OK, I downloaded the latest alpha (84), I've got conversion turned on, forcing everything to MP3, and I now have a number of problems and observations.
1. MC thinks that my Zen only has 2.1 GB available. This severely limits my syncing options!
. I have the 60 GB model. Any idea what's up there?
2. When syncing, I very frequently received the popup window "The action cannot be completed because the other program is busy". Clicking on retry would allow it to move forward, but it appeared to pop up on every file that required conversion. On a hunch, I cancelled the sync halfway through, and changed the converter to MP3 VBR (I was using MP3 at 192). But it didn't appear to make any difference. However VBR is intolerably slow (unusably so).
3. When forcing conversion, does it take into consideration the bitrate as well as the format, and convert files to a higher bitrate? It appears that the space required calculation assumes that all files will be at the given bitrate (with 192 selected at least).
4. I am still seeing some "File is opened woithout permissions to transfer errors, but they don't appear to be consistent - they don't occur on the same files each time.
5. The playlist itself still does not appear on the Zen, although the "syncing playlist info" does come up at the end of a transfer.
Sorry to be full of bad news!
Thanks in advance for any insight.