The Zune Music + Video software lets you add to your collection audio and video in a variety of formats and codecs. Just download media from the web or rip songs from a CD, and the Zune software automatically adds the downloaded (and ripped) items to your collection and syncs them to your Zune device.
Note
The Zune Music + Video software will convert many video formats during sync so they can play on your Zune device. This automatic transcoding can take a while.
Zune audio and video formats
The audio or video format is the container that stores audio or video information. It holds the actual audio or video content.
You've probably heard of the most common audio and video formats: Windows Media Audio (WMA), Windows Media Video, MP3, and MP4. You can find out the format of your media by looking at the file extension—the characters to the right of the dot in the file name. For example, an MP3 file's extension is .mp3.
You can play, burn, or sync audio and video files on the Zune Music + Video software that are in these formats:
| Audio formats | File extension |
| AAC audio created with AAC-LC audio codec | .m4a and .m4b |
| Windows Media Audio | .wma |
| MP3 audio | .mp3 |
| MP3 playlists | .m3u |
| Zune playlists | .zpl |
| Video formats | File extension |
| MPEG-4 media created with the H.264 video codec and the AAC-LC audio codec | .m4v and .mp4 |
| MPEG-4 media created with the MP4pt2 video codec and MP3 audio codec | .avi |
| QuickTime movie created with either the MP4pt2 video codec or the H.264 video codec and the AAC-LC audio codec | .mov |
| Windows Media Center DVR | .dvr-ms |
| Windows Media Video | .wmv |
Some media on your computer may not show up in your Zune Music + Video collection even if they are in one of these formats. For example, if you buy protected .m4v and .wma files from somewhere other than Zune Marketplace, they won't work with Zune Music + Video and won't be included in your Zune Music + Video collection. Zune Music + Video plays only protected content from Zune Marketplace.
Songs or other audio content in formats that Zune Music + Video doesn't use can be converted into one of these formats and then added to your Zune Music + Video collection. To learn more about converting audio files into one of the formats Zune Music + Video uses, see Manage file conversion.
Codec is short for "compression and decompression." A codec is software that compresses the sound and image streams, and the Zune Music + Video software decompresses media using the same codec.
For example, when you rip a song from a CD to your computer, the Zune Music + Video software uses the WMA codec to compress the song into a compact WMA format. When you play that WMA file (or any WMA file), Zune Music + Video uses the same WMA codec to decompress the file so that your Zune device can play the music.
Some codecs can be used to store audio and video in a number of different file formats. For example, the H.264 video codec (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC) can store data in a number of MPEG-4 and QuickTime movie formats, including .m3v, .mp4, .m4a, .m4b, and .mov.
Your Zune device will play media compressed with the codecs installed on Windows or the Zune Music + Video software, including:
WMA Standard
WMA Pro
WMA Lossless (available for Zune 30 with version 2.1 firmware)
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC)
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3
MP4pt2 (not available for Zune 30)
H.264 (not available for Zune 30)
MPEG-2c
WMV8 (available for Zune 30 only)
WMV9
WMV Photostory (available for Zune 30 only)
Note
Your Zune device doesn't use as many codecs as the Zune Music + Video software does. However, any media that can be stored in your collection will be converted to a playable format when it's synced to your Zune device.
