You want to migrate from the iPod to the Zune but the main reason you haven’t made that jump is because you have your iTunes library. I’m sure that’s a very common reason for not coming over to the Zune world. (Ok, maybe not, but I’ll maintain my delusion.) This is a serious issue though and if you do want to change platforms, then your only options are mostly time consuming and wasteful.

For instance, you can burn the protected M4P music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make an audio CD and then use some CD ripper software to convert the audio CD track back to Zune accepted MP3 or WMA. iTunes allows you to burn the protected music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make a standard audio CD:

1. Insert a CD-R or CD-RW disc into your CD-ROM drive.
2. Burn your playlist to make an audio CD. You cannot select the “MP3 CD” option since it requires the DRM protected iTunes music files be converted to unprotected MP3 or WMA files.
3. After the audio CD is successfully burned, insert the disc into your CD-ROM drive again. Then you can use iTunes to import the music tracks on the burned disc as MP3 or WMA files.

However, it would be a time consuming process if you have a big library of iTunes M4P music files ready to be converted to Zune MP3 or WMA. Moreover, the information about the M4P music files like title, artist and album will be lost after the burning and ripping process. So this method is not recommended if you have a big collection of iTunes M4P music files ready to be transferred to your Zune.

I’ve made a Google search for programs that can convert iTunes M4P music to Zune WMA or MP3, and TuneClone M4P Converter attracted my attention. The edge of TuneClone over other similar programs is that it applys the virtual CD burning technology to simulates the burning and ripping process.

You can use TuneClone M4P Converter to convert your library of M4P DRM protected music to the MP3 format that you can use on any player out there worth its salt. This is a useful tool for anyone looking to break their relationship with the iPod. This software does cost $34.95 to register but that price does give you what appears to be a full feature application. The best part is that it maintains all of the music file’s metadata. Wordpress has a tutorial showing how to use TuneClone M4P Converter to get iTunes 8 music converted to MP3 format.

Due to high audio/video quality, iPod and iPhone are always fantastic portable devices for playing videos. Meanwhile, we may want to watch DVD movies on iPod and iPhone. Yet, a general DVD is in MPEG-2 or VOB format with CSS copy protection. To put a DVD movie onto iPod and iPhone, you need a DVD ripping program to remove the protection and rip the DVD movie to iTunes compatible video first.

For PC users, there are lots of such programs that can rip DVD movies to iTunes videos. Among them, I prefer to use Clone2Go DVD Ripper. You can download it from http://www.clone2go.com.

With Clone2Go DVD Ripper, you can convert nearly all DVDs to iTunes videos for playback on an iPod Touch, iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPhone 3G, including purchased DVDs, original DVDs, DVD copies and even downloaded DVDs.

Below is the step by step tutorial that details how to rip DVD movies to iTunes video files, ready to transfer to your iPod/iPhone:

Step 1. Import DVD movie

Click “File -> Open DVD…” to import the DVD movie from your DVD drive. Alternatively, you can click the “Open DVD” button to import the DVD movie you are going to watch on your iPod/iPhone.

If the DVD movies is saved as a folder on your hard drive, you need to click the “Add Video” button to locate that folder, which is composed of two separate folders: VIDEO_TS and AUIDO_TS. From the VIDEO_TS folder, select the .vob file to import and then click “OK”.

Note: Apart from DVD ripping feature, Clone2Go DVD Ripper can also be used to convert video files and download YouTube videos for iPod, iPhone and a lot more mobile devices.

Tip: If you want to merge several DVD chapters/titles into one single file, just multi-select them and choose “Edit -> Merge Output”. What’s more, Clone2Go DVD Ripper supports batch importing video files and batching convert DVD/video files.

Step 2. Trim the video

If you just need a clip of the DVD movie for viewing on your iPod/iPhone, you can drag the “Start to trim” and “Stop to trim” buttons to get the certain segment of the DVD movie.

You can also specify the “Start Time” and “Stop time” at the bottom right panel of the interface (under “Profile”).

Step 3. Choose a profile

Since you are going to watch the DVD movies on your iPod/iPhone, you need to choose the output video format compatible with iTunes. From the drop-down list of “Profile”, you will see profile categories including “Apple iPod” and “Apple iPhone”. The formats in the corresponding categories are just for iPod Touch, iPod Classic, iPod Nano and iPhone. That’s to say, the videos generated with these formats can be added to your iTunes Library.

Tip: If you are still not very satisfied with the profile you choose, you can customize it for yourself.

Step 4. Start to encode

Now you can click the “Start Encode” button to starting ripping the DVD moive to iTunes for iPod/iPhone.

Tip: The output video files are easily available by clicking the “Folder” button on the main menu after the ripping/converting process is done.

Step 5. Transfer the DVD movie to iPod/iPhone

Launch iTunes. Click “File -> Add File to Library…”. Select the video file from the output folder and click “OK”. Navigate to “Movies” tab and you will see the video. You can double click to play it.

Connect your iPod/iPhone to your PC and transfer the video to your iPod/iPhone with the sync of iTunes Library.

Now you can take your favorite DVD movies on the road!

Windows Movie Maker is a totally free program that comes with Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Vista (also called Windows DVD Maker). Below are the media formats accepted by Windows Movie Maker:

Video files: .asf, .avi, .wmv
Movie files: MPEG1, .mpeg, .mpg, .mlv, .mp2
Audio files: .wav, .snd, .au, .aif, .aifc, .aiff
Windows media files: .asf, .wm, .wma, .wmv
MP3 format audio: .mp3

To import a DVD clip into Windows Movie Maker, you need to extract the clip from the DVD movie, and then add it to the Windows Movie Maker project. I'd recommend using Clone2Go DVD Ripper to perform the DVD ripping process.

1. Add DVD movies

On the main interface, click "File -> Open DVD..." to import the DVD disc. Or you can click the "Open DVD" button to add the DVD.

If the DVD movie is saved as a folder on your computer, you need to click the "Add Video" button to locate that folder, which is composed of two separate folders: VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. From the VIDEO_TS folder, select the .vob file to import and then click "OK".

2. Trim the video

You can drag the "Start to trim" and "Stop to trim" buttons to get the certain segment of the DVD movie.

You can also specify the "Start Time" and "Stop time" at the bottom right panel of the interface (under "Profile").

3. Specify the output format

Windows Movie Maker needs external codec to decode mp4, xvid and mpeg2 video. To skip this trouble, please select "Customized AVI Movie(*.avi)" profile and adjust "video codec" to "msmpeg4v2", "video size" to "Original" to get AVI video accepted by Windows Movie Maker.

4. Start to encode

Now you can click the "Start Encode" button to start ripping the DVD clip to Windows Moive Maker AVI format.

Tip: The output video files are easily available by clicking the "Folder" button on the main menu after the ripping/converting process is done.

5. Import the DVD clip to Windows Movie Maker

After you get the output video clip ripped from the DVD movie, now you can begin to import it into your Windows Movie Maker.

Click on "File". Then click on "Import". A window will appear. In the window, navigate to the video clip you extracted from the DVD movie just now. Then double click on the file. You'll see the icon for the file in your Windows Movie Maker "Collections".

Tip: Many users may wonder how they can convert Windows Movie Maker file (*.MSWMM) to other video format. Actually, A *.MSWMM file is not a video file. It is a project file of Movie Maker (more like a record file). You have to open this file in Windows Movie Maker and save the movie to your computer: Go to Movie Tasks bar -> Finish Movie -> Save to my computer. After that you will have a WMV file which can be converted to another video format or burned to DVD.