Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Steven Hughes via Techronical attempts to answer a question that most Zuners encounter at one point or another; how to get high-quality videos in a compact filesize and that don't take a long time to convert. Based on a tip from Long Zheng, Hughes recommends the free (donationware) program MediaCoder, which allows users to import custom encoder presets to help smooth the process and achieve consistent results.

Though Zheng's settings file is MediaCoder-specific, his suggested bitrate, framerate, and resolution should be universal for your favorite encoder.

He recommends:

• Video:
  Format: Windows Media
  Codec: Windows Media Video 9
  Mode: Bitrate-based
  Bitrate: 768 Kbps
  Resolution: 320×240
  Frame rate: 25 fps
• Audio:
  Encoder: Windows Media Audio
  Codec: Windows Media Audio 9.2
  Resample: 44100 Hz
  Mode: CBR
  Bitrate: 192 Kbps

Keep in mind that you most likely don't have to use such a high bitrate for audio (typically I use 128 Kbps). If you have a Zune80 and want to display your videos on the TV, you should set your resolution to 640x480 (Zune4, 8, and 30 just leave it as-is). As pointed out by Civisi last week, if you're converting videos manually, you should make sure the Zune software isn't fighting your progress by re-encoding your videos at sync time. Check the Settings page of the software under Device, Conversion Settings to best fit your needs.

This tip has been sitting in my inbox for a while, but it's truly a useful one. With spring right around the corner (yeah--right) it'll soon be time to get rid of your winter baggage. And what better way to do that than get rid of the old crap lying around your hard drive? Every time the Zune software needs to convert a video to portable format, it retains your local copy and keeps temporary copy of the converted output. Over time these can build up, taking precious space on your disk.

Props go out as usual to ACE and the ZuneBoards team for bringing this to my attention, so I'll let them take over from here:

"Simply go to:

1. Start
2. Computer (or My Computer on XP)
3. Right click your C: drive
4. Choose properties

You should see something like this:"

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