80gig zune 2 . . . know anything about video files?

[EarlVonKippler]

okay, since this is about really the only forum i visit daily, i thought i'd throw a very left field question out here. totally unrelated to EU, but regarding the microsoft zune. do you know anything about it?

some .m4v videos not working, others are fine.

i own both a 80g zune 2 and an 60g ipod video. i converted all my .avi videos to .m4v using "3GP Converter" using the ipod setting. now every single one of them work perfectly on the ipod. i recently got a zune 2 and gave the ipod to my wife. i noticed the zune plays .m4v natively, so i just synched them up and went about my business. however, after further review, it turns out that several of the files will not play on the zune, the example image is shown in the list, but when i attempt to play them, i get an error stating it can't be found or played.

so, i converted the .m4v to .wmv using "Free Zune Video Converter 1.0" making sure the audio bite rate was 128 and such, but now the zune considers them corrupted.

what is going on here? i can convert all my oringinal videos to .wmv i guess, instead of taking the already converted .m4v files and reconverting them. i am just wondering why the .m4v dont play in the first place when they are all playing fine on an inferior device (the ipod)

also, any 3rd party freeware you can reccomend would be helpful . i am using what i am using, because i understand and ~trust them. do you have better choices i should consider?

edit: read some notes elsewhere and found my answer regarding the corruption. i am recoverting as we speak, but it seems it is a problem specifically between the conversion software i am using and the new zune 2 programming.


so my remaining questions are:

why will some .m4v play, but not others?
what freeware do you reccommend to convert video for zune 2?