters but why wont it let you rip them?