Convering videos w/SMC without immediately loading onto fuze

Hi I am a very happy owner of a sansa FUZE 4gb. I just recently started using the video functionality and my approach to its use has been a bit different from how others use it I think… I have a large number of microSD cards that I swap out with different segments of my library stored on them. Since it takes hours sometimes to convert video to a format usable by my player, I have been looking for a way to pre-convert the videos I would like to watch in the future. That is to say, I want to convert a lot of videos and store them on my computer somewhere for easy loading/unloading onto the FUZE. The problem is, when my memory fills up in the fuze, the converter stops working (actually it does something worse- it continues working and then fails to save the converted output due to low memory errors on the target drive.)

what I want to do is specifiy a save location for the converted video output - like a microSD card in my drive or a usb flash drive or a directory on the local HDD. That way I can use my downtime to convert videos at my liesure, then transfer them to the fuze just before I leave my home for easy viewing. 

Is there any way to accomplish this? Right now the only workaround I have is to fill up my fuze, copy all the videos onto a different drive, free up all the space on my fuze and then start again, The drawback of this method is that I can only convert 4gb of videos at a time - but I have a terabyte of content that I would eventually like to convert. Any ideas?

Why not just convert them to the MicroSD cards (inserted in your Fuze) in the 1st place?

thats basically what I’m forced to do. But I have a ton more media than I have storage on microSD cards. If I could convert a bunch of video and save it to my hard drive instead of a microSD card, I would be able to convert data in increments greater than 16gb, which would allow me to queue up a huge list of videos and go to sleep letting it work for 8 hours. 16gb takes about 4 hours.

Also, I wouldn’t have to calculate how big the files will be on my SD card after they are converted (a prediction that’s nearly impossible to make) because of how the software glitches when the target drive is full. So it would streamline things and make them more efficient for me. 

Honestly it’s bizarre in my opinion that the current SMC software won’t let you save to any location you like. Did they think their customers were too stupid to remember where they saved a converted media file? Obviously the customer is smart enough to download/rip videos for the fuze in the first place, so why wouldn’t the customer be smart enough to remember where they saved a file?

Sorry, I misunderstood. What you’re asking for was available on the 1st version of SMC I believe. SanDisk does not produce SMC; it is outsourced to a different company. I can’t remember if the 2nd version had this capability or not, but it was written by a different company than the 1st. The problem with these 2 former versions is that they were ‘pre-Fuze’ and therefore did not support it.

We’re now on the 3rd version of SMC, developed after the introduction of the Fuze and while it’s from the same software company as the 2nd version, they took away the photo crop feature. Seems like it’s 1 step forward and 2 steps back.

The last word from SanDisk here (which was quite some time ago) was that they were hoping to eliminate the need for SMC altogether via a firmware update. But that may or may not ever come to pass. Have you seen this thread? Or this one? I agree that converting videos to your computer’s hard drive first, and then loading them onto memory cards as needed or wanted would be a much more convenient way of doing it, especially with a large video collection.

I’ve done it as you have; converting them to the player and/or a card first, then moving them to my hard drive (emptying the card) for long-term storage and repeating the procedure. It can be a pain.

I’ve never found a way to convert a video with SMC and then save it on a hard drive or flash stick  Maybe there’s something I’m missing?

What I’ve done is converted a bunch of movies on different cards.  Left over space (not enough for a movie) is devoted to a few short TV shows (great when I don’t want to watch a full length movie).  Then I swap cards as needed.  I’ve labeled each card with a blank label, numbered them, made a list on Excel for each card.

I wouldn’t mind the flash stick or other way of having them stored.  My coworker did that with her ipood, she was able to store the converted movies (from full-lenth to a mini device) on flash sticks and get a lot on them.  Then she’d just plug in the 2 and move them as needed.  Of course having them on cards eliminated the need to have a computer there to transfer movies, I could do it as I needed or wanted.  But still…

After converting the files you can browse to the SD card using the drive letter.

Easiest windows way is to hit <windows>+d and then type <drive letter>: in the run window.

example-    m:

Or if you have a micro-to-standard adaptor you can put it in an SD drive and cepy the contents where you like, then clear out the card.

dragonnas, so I just drag the file to my fuze after it’s converted?

Do I drag it from my card to some other place, such as my D drive?  Then drag it from my D drive to my fuze?

Could you provide step by step instructions (yes I need it that simple)?