Zune 2.5 Spring Update: Finally, Some Serious Software Updates!

[Jason Dunn]

<em>&quot;It&rsquo;s simple to create an automatically updated playlist based on rules you set from within your PC software. Those rules can include specific artists, genres, ratings, years, even your mood. As your collection grows, tracks that fit your criteria will automatically be added.&quot; - From The Zune Spring Update 2008 Reviewer's Guide</em><br /><br /><img border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/zt/2008/zune25-playlist_dialog-small.jpg" alt="" /><br />[<a target="_blank" href="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/zt/2008/zune25-playlist_dialog_hires.jpg">Click to view high-resolution version of the above image</a>.]<br /><br />In the same way that the second-generation Zune hardware is really what we should have had at the v1 launch, the Zune 2.5 desktop software is really what we should have had last November when the v2 players launched - they've finally added back the things that every music player software needs, namely auto-playlists and the ability to edit album and track information. The stuff that was there in the v1 software, then removed (or, more accurately, not added in yet) when the v2 software came out. Here's what the reviewer's guide has to say about track and metadata editing: <MORE /><br /><br /><em>&quot;Want to change the artist name on a song? Drag and drop the song to the artist. Want to change the genre of an album? Drag and drop the album into the new genre &ndash; the Zune software will update to reflect your changes.<br />The advanced metadata editing features make it easy to edit multiple tracks or survey album and artist information. Display info about any album in your collection; right click and select &lsquo;find album info&rsquo; and quickly find the song names, the release year, the genre and more. You can quickly and universally apply these changes. <br /><br />If you have an image saved to your clipbook, you can paste that image to replace the album art on any album in your music collection. You can click multiple albums and edit them all at the same time &ndash; just select them and the software will guide you through it. By right-clicking on any given song, you can quickly edit the artist, album, song title, genre and more.&quot;</em><br /><br />Sounds like a winner, no? I'll see how well it works tomorrow morning - and I'm really curious to see if it can read my files properly, because I'm still having some issues with my songs not showing up properly in the Zune software. I guess we'll see tomorrow!

[seedoubleyou]

Updated my software and such this morning... good 'ole windows, had to reboot...

3 min later...

- It would appear they're pulling music meta data from a different source or something now as in using the software to lookup an album I am noticing that genre information is different than what it was prior. Has allmusic.com improved itself too? Wouldn't that be great. I liked this updated tool, I only hope it is stable, reliable, and actually properly populates my plays on the social. It is kind of a bummer that I am going to have to re-analyze my entire collection to update genre information and such.

- Where do we enable/disable gapless playback? Or is it enabled all the time by default now. Honestly, no complaints there if it is.

- Social/Zune website appears to be down 'resting', so its hard to judge what I can't even see and play with yet.

- Connecting my Zune80 to my v2 Car adapter this morning even pushed an update out to that accessory. I wonder if they somehow improved signal reception or something.


That's my initial .02... anyone else?

[andre]

still downloading now but...

i don't have the option of creating an autoplaylist based upon subgenre which they used to have in v1 ZMP and WMP which is nice if you want to break up a genre (like rock) into different styles of rock.

i am guessing i am in the minority here as iTunes doesn't allow you to do that either.

I guess my best choice is to level up subgenre to the genre level...

[theone3]

Wow! There's now support for non-wmv meta-data and built in tag editing! I just got my zune a couple of weeks ago, and this was my biggest gripe with it - I already have an iPod 160 (which I will eventually trade in) filled with mp4s, and was procrastinating on re-converting them. Gotta love Microsoft for supporting and updating their devices like this.

[Jason Dunn]

I woke up at 5:45am so I could start testing and doing videos, and am in the midst of rendering my screencasts. All in all, I'm quite impressed with what I'm seeing so far!

[Jason Dunn]

i don't have the option of creating an autoplaylist based upon subgenre which they used to have in v1 ZMP and WMP which is nice if you want to break up a genre (like rock) into different styles of rock.

I have to admit that I've never thought of music in terms of sub-genre, and as you pointed out if iTunes doesn't support it, most people are probably ok with listing by genre (although iTunes doesn't have folder monitoring either, which is just stupid, so maybe they're not the best judge of what's needed).

Myself, I have quite a few genres that would probably really be sub-genres ('80s Pop, '70s Pop, Christian Pop, Christian Hard Rock, etc.) but I don't mind having a long list of genres.

The new auto-playlist stuff is GREAT - I'm going to do a video once I play with it some more...:D

[onlydarksets]

Did they fix the woeful Videos view? Can you actually see the title and the episode? How about a grid view?

I'm updating now, but I'm impatient...

[onlydarksets]

Nevermind - question answered:

• Browsing videos. Consumers can browse their video collection by genre and series, plus they can preview videos before they play them on full screen.
http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/showthread.php?t=88947

[onlydarksets]

Omigosh - you can edit Video metadata as well, including the type! Goodbye, Sharpie!

[andre]

I have to admit that I've never thought of music in terms of sub-genre, and as you pointed out if iTunes doesn't support it, most people are probably ok with listing by genre (although iTunes doesn't have folder monitoring either, which is just stupid, so maybe they're not the best judge of what's needed).

Myself, I have quite a few genres that would probably really be sub-genres ('80s Pop, '70s Pop, Christian Pop, Christian Hard Rock, etc.) but I don't mind having a long list of genres.

The new auto-playlist stuff is GREAT - I'm going to do a video once I play with it some more...:D

i just downloaded the 2.5 version and...i guess i have to still keep v1 software :-(

I was going to make my subgenre->genre but there are no boolean operations. so if I wanted to make an all-pop playlist by adding 80's pop + 90's pop then I couldn't with the v2.5 software. sigh...

on a positive note...the autoplaylist does allow you to break things down by year instead of decades like previous version of the zune and wmp. this allows you to create a music style that may not have started exactly at the beginning of the decade (think of disco music that started in the mid seventies and died around 1980)

we don't have the ability to 'AND' 'OR' with the autoplaylist!! so if i did want to make an all-pop autoplaylist I couldnt make one of 80's pop + 90's pop. as a

[onlydarksets]

Two more comments:


This whole business of having to go to the website to accept new TOS before being able to login is stupid. I know they could do this inline within the Zune Software.
Is it just me, or is the software faster?

[onlydarksets]

In the same way that the second-generation Zune hardware is really what we should have had at the v1 launch, the Zune 2.5 desktop software is really what we should have had last November when the v2 players launched<more>

That's been my view on it (http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/showthread.php?p=240021&highlight=zune#post240021) as well. This is a big step forward, and I'd say the offering is (finally) fully competitive with the iPod line from a year ago (i.e., pre-Touch/iPhone). That's not bad progress for MS to make in 2 years.
</more>

[Jason Dunn]

Wow! There's now support for non-wmv meta-data and built in tag editing!

Tell me more about this...I've been poking at video metadata and while they've added some categories (TV, movies, etc.) there are only a couple and you can't add your own. So it's better, but still very limited. :(

[andre]

we don't have the ability to 'AND' 'OR' with the autoplaylist!! so if i did want to make an all-pop autoplaylist I couldnt make one of 80's pop + 90's pop. as a

***long quote trimmed by mod JD***

"well why don't i just shut my big fat mouth" ~ bart simpson

i was wrong about making an auto playlist from a group of genre! if you add a semicolon between the groups you get them

all pop playlist = 80's pop;90's pop

[Jason Dunn]

i was wrong about making an auto playlist from a group of genre! if you add a semicolon between the groups you get them all pop playlist = 80's pop;90's pop

Hey, cool! That sounds like a tip to me! :D

[MarxMarvelous]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does gapless playback work on-device if there was no firmware update on the device?

[Jason Dunn]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does gapless playback work on-device if there was no firmware update on the device?

Oh, there's a device firmware update - we just haven't talked about it much yet. :D The Zune gets updated to firmware 2.5.