10 Tips for dropping level of Zune related stress

Great article! 

I need a WMA tag editor. I don't think MP3 Tag will edit WMA files.

I've browsed the Open Source market, but could not find anything.

Any suggestions?

I have used mpeTag to edit wma tags but in a very limited fashion.  I was able to change the basic information but could not figure out how to set an Album Artist for wma that would be read by the Zune software.  This was mostly during a test just to see if I could get the tracks grouped into an album.

What I eventually did for that wma "Random Songs" album was edit what I could in mp3Tag including having it auto number the random tracks I found on my c: drive, then load the songs in WMP.  At that point, I just kept dragging and dropping one on top of the other until I had an album of random songs. 

EDIT:  Here is the features page for mp3Tag:

http://www.softpointer.com/tr_features.htm

But as I mentioned, I haven't explored all of the wma options but from this page, it sounds like it should be as fully featured as the mp3 options.  I quite possibly just didn't figure out what I needed to do at the time.

Microsoft Support Articles for Zune

Thanks, I'll try it out. What I've used in the past for MP3's is MP3 Tag Tools v1.2.008 (open source). It works great for MP3's, but not for other formats.

I have resorted back to WMP a few times to fix albums, but it pains me to do that.

I know a lot of people have been furious with the new Zune software, but I really think the new version is still pretty darn good. I just miss the easy editing, like selecting a whole album and changing the genre, artist etc, all in one move.

Oh, well. I hope this is in the works for later.

Can anyone help me with artist info for songs that were taken from a mix CD. I changed the info. using WMP and a couple of third party programs but when they are placed on the Zune, the still come up as "Unknown Album" or all listed under one of the several artists that were on the CD.

I've updated the song info. in the properties of each file and created correct artist and album files in my music folder, but no dice.

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Tagging WMA's:

Well I've tried numerous tagging applications, but some were trial only - I am looking for Open Source, because let's face it - we all love the free stuff. The only tagging tool for MP3 & WMA that I found was Entagged - TagEditor. It worked ok, but it was still buggy, abd every now and then it got fussy with MP3's for no reason.

However, if you are a Vista user this is the fastest and easiest method of tagging - just by opening the music folder and going through all of your artists and selecting an entire set of songs from one album at once and fix the genre. Sorry if this is a "no duh" tip, but this is the best way to fix MP3 & WMA tags, and check the album art too (disply in tile mode). Here's a screenshot:

http://tedborel.com/zune/batch-tag.jpg

Video:

Tagging WMV

I use dSharpie to tag all of my WMV files. It works great - again Open Source. I'm not sure where the download link is but Google it or try this forum link.

Commercial skipping - if you have Media Center and record non-HD TV content you will love Life Extender (Open Source) www.LifeExtender.com It runs silently in the background and starts to remove commercials as soon as the file is finished recording.  It saves me a ton of transcode time for the Zune!

There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Excellent tips. Can you please help someone who is not great on the computer..Step by step. How do you do this?

2.  Do not make your Podcast directory a subdirectory of your monitored music folders.  If you rescan, there is a chance you will see your Podcast on both the Podcast and music tabs.  Keeping your Podcast directory outside of your Music directory also makes it easier to find the casts if you want to make changes, delete, etc.

Thanks so much.

broken bruised forgotten sore

I do not understand how to convert a vob file to a format that zune will read. I am running Windows Vista and I have to be missing a step somewhere. I got an avi file converted using Windows Movie Maker and it synced up no problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thank you very much the video one helped me out.

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