The VideoLAN Forums

The VLC player comes with the option to convert between different file types and I tried this for one of my .vob files. The conversion worked, sort of, in that I did get an mp4 video, but the sound was missing from it. I was half expecting it to fail, but I thought that it would go the other way and become sound only, because when I load the .vob file into Windows Movie Maker it gives me a blank video with just sound.

So converting it with VLC player gives a video with no sound, and converting it with WMV gives a blank video with sound, but is there anything I can do to have the video and sound together?

It's fine for me to have the videos in this weird format because I can play them myself using VLC player, but I want to make them more easily accessible for sharing. The videos were originally recorded on a camcorder 15-20 years ago to a cassette, then transferred to one of those HDD DVD players to stop the quality deteriorating any further, and now I have them on my laptop.

Unfortunately, there is no good open-source AAC audio encoder at the moment.

Try the free Handbrake application.

I was able to get sound when converting from VOB to mp4. After clicking convert/save click on the small wrench icon to the right of the profile.
Under the audio codec I made sure both the audio and Keep original audio track buttons were checked. I also did the same for the video but that may not be necessary. Click Save. I now have both audio and video after conversion.