Zune Tips Weblog

With the ability to define the Season number, Episode number, and aired date for each TV Show video that I have on my Zune (using the new version 2.5 Zune Software), I noticed through experimentation that I can control the Episode sort order by adjusting the aired date. For example, I did a quick Google search for the episode number and aired date for the Time Tunnel videos I have synced to my Zune. I then edited each of those videos (buy right clicking them and selecting “Edit” in the Zune Software) to adjust their season and episode number and aired date.

Now when I resync my videos I see the episodes sorted correctly, with the episode number to the left of the episode title as shown below:

Pretty slick! Now, it’s much easier to add a new TV episode that fits between the episodes already synced to my Zune. I did run into one snag, where the Zune device shows duplicate episode titles. I corrected that problem by selecting all the episodes for a show in the Zune Software, right clicking and selecting “Do not sync”. That removed the video files from my Zune, and then I reversed the process by selecting “Sync to Zune” which resynced them.

So, it appears that the aired date is the crucial meta data tag for episode ordering. Unfortunately, I don’t think applications like dSHARPIE can edit that particular tag, or the season/episode tag.

The Zune Marketplace has numerous audio and video podcasts that you can subscribe to, but what if you came across a podcast that wasn’t available on the Marketplace site? For example, let’s say you found a good heath fitness podcast which you wanted to subscribe to… how can you do that for your Zune?

In the Zune Software, you can click on “Collection” and “Podcasts” which will bring up the screen shown below:

(click on image to enlarge it)

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There may be times when you want to remove all content on your Zune device and start fresh. I did this recently when I got my Zune 80 back from the repair center. To do this, you can connect your Zune to your PC and start up the Zune Software. Next, under the “Settings” and “Device” heading you’ll see a page as shown below:

(click on image to enlarge it)

If you click on the “Clear All Content” button, every music, video, picture, and podcast file will be erased from your Zune device. This is useful when you want to remove all the preloaded files that come with a new Zune.

Warning: Make sure you have all your music/video/picture files archived in a safe place, as you don’t want to have the Zune software delete them! (Especially if you’ve defined your Zune monitored folders).

I’ve come across a lot of forum postings by Zune newbies asking how to sync music, picture, and video files to their new Zunes. In my opinion, the easiest way is to set up sync folders on your PC which the Zune Software will monitor and sync the contents. So how do you do this? The graphic image below show the setup page in the Zune Software for defining the sync folders:

(click on image to enlarge it)

You get to this setup screen in your Zune Software under “Settings” and “Software”. Here, you can define one or more monitored folders for Music, Pictures, Video, and Podcasts (individually). Once you do this, you can copy any appropriate file into them to have that file synced with your Zune. Note, that you can’t put a music file (.mp3) in the video sync folder and expect the Zune to sync it. Also, all of these files are being synced, so removing a file from this sync folder will also remove it from your Zune device the next time you sync it.

While I was in the process of reloading files to my repaired Zune 80, I cleared out all my old Podcast subscriptions to start fresh. As I was perusing the available podcasts on the Zune Marketplace, I was amazed on the number of audio and video podcasts that were currently available. When I first got my Zune (back in December), I scanned through the podcasts and signed up for about 10 or so, but I’m astounded by the shear number of podcasts that are on the Marketplace now. What’s especially nice, is the number and variety of the video podcasts.

So if you’re wanting to view videos on your Zune but don’t want to mess with video ripping, conversion, etc. I suggest you try subscribing to a few video Podcasts. You can watch Nova science clips, Comedy Central short performances, or nightly news broadcasts. Audio podcasts are also nice if you’re driving a lot in the car, or traveling on a long plane or bus ride. Just be careful about subscribing to too many podcasts, as you may fill up your storage space really quickly!

I know, this web blog is starting to sound more like a DVR-MS Video blog rather than a Zune blog, but just bear with me. I’m currently engrossed in the world of Windows Media Center, TV Show recordings, and video processing.

As you know from my previous postings, Windows Media Center (or Vista Media Center) generates DVR-MS formatted files for recorded TV Shows. The utility called DVRMSToolbox can edit and process these files automatically, but there are other freeware utilities that may be useful for manual processing.

The blog page called “Fun with DVR-MS” by Stephen Toub contains detailed information on how to create code to manipulate DVR-MS files using available SDK modules. His page is pretty techie and is probably more suited for a developer, but he does have a few example utilities available for download that you might find useful.

One utility is a simple Media Player that he put together to play DVR-MS videos. Of course, you can always use Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player to view DVR-MS files, but his utility seems to be a lightweight and effective player alternative.

Also included is a DVR-MS Editor, which allows you to define sections of video in a DVR-MS file to be written out to a new DVR-MS file. This is a nice utility for editing out commercials manually, however, it has very basic controls for editing so it’s usefulness is probably limited. In any case, it offers a quick and easy way of editing DVR-MS files manually.

A link to downloading his sample applications is near the bottom of his web article.

I got my Zune 80 last Christmas specifically for watching videos. Up until now, I was at the mercy of whatever videos I could find on the Internet for download. Sites like Stage6.com was nice in that they had uploaded TV Shows available for download, however, it was very time consuming to search through their database, download the desired video files, convert them from DIVX to WMV format, etc.

I also struggled with using my DVR (which records to DVDs) to record live TV Shows so that I wouldn’t miss them when I was on a business trip or away from home. The DVR that I have is difficult to use, and it always takes me 15-20 minutes to read the manual, figure out which buttons to press, make sure the recording time is set right, etc. Even if I can successfully record a TV show, I could never figure out how to get the recorded video onto my PC to convert the file for my Zune.

Because of all this, I decided to purchase a Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Tuner Card for my Desktop PC system. My only snag, is that I didn’t have a cable line running into my home office. So after a trip to Home Depot for supplies and about an hour in my house attic, I was able to wire an extra cable line into a convenient corner of my office. Note, that I decided to get the PVR-150 model since it has a built-in MPEG2 encoder, so all the encoding is done on the TV Tuner card itself and doesn’t rely on the Desktop PC’s CPU to do the processing. If you’re planning to get a PVR, I highly recommend getting one with a built-in hardware MPEG2 encoder. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous posting, I noted that I was using a freeware application called DVRMSToolbox (DTb) to process my recorded TV Show files. What’s nice, is that I have it all set up to convert all new video recordings automatically. Thus, I no longer have to manually convert video files using Windows Media Encoder. Using this utility, I have automated this process:

1. Find and edit out all commercials in a new TV Show recording
2. Convert the recording to WMV format for my Zune
3. Merge all MetaData from the original recording file to the new WMV file
4. Move the WMV file to my Zune Sync folder
5. Save the edited TV Show file to a backup folder on my 2nd hard drive
6. Clean up all temp files, etc.

Note, that this all happens automatically, without my intervention. The DTb application has a “Watcher” service that monitors a specified folder on my system for new files, and processes them as per my defined actions. So every morning I can simply sync my Zune to my PC and have all the TV Shows that were processes last night synced to my Zune for viewing later! It can’t get any easier than that.

If you want more details on how I’ve set up DTb and my system to do this, you can check out my new Blog page. Also, I’m using DTb to process DVR-MS formatted files (which are created by the Windows Vista Media Center software that I’m using), but you could get creative and configure DTb to also process DIVX, MPEG2, etc. files automatically for the Zune.

In case you haven’t noticed, you can subscribe to an RSS Feed for the ZuneTips Web Blog by clicking the link labeled “RSS Feed” at the bottom of the far right column of this page. I try to make postings every day or two, so having an RSS Feed subscribed to your browser toolbar will make it easier to identify when I’ve added new material.

The Zune Software will store files in a temporary folder when you sync video files and video podcasts (which requires transcoding). If you don’t routinely clean out this temp folder, it can really fill up with files. I checked mine recently, and it was over 6 GB in size! Here’s how you can check on your system:

First, in File Explorer right-click on the C: drive icon and select “Properties” from the popup context menu. You should see a dialog window similar to the image below:

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