onlydarksets

Most of the blog and forum postings out there for converting video for the Zune are for manual conversions. I haven’t found a whole lot of discussion on automatically converting from WMC DVR-MS files to a Zune-compliant format, and I have found next to nothing on converting HD DVR-MS.

First, for manual conversion, there are a few options out there that will create Zune-compliant WMV files (see this clearinghouse list):

• DVRMSToolbox
• ZuneTVWatcher (discussed here)
• Druid
• Encode360 (endorsed here)
• jelwood’s mencoder (discuss)
• TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 (endorsed here and here, and by me for complex, one-off sources)
• Spb Mobile DVD

However, the Zune now supports MP4 and h.264. That opens up the options to any software that supports DVR-MS as an input and either of those codecs as an output. A partial list:

• ffmpeg (discuss)
• PQ DVD to Zune (discussed here)

Since I’m looking at solutions that can be automated, it will probably come down to DVRMSToolbox, ZuneTVWatcher, Encode360 (which has a command line), and ffmpeg.