gdgt

Convert the video to a native Zune format with a different transcoding program like MediaCoder. The Zune software's built-in transcoding is horribly inefficient, and there's not much else we can do until it's fixed.

I don't totally understand video formats, but I'd guess that the difference in conversion times for "identical" videos could be due to different codecs used to compress them.. perhaps.

@soren121's advice sounds good.. but I haven't really used video converter programs much, so I can't really comment on that.

Another thing you could do is just change the Zune computer software settings to convert videos in the background, rather than converting them only when you're syncing, and adjust the temporary storage space for the converted files, then just leave the program open overnight or something.

I use Microsoft's own Expression Encoder 3. It's free, and has conversion profiles to automatically convert with the proper settings for Xbox 360, Windows Mobile, Zune 1st gen, Zune 2nd gen, Zune HD and the dock settings for each respective Zune (like 720p for the HD, for example). It converts every format I've tried with it (including .mkv) and comes out perfect every time. You can get it here www.microsoft.com­/Expression­/products­/Encoder­_Over... The free version does everything you need it to, there's not any big limitations on it at all. The only thing you might have trouble with is that if you're using default settings and it has trouble converting, you need to set the video setting to VBR Quality and set that to 100, and change the audio setting to VBR Quality and set that at 98.

Are you sure? I haven't used it for .flv, but it won't recognize .mkv too. However, if you add it in manually by selecting it to show all files- .mkv does work, the program just won't recognize it itself. It may be a similar issue with .flv.

I just tested it with .flv and it does indeed work. Make sure you have a codec pack installed in the first place (like K-Lite's) or it (probably) won't work. The .flv file needs to added manually, and also make sure to use the settings I described in an earlier post.