Converting vob to avis

So I have a few vobs from a dvdrecorder that was recording a live set of video from an Open Lab. The vobs must be a little screwy- any editing program I try to load them into thinks they're only 18 seconds long. VLC knows how to play them in their entirety, but I really only want to get a few good moments out of it all.

I think transcode is up to the task, with command like:
transcode -i vts_01_1.vob -y dv -o openlab1.avi

But the video comes out screwy (while the audio is fine).

I google for the answer and got this gem of a thread as the first hit:
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.os.linux.misc/2004-02/2245.html
where one poster repeatedly ask for details beyond 'go look on google' or 'read the manpage'. I think anyone who responds with 'go look on google', when that thread then for some stupid reason uselessly becomes the number one search result on google, deserves to be summarily shot. I'm only half kidding. Anyway the original poster responds with queries for details (like a command line) but repeatedly gets the same useless answers, but more vehemently.

I haven't figured it out yet, but I'll post an actual command line when I do.

Connecting to a Server in GWT

A while back I started playing with GWT and created a small game GWTTiles. Fine example but there's no client-server interaction, so I tried that out a few days ago. The DynaTables example seemed way too complicated so I looked on the web, and got fairly far but couldn't get the server to work- but then finally a comment in a tutorial pointed out I needed to compile the java server myself, GWT wasn't going to compile it for me- though once placed in the proper directory it would happily run the .class file automatically.

So I didn't even have the java jdk installed, that was necessary to get javac:

javac -cp "$APPDIR/bin:$APPDIR/src:/home/bm/other/gwt-linux-1.4.60/gwt-user.jar:/home/bm/other/gwt-linux-1.4.60/gwt-dev-linux.jar" src/com/binarymillenium/gwt/server/serviceImpl.java

Then the class file had to be placed in bin/com/binarymillenium/gwt/server, and running the -shell script will properly execute it and my client app can get data from the server (just a text string for now, I need to figure out serializing next).

This is the error I used to get:

"com.google.gwt.user.client.rpc.InvocationException: Unable to find/load mapped servlet class 'com.binarymillenium.gwt.server.serviceImpl'"

And in the development shell window:

[ERROR] Unable to instantiate 'com.binarymillenium.gwt.server.serviceImpl'
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.binarymillenium.gwt.server.serviceImpl
...