How to use Mediamonkey to sync with the Zune [A Guide]

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:47 pm

I've moved this guide to the wiki to keep it in a centralized location and maintain its ease of access.

I've discovered that you don't have to deal with MM recopying each track every time you sync, as long as you have the the correct settings set up.

Please see

http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... ith_a_Zune

for the guide.

Note: This method DOES NOT work with the new 3.0 firmware. The last firmware version known to work with this method is version 2.5.

Wargazm · Post by **Wargazm** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:16 pm

-Multiple hacks are required to synchronize, including a registry hack. One hack must only be made once, but a second hack must be used on each synchronization (assuming your computer has been rebooted since last sync)

Your writeup didn't describe any hacks...are these a part of the external hard drive hack? I glanced at that list of instructions, but it didn't mention any reg hacks either.

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:21 pm

The external hard drive hack modifies the registry to allow your computer to see the Zune as a drive.

The second "hack" is ending the Zune.exe process while synchronizing a video, which must be done each time the computer is rebooted to synchronize.

I'm talking about a "hack" in the sense that these are processes not necessarily meant for everyday use and that they are bypassing the Zune software in a way that the official Zune software was never really meant to allow.

Wargazm · Post by **Wargazm** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:21 am

gotcha....I thought you meant that you had to do a registry hack every time the computer rebooted.

so far what are your thoughts on this? are the limitations something you can live with?

Also, does the new 2.3 firmware break this process?

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:29 am

Wargazm wrote:gotcha....I thought you meant that you had to do a registry hack every time the computer rebooted.

so far what are your thoughts on this? are the limitations something you can live with?

Also, does the new 2.3 firmware break this process?

The new 2.3 firmware does not break the process. I have the most up-to-date software and firmware and the process works.

The biggest limiting factor for me is the lacking ability to sync playlists, the second biggest factor being that you have to repeat the process indicated in my Instructions every time the computer is rebooted and you want to sync. If you don't reboot your computer often I would say this is a very good option. Personally, I am going to continue using it, for the mere fact that the Zune software does things to my music files (extracting album art, etc.) that I prefer would not happen.

Wargazm · Post by **Wargazm** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:15 am

yeah, I definitely don't want my album art extracted. ugh.

I don't reboot often at all, so yeah, I may have to do this.

Question: how do you do video syncing? I assume you can just drop videos onto it with Windows Explorer since it's basically a hard drive at this point, but I figured I'd ask.

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:30 am

Wargazm wrote:yeah, I definitely don't want my album art extracted. ugh.

I don't reboot often at all, so yeah, I may have to do this.

Question: how do you do video syncing? I assume you can just drop videos onto it with Windows Explorer since it's basically a hard drive at this point, but I figured I'd ask.

Right now I'm doing video and pictures with the Zune software, but leaving music to MM. Fortunately the Zune software makes it easy to limit what filetypes you want on it. Of course, you could use WMP as well with zAlternator, but I don't see how it'd be much different from using the Zune software itself.

Wargazm · Post by **Wargazm** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:55 am

cool. thanks for the help man, I really think I'm going to end up buying a Zune now.

zB Dizzy · Post by **zB Dizzy** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 2:50 pm

Hey, this is Dizzy from zB

nohitter151, thanks for bringing our hack here! With any luck, this will inspire more people (Wargazm?) to get a Zune. I love the MM software, so I put in a special request with Pity to support it and did the debugging myself.

If you find any problems with my tutorial or any better methods, please take the time to register and post. I want to make this as smooth as possible.

Original Thread: http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/tutori ... nator.html

Thanks again

BTW, is that a Zune skin you're using

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:20 pm

zB Dizzy wrote:Hey, this is Dizzy from zB

nohitter151, thanks for bringing our hack here! With any luck, this will inspire more people (Wargazm?) to get a Zune. I love the MM software, so I put in a special request with Pity to support it and did the debugging myself.

If you find any problems with my tutorial or any better methods, please take the time to register and post. I want to make this as smooth as possible.

Original Thread: http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/tutori ... nator.html

Thanks again

BTW, is that a Zune skin you're using

Good to have you here, Dizzy! Thanks for your guide, it was very helpful, although in it you never mention you need the Zune accessible as a disk (external HD hack) and I couldn't get zAlternator to work without it.

And yes, it is a Zune skin! I ported it over to MM as my first skin

. I've linked to it in my sig if you'd like to try it out.

zB Dizzy · Post by **zB Dizzy** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:06 pm

Thanks for the heads up! Fixed that in my tutorial and linked to your skins

JoeyJoJo · Post by **JoeyJoJo** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:56 am

Thanks to all for the effort to get the Zune working with 3rd party software. The Zune is a great piece of hardware that is crippled with horrific software. Hopefully this effort will continue and will eventually support synching playlists, but this is a good start.

To add to the effort, I have written a small utility that will automatically kill the Zune.exe process, to save you the hassle of having to go to task manager to do so.

Download from here: http://rapidshare.com/files/87535402/KillZune.exe.html

Feel free to cross-post to ZB if this is helpful.

Edited to add: I went through the procedure today, and found that playlists were synched to the Zune. So I couldn't be happier. Now I'm no longer disappointed that I bought one of these things.

Wargazm · Post by **Wargazm** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:21 am

zB Dizzy wrote:With any luck, this will inspire more people (Wargazm?) to get a Zune.

yeah, I am seriously considering it. Like you say, the hardware is great but the software is mediocre at best.

In your opinion, do you think this effort can evolve into native support from within mediamonkey (perhaps in the form of a plugin) without the need for the extra software? Or are there some fundamental technical roadblocks that will keep that from ever happening?

nohitter151 · Post by **nohitter151** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 11:27 am

JoeyJoJo wrote:Thanks to all for the effort to get the Zune working with 3rd party software. The Zune is a great piece of hardware that is crippled with horrific software. Hopefully this effort will continue and will eventually support synching playlists, but this is a good start.

To add to the effort, I have written a small utility that will automatically kill the Zune.exe process, to save you the hassle of having to go to task manager to do so.

Download from here: http://rapidshare.com/files/87535402/KillZune.exe.html

Feel free to cross-post to ZB if this is helpful.

JoeyJoJo, thanks for this. Does your .exe require that you still sync a file to your Zune before it is run or does it somehow do this automatically? Thanks again.

JoeyJoJo · Post by **JoeyJoJo** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:30 pm

JoeyJoJo, thanks for this. Does your .exe require that you still sync a file to your Zune before it is run or does it somehow do this automatically? Thanks again.

This exe will only kill the Zune process. You'll still need to start it up and kick off the sync process manually, but at least you don't have to fiddle with the task manager. I will play around with trying to automate the whole process at some point.

Good luck,
JoeyJoJo