Hello,
I just purchased a Sansa Fuze 4GB, as we’re flying in a couple of weeks and I wanted to be able to watch some instructional hess videos (off a DVD) on the plane.
After experiencing many of the problems others here seem to have run into, I finally was able to create an AVI file with settings such that the Sansa Media Converter wouldn’t reject the file due to something called a codec. (Thank you to those who specified that you need to set it at 224x176, and the bit rate fairly low – I would NEVER have known to do any of that, otherwise).
So I created the AVI file off the DVD; the preview function seemed to play it just fine. And it even started to convert on the SMC. I’m feeling pretty good watching the progress bars, when all of a sudden the lower bar stops cold at 49%. (The upper bar seems to be completely done, at 100%.) No amount of waiting seems to make any difference, and the only button that works on the SMC window is to “Cancel” the job. When I do that, I get another box informing me that the conversion was “Unfinished” and – in what strikes me as a show of ironic humor – gives the reason as, “User cancel the converted [sic] operation.” Well guys, I wouldn’t have cancelled the operation if it had actually kept moving forward!?!
At this point I looked around the forum some more, and found another suggestion to look up the temp folder where the file is located so I could drag it manually into the Fuze folder. I found the temp folder, but the video file is not there. (There is an 8Kb thumbnail file in the Thumbnails subfolder, but I’ll be darned if I know what that’s for.)
So, what do I do now? I’ve spent the better part of two days trying to figure out this thing. If I wanted something meant for playing MP3 files, I could have spent a lot less money and also saved myself a lot of time and frustration. But that neat little screen on the Fuze kept beckoning. Was it a siren’s call? :manmad:
This is my first post here, so please forgive me if I show my lack of Fuze expertise or of knowledge of the forum contents. Any step-by-step explanations as to what I need to do to get this to work will be greatly appreciated!
Message Edited by JEA on 09-12-2009 12:35 PM
Message Edited by JEA on 09-12-2009 12:38 PM
UPDATE 9/13: I tried to manually drag and copy the file into the Fuze videos directory. Before doing it, I got a warning from Windows saying that the file “has one or more properties outside of device limits. If possible, use a media program that can convert the file before copying it. [Umm, I thought that’s what SMC was for.] If you copy the file now, it will be stored on the device, but may not be presented in the device user interface. Do you wish to copy the file to the device anyway?”
O.K., this leads to a further couple of questions: What exactly does Windows mean by the file having “one or more properties outside device limits”? And, how can I find out what those “device limits” are so that I don’t exceed them? The Fuze manual available in PDF format on the Sansa website isn’t exactly the most detailed or helpful user manual that I’ve ever come across.
Message Edited by JEA on 09-12-2009 09:29 PM
