Organizing Video in Zune

[abhishes]

Hello everyone,

I have like 200 Zune compatible videos which I got from attending a technical training event. These are on various subjects like .NET, SQL Server.

I want to organize these videos according to the subject to which they belong to.

Now when i sync these videos to zune, all 200 go inside a folder called Videos.

This is very painful to browse. I want to organize my video files under folders like SQLServer and BizTalk.

It seems that in order to organize the video files on Zune, it needs to have a “Album” tag on the file. It organizes the files into various folders by looking at this tag.

However in Vista (and Zune software) , When I try to modify the properties of a WMV file, there is no “Album” property. I have tried assigning some string to each of the property which is available but still when I sync the files in zune everything still goes only under one folder called “Videos”.

I am surprised that there is no obvious way in which a user can organize his/her video files in Zune.

Regards,
Abhishek.

[Jason Dunn]

Someone else posted exactly the same question here last week, and I have the same answer for you: I know of no way to edit the metadata to separate out those videos. I know, it's hugely frustrating - I've emailed a Zune team member and am waiting to hear back from him to see if there's a way to address this problem.

[onlydarksets]

Use dsharpie (http://www.zunescene.mobi/forums/index.php?topic=8887.0). Set the Type to TV Show, and then use the other fields to group the videos.

[Jason Dunn]

Use dsharpie (http://www.zunescene.mobi/forums/index.php?topic=8887.0). Set the Type to TV Show, and then use the other fields to group the videos.

Wow - great find! I wasn't aware of this program...time for a front page post. :D

[onlydarksets]

For mp4 files, use AtomicParsley (http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/). It's command-line (wait - keep reading!!!), but there are a few GUIs for it. It doesn't let you set the "TV Show" tag properly for Zune, but you can workaround it:

Set all of the other tags
Move the files into your Zune video folder
Select them all in the Zune software
Right click and select Edit
Change the type to "TV Series"


I am using it in my SageTV->Zune/iPhone conversion process (http://onlydarksets.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/convert-sage-recordings-to-iphone/) (same one from this thread (http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/f314/swiss-army-knife-video-encoding-tmpgenc-4-0-xpress-90978-2.html#post694946)). MP4 lets me use the same video file on both devices.