CucuSoft Zune Video Converter Suite is an excellent, easy to use yet powerful set of tools that will allow Zune users to fill up their high-tech multimedia buddies with videos and audio from virtually any media format. A must have piece of software for the serious Zune lover.

The suite includes two powerful tools: DVD to Zune Converter, which will encode your DVD into mpeg-4 video file format, and Zune Video Converter, a very accurate mp4 encoder application that takes almost any media format as a source.

Feature Set (4/5)

As both applications inside Cucusoft Zune Converter Suite are based on the same Cucusoft advanced converting techniques, they present similar features.

Regarding input, Zune Converter Suite supports DVD movies of almost any kind as long as they comply with the DVD-Video standards (i.e. no “tricky” DVDs and/or PS2/3 games). MP4 and WMV are fully supported. DVD to Zune Converter also allows choosing both subtitles and audio tracks (English, French, Spanish, etc.) independently. The other application in the suite (Zune Video Converter) lets you perform conversion on almost any video file: AVI, DivX, XviD, MPEG, WMV, and QuickTime MOV video files are fully supported, as well as realmedia files (RM, RMV).

Output format can be easily customized, with the defaults set at H.264 video format (up to 768 Kbps, with a size of 640×480 “TV Size” at 30fps), or MPEG-4 (up to 2.5 Mbps, 480×480 at 30fps). Zune Video Converter Suite also allows for extracting audio-only clips in MP3 format.

Additionally, the suite allows creation of split resulting video files by DVD chapters, as well as the usual video cropping modes (4:3, 16:9, etc.) Unluckily, only Zune-compatible files can be produced (i.e. not capable of producing, for instance, MOV or RM files).

Conversion is performed at a great speed even with default options, and you even get to watch your movie while you are converting it to fit your Zune.

Ease Of Use (5/5)

Whenever somebody searches for the word “easy” in a dictionary, a screenshot of the CucuSoft Video Converter Suite should appear next to its definition. This suite is extremely easy to use for both beginners and advanced users alike.

Both programs in the Suite can perform an automatic CPU type detection and select the appropriate setting values to ensure the best speed/quality balance. This allows the novice user to start converting any video into Zune compatible format with as little as 2 clicks. Beginners will appreciate this capability very much.

Advanced users are not left behind, as Zune Converter Suite allows customization of almost every parameter.

Almost every function can be activated by a single button or menu click, and the intuitive and simple interface is nice (and customizable) too.

Ease Of Installation And Setup (5/5)

CucuSoft Zune Video Converter Suite is installed as most Windows programs: double click to open the installer, then follow the on-screen instructions and you are done. It?s as easy as that. Also, Zune Converter Suite Installer is very lightweight, and therefore the installation process is really fast. As with most new software installers, a computer restart is not required.

Quality Of Copy (4.5/5)

The Zune Converter Suite performs a really good conversion job. The quality of the resulting pictures depends of course on the capabilities of your own system; but even under the minimum system requirements, the Zune Converter Suite produces nice quality videos. As with most video to Zune converters, the lower the speed, the better the resulting output, and vice versa.

Software Stability (5/5)

No unstable or unpredictable behavior has been observed while testing under several Windows versions and system configurations including several different (and often problematic) antivirus applications.

Summary (4.7/5)

Easy to install and use - two-clicks video conversion.
Supports almost every video input format, including RealMedia and QuickTime videos.
Highly configurable output allows good compression and supports the latest 640×48 video size.
Supports watching the source video while converting.
Allows split output by DVD chapters.
Allows audio-only conversion.
Fast operation.