I think I've finally figured out how to deal with the Zune, and so far, my new way of doing things has been working out very nicely. For some background, I don't want to keep my podcast subscriptions in the Zune software - I want all of my subscriptions in one place, with read status synced with Newsgator Online. But I still wanted my podcasts on my Zune, and I wanted it to be easy - no manual work involved.

Well, I could do that with the original firmware, through the use of auto playlists, but they removed that in the latest firmware. When I first started, I didn't sync all of my music with the Zune, but I wanted all of my podcasts. Unfortunately, the Zune didn't see all of my podcasts as podcasts, so that didn't work out either.

So what I did was split my music into two folders. I have my main folder, and then I have a Zune folder, where I put all of my music I want synced. That's the folder I have the Zune software monitor, as well as the folder that all of my podcasts go into. Now, whenever I sync, everything is on there. It's not the best organization I've ever seen, but it's all on there, and I can find it, and when I've listened to a podcast and delete it, it automatically removes it from the Zune, which is what I wanted - getting podcasts on and off of my Zune is now no extra work for me.

Also, I think I've finally figured out what I need to do to easily get video on the Zune - from existing digital media, as well as DVDs. Once you figure it out, it's really quite easy, but when it takes 1/2 hour to "test" something, it takes a bit of time to get it right. I'll write that up separately, but the key is Windows Media Encoder 9.

Tags: Zune | Podcasts