Convert your videos for Zune using Windows Media Encoder for Free!

You want to watch your favorite movie on your Zune, and want to convert your Movie VCD or DVD into Zune compatible format. There are many converters available for this purpose, but why to pay when you can do that for FREE! I can tell you watching movies on Zune is a great experience with its crisp, clear and sharp pictures. This can be done using Windows Media Encoder to encode video to WMV file that is suitable for Zune. And this should be done so that it synchronizes with Zune without the delay of intermediate transcode.

So let us start, how to do this conversion. You can download Windows Media Encoder 9 Series and install it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=4

Direct link : Windows Media Encoder 9 Series

Now, from the Start menu, select Windows Media > Windows Media Encoder

when you run the Windows Media Encoder, you’ll get the New Session window, select Custom Session and click OK.

Then from the Session Properties dialog Box, in Sources tab, select File radio button if the source is from your PC or select Devices, if it’s from a device such as video camera.

Then click on the output tab, uncheck the ‘Pull from encoder’ option and select Encode to file checkbox, and then choose a location and file name where you want to store your converted file, it can be a location where your Zune Syncs with.

Next, click the Compression tab. Change the

Destination: field to ‘File download (computer playback),

the Video: to ‘DVD quality video (1 Mbps VBR)’ and the

Audio: to ‘CD quality audio (CBR)’.

When you choose the 1 Mbps VBR, encoder will perform two-pass encoding, which maximizes the quality of the video but will takes roughly double the time to encode. To perform one-pass encoding, choose DVD quality video (1 Mbps CBR). I have tried with both and even one pass gives very good quality.

Now, click Edit button which is on the side of Destination:,

And in the Custom Encoding Settings dialog box, click 1073 Kbps tab and change the

Audio Format: to 128 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo VBR

Video Size: to 320 X 240

Video Bit Rate: 500K, you can leave it at 1000K to get a great quality but it will also give a large file size. So use 500K to get a balance of both.

Normally you’ll choose video size as 320 X 240 for standard videos, but if you are encoding videos of widescreen formats, you’ll need to determine the proper video height for maintaining the proper aspect ratio. For that Click on the Video Size tab, then on right of the window, you’ll see the original video size and the Aspect Ratio. Just note the value that's listed under ‘Cropped:’. Just divide 320 by that value listed under cropped to get proper output height to maintain the correct aspect ratio. As we know 320 pixels to be width of the Zune’s screen. So we will get the final value as 320 X that obtained value.

Click OK and Click Apply.

Finally, click the button at the top ‘Start Encoding’.

That’s all. Sync this file with your Zune and Enjoy the Experience of watching your favorite movie on Zune. I am sure you’ll enjoy it.