Doesn't skip or anything when just playing the DVD on the computer?

What DVD is it?

No it's not, but it's occured to me that the playback itself may induce the skipping, so I'm copying the vob to hdd to see if that fixes it.

Damn. Well it ripped 10x faster. Still skipping though. Must be a setting issue.

avidemux does either crackling or skipping, depending on settings.

 T_T

OK I think I finally got this work:

Step 1 acidrip dvd tracks to avi (audio --> mp3). acidrip seems to be the only sw capable of reading the dvd on ubuntu, even with libdvdcss on board I can't even open it in a file manager.

Step 2 open avi in avidemux and copy-save audio to .mp3. It's a bit lo-res but doesn't have the crackling/skipping, so suitable for the tablet at least. Bonus: I can still watch the video, if I so choose (unlikely).

I just want to add: FUCKING JESUS MOTHERFUCK THAT WAS HARD.

Definitely must be an easier way. Did you try Handbrake or MakeMKV?

Yeah, it should be easier. After >6-hours in, I'm taking whatever works.  :-O~~~

Handbrake isn't in the Ubuntu repos (guess I could add it), so I moved on to acidrip, which someone reckoned is the best thing anyway.

Weird thing is if I copy/save the raw audio from a copied 1G vob out of avidemux (it won't directly read the dvd, like everything else except acidrip), it comes with crackling/skipping on board (there are two tracks on the vob: an ac3 in 5.1, and a stereo pcm). acidrip doesn't even let you pick which track to use, apparently it guessed right.