I recently treated myself to a HD camcorder. I got the camcorder a bit early so I could have a chance to play around with it and practice editing the clips, the camcorder records the clips in a .MTS format which is a High-definition MPEG Transport Stream video format, commonly called "AVCHD"; used by Sony, Panasonic, and other HD camcorders; based on the MPEG-2 transport stream and supports 720p and 1080i HD video formats.

I captured lots of fun home movie HD videos and would like to put these videos on my Zune player to watch. The problem is that the videos that I captured with HD camcorder are in .MTS format which the Zune player can not playback. I've googled a lot and found out that the Zune player could only support videos of H.264/WMV format with 1080i HD resolution, up to 14 Mbps bit rate, CBR or VBR for above supported video profiles or MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile up to 4.0 Mbps bit rate.

I've tried lots of video converters to convert .MTS videos to Zune video formats but the best I can get are trial version converters that put inconvenient huge watermarks in the middle of them. A friend of mine recommend a Free Zune Video Converter to me. This one is really good for me. No watermark, and no time limitation. It just takes some clicks to convert videos to Zune video format using this free Zune video converter. I thought maybe some people got the same problems to find out a free yet easy-to-use Zune Video Converter to convert videos to Zune video format. Just let me show you to how to convert the videos to Zune video format step by step.

Step 1: Download & install Aneesoft Free Zune Video Converter

We'll be using the very nice video converter software called Aneesoft Free Zune Video Converter for converting videos to Zune video format, head over here and download the free trial version of Free Zune Video Converter. Next step is to install Free Zune Video Converter.

Step 2: Run Free Zune Video Converter and add videos

Now run Free Zune Video Converter and click the big button "Add..." to add videos from your hard disk, you may add as many videos as you want to convert to Zune video format. Only the titles you checked will be converted.

Step 3: Edit & merge videos: trim, crop, add effect, add watermark

This Free Zune Video Converter program has two versions. The free version is function-limited. If you'd like to edit and merge your videos, you need to upgrade to the pro version.

Step 4: Set the output Zune video format

Zune supports MP4(MPEG-4/H.264) & WMV video format. So we set the output format to "Zune MPEG-4 Video(*.mp4)" for Zune. You may also find other preset video setting options avaiable for you.

Step 5: Start converting videos to Zune video format for free

Now you may click the big button "Start" to begin converting videos to Zune compatible video files. An "Upgrade to Aneesoft Zune Video Converter" window will pop up. If you wouldn't like to upgrade, just click "No, thanks" to continue converting your videos to Zune video format.

Once the convert is complete, Aneesoft Free Zune Video Converter will place on your Desktop a new Zune format version of your video that will play on the Zune. Double-click the new file and play it to make sure it looks as you expect. I bet you'll be surprise at the video quality, just like me.