I have a number of DVD recordings made from the TV, the soundtracks of which I would like to be able to play in the car.

Is there any way of transferring these soundtracks to CD or USB, for that purpose?

there is apart of me that wants to write a tutorial on how to extract the audio from the dvd structure, but it's not necessary. there are loads of tools for this. just search for dvd audio ripper or extractor.

this looks alright http://download.cnet.com/ZC-DVD-Audi...-10964625.html

the process is a lot easier because it is not a copy protected dvd.

I didn't think that the soundtrack was a seperate file on the DVD and was integrated in a way so that if you did extract it, you'd end up extracting the dialog, (people speaking) too!

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, flagpole. I haven't yet downloaded the one you suggested, because several reviews complain about having a toolbar download when they specifically said that they didn't want this.

Now that I know that this is the way to do it, I'll keep looking until I find one that I'm happy with.

You are right.

i took the OP to mean the audio track, rather than the music track.

if you want to get the music without the dialogue you can do a reasonable job by combining the surround sound without the center channel.

I know just the software that will do it as I use it, it's not freeware though but you might be happy to pay for it if it does just the job you want. It's not too bad for a one off payment at about $30 (£17 is that?)

It's IMToo DVD Ripper, and there's also an IM Too Blu-Ray Ripper if you want that too, it can rip to almost any video format and it can also rip directly to MP3 or WAV files from the DVD which is what you want.
http://www.imtoo.com/dvd-ripper.html

You can pick which soundtrack from the DVD you want to rip and you can also choose to rip by chapter rather than by title which could be very useful for extracting audio as well. There's even an option to set the particular part of the track you want to rip.

There might well be free programs also that do this job, such as Handbrake I tried them and found them a bit complicated, IMToo however is dead easy.

I've just checked and freemake video converter will allow you to rip the audio froma dvd. and it's idiot proof.

Thank you everyone, I am grateful to you for your suggestions. My son-in-law has found one for me called Xilisoft DVD Audio Ripper which rather strangely will rip the audio from a commercial DVD, but NOT from my home-made ones.

I am using a Blu-ray Panasonic recorder on which there is an option to 'finalise' the DVD. I'm not sure what this means, but I expect that it renders the DVD uneraseable. The trouble is, I can't seem to be able to apply the option on self-recorded DVDs which are already full.