The Sansa Media Converter is most certainly ■■■■. Thank goodness that the Fuze+ can read videos from a large number of encoders/converters, unlike the thumbwheel Fuze.
However, I’ve had slightly different results than you. Anamorphic video plays fine for me (the decoder shouldn’t know the difference). I’ve also had full-length movies, some as long as three hours, play just fine. You can use pretty much any constant framerate, as long as you don’t exceed 30. Any bitrate will due for both audio and video, as long as the video bitrate doesn’t exceed Level 2.0 specs* (pretty much anything that isn’t ridiculous for such a small screen).
*If you’re not using an AVC/X.264 encoder, Level 2.0 means nothing to you.
