Some Questions About The Zune Options

[twistedsymphony]

OK I got my Zune as part of the $99 Buy.com deal I posted earlier... I got it in the mail about a week ago and so far I'm extremely happy with my purchase... Had I know how fantastic this product was I probably would have bought one months ago.

in any case there are some things that are perplexing me and I'm unsure if these are simply bugs or things that I'm over looking.

so here goes...

1. Perhaps the most annoying is that my Zune profile page is no where near up to date with what I've actually played. I listened to my Zune for several hours yesterday, and synced it with my PC several times after the fact and none of it was updated to my profile. I've tried listening to it through the zune player on my PC with no luck there either... So I guess my question is: how does it determine what and when to update my profile.. IMO the profile is completely useless unless it's up to date.

My profile: http://social.zune.net/member/Twistedsymphony

2. Most of the albums that I imported to the Zune player collection were missing album cover art. The software found covers for most of it, but there are a good number of albums with no cover specified or the wrong cover specified. Now I have no problem changing manually adding or changing the album cover on my PC but for whatever reason it wont update the player when I sync. The only way I've found to be able to update the cover art on the player is to delete the entire album from the player and then re-add the album... is there an easier way?

In addition to this there was an interesting problem... I have an MP3 of Benny Benassi's "Who's Your Daddy" I'm on the official mailing list and as a result of that I got a copy of the music video... since I don't always want to watch the video I stripped the audio track out and made it an MP3. the Zune player and software both recognize the artist and title correctly... since it was never released on a disc it has no official cover art and it found some crappy-ass cover art by some guy called "Big Samad Sefiane"... and for whatever reason when the song appeared on my Zune profile not only did it use the crappy incorrect cover art.. but the artist was listed as "Big Samad Sefiane" instead of Benny Benassi.

3. The preloaded videos are flagged by type. Some are flagged "Music Video" and are listed in the music video category and there are a couple of other categories. I can't for the life of my figure out how to categorize my own videos... there doesn't seem to be any option for it anywhere

I could probably write a list of at least 50 little annoying bugs in the way it works/missing features overall I'm very pleased with it though.

This post has been edited by twistedsymphony: Nov 21 2007, 07:36 PM

[Perplexer]

I'm also very pleased with the Zune. I bought one over a month ago and finally got around to messing with it early this week. Same thing; had I known how polished and solid the interface was, I'd have picked one up earlier.

1. Haven't set up my Zune profile, so I don't have any suggestions on the first one.

2. I'm pretty anal-retentive about my music collection, so I've already added cover art to most of my albums . I'll give it a look this holiday weekend and see what the Zune software does with some of my more obscure stuff...

iTunes had a similar problem with not updating cover art within the MP3 file... there was some workaround but I can't remember exactly what... I ended up deleting the songs from iTunes and reimporting them.

I particularly like the "song list" to see what is coming up next (mine is on perpetual shuffle), and the option to jump to the album if an artist comes up during shuffle or playlist that you like... I had always wanted these two features in my iPod, and they never came.

Started entering details for my Zune profile, and under "status," I was going to enter "working on an iPod -> Zune accessory converter" but apparently "This text contains a restricted word or phrase."

And that's the negative. No quality accessories for the Zune. I just want a simple car charger which provides line-out from the dock connector. They exist for the iPod, why not the Zune?

Oh well, time will tell.

This post has been edited by Perplexer: Nov 21 2007, 10:55 PM

[twistedsymphony]

if we could get a dongle that feeds all the pins through the wire that would be all we need really. I'd by 5 of em...

Looking though the options apparently it's got a TV out feature as well... I can imagine building a Car dock that includes a Video screen ... that would be f-ing sweet.

I found the answer to my own 1st question and I REALLY don't like the answer...
http://forums.zune.net/2101/ShowPost.aspx

basically, MP3 based music only gets reported to your profile if the artist and song title match with the AMG music store titles.

the "solution" is to let the zune player or WMP11 re-write your ID3 tags to more perfectly match and even then there will be music left out that AMG just doesn't recognize. I'm assuming anything it didn't find cover art for automatically is included in this.

like you, I am also anal retentive when it comes to my music... I buy all my music on CD or SACD/DVD-A and then rip to 320k using a custom build of Exact Audio Copy and LAME. I just never had a need for album art before now which is why I didn't bother.

So now I have to choose between letting MS violate my perfect ID3 tags or having an essentially useless Zune profile.

I have a feeling the reason behind requiring matching tags to the AMG database is for profanity reasons... so you don't rename all of your music to vulgar things... or set your album art to something pornographic....

.. I wish they'd just let you do what you wanted and put a "this profile is restricted to mature audiences only" notice

[JDawg117]

I just got an 80GB zune for christmas. It's pretty sweet, but I have also had a few problems.

About a month ago I installed a trial version of DVDFab platinum. I copied about 25 DVD movies to my computer and wanted to put them on my zune. The problem is they are all in .avi format. The zune only does WMV and MPEG4.

I have spent the past 24 hours tring to find some free software to convert my movies. Most trial versions only convert a certain portion of the file or leave a watermark saying "Buy the full version of our software." I need a good converter program.

[JDawg117]

I have spent the past 24 hours tring to find some free software to convert my movies. Most trial versions only convert a certain portion of the file or leave a watermark saying "Buy the full version of our software." I need a good converter program.

Now it's like, 48 hours

[JDawg117]

I found out that windows movie maker works for file conversions.

If you are trying to put movies on your zune, download "dvdfab" platinum, use the 30 day trial to backup all your dvd movies, then use windows movie maker to convert them to wmv, and copy them to your zune. So far I have the Matrix, T3, Dodgeball, and a bunch of others

This post has been edited by JDawg117: Dec 29 2007, 01:06 AM