HandBrake

There is no easy fix for this. Some studios are using playlist obfuscation reguarly. AnyDVD will attempt to figure out which playlist(s) appear to be valid, using a method unknown to me. The playlist number(s) will be shown in the Status pane. However, this only works for a minority of discs. For Bl...

DVDs will almost always have a 5.1 AC3 track. Some also have a 5.1 DTS track. I pick the DTS track if it is available, but it doesn't make that much difference. Older DVDs will have a AC3 2.0 track. These can be skipped. Some old DVDs only have 2.0 tracks, especially if the original movie was in mon...

Cygwin is the easiest way if you are looking to borrow from existing scripts.

Windows batch files are pretty weak. Powershell is better, but the syntax is nothing like Linux shell script.