Zune Thoughts: Convert Your Videos for the Zune with Windows Media Encoder

Back in the Compression tab, click the Apply button at the bottom. There will be another pause while WME loads the settings before it shows you the video encoding screen. Click the button at the top labeled ‘Start Encoding’.

The encoding is a two-pass process, so Windows Media Encoder will first run through the entire length of the film, examining it for bitrate changes. Then it will run the second pass, applying the variable bitrates that it determined in the first pass. The speed of this will depend on the speed of your processor. Mine took just under three hours to transcode the 2.5-hour Aliens file.


When it’s done, you’re ready to sync it to your Zune. It should also be noted that since most Pocket PCs have the same screen resolution of the Zune, these instructions can be used to create a nice .WMV file to play on them as well. So have fun! And try not to give those people who paid money for a Zune converter too hard of a time.

Damion Chaplin is a graphic artist and digital media connoisseur living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his lovely wife Lorri and His Most Imperial Highness Grimalkin (The Kitty). He really wishes Microsoft had included a WME plugin with the Zune software so tutorials like this were unnecessary.