Zune Thoughts: I Hope The New Zune Desktop Software is Improved

The current Zune desktop software is just...sad. It really is. It's semi-functional version of Windows Media Player 11 that does less and isn't improved over WMP11 in any way. I've explained some of my dislikes before, but here's my latest frustration: the video encoder now crashes 100% of the time. Here's what the error looks like:



That error is completely un-helpful of course. Digging deeper into the sync status screen eventually led me to a Web page with this error:



Ok, so invalid or corrupt data - that's slightly more helpful. The problem is, of course, that this video file plays file in Windows Media Player, and is a WMV generated by CloneDVD Mobile from Slysoft. Every tool I have says that the video file is file - but the Zune software won't transfer it, even though it's a 500 kbps WMV at 320 x 240. And when it tries to transcode it, it crashes.

WMV is a great codec for video, but it's been completely abandoned by Microsoft - it's hard to find great third-party tools that even support the Zune, let alone WMV files with the right sort of profiles. I can't wait until the Zune v2 comes out and I can use h.264 instead...