I finally got a movie onto the PSP that played with the sound intact and everything. Amazing, huh? My process was simple. I used MacTheRipper to get the movie off the DVD, using Title Only extraction. I then used FFMPEGX to encode the video using the built-in PSP profile. A couple of things to know:
- PSP doesn’t like the NTSC Film frame rate. Leave it as NTSC (29.97).
- Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (AOTC) is 2:22 long. It wouldn’t fit on a 512MB card unless I reduced the audio encoding down to 64-bit and 24000Hz sampling. The Incredibles, which I haven’t gotten to work yet, did fit with 128-bit, 48kHz sampling. It came out to about 390-420MB depending on the options.
- I’m not so thrilled with the video quality of AOTC. The edges of people are blurry and not exactly what I expected. The Incredibles encoded much sharper, but then it is animated… no hair to deal with, for example.
- The Incredibles hasn’t worked yet. Something about the multiangle stuff is causing my tools to barf. I’ve tried both YadeX and MacTheRipper to rip it and both FFMPEGX and iPSP to encode it. Both have had major issues with the audio sync. The closest I got was using MacTheRipper to demux the VOB file (essentially splitting the video and audio into two separate file). I then encoded with FFMPEGX, but the audio was out of sync by a smidge. Enough to be annoying, though… I’m going to try to fix it using Sync Hole but I’m not holding my breath. I’m going to try some more things before I just give up and wait for Disney to release it on UMD.
- I’ve yet to try iPSP’s full screen mode. Sony would like people to encode video at 320×240 rather than at the full resolution of the PSP (which is real widescreen, 16×9). People have figured out how to encode movies at the full resolution and tweak the headers so that the PSP will play it (clever people). The movies take up more room, so that might be a problem for me with the 512MB card, but it’s worth giving it a shot with a shorter flick.
- The subtitles didn’t make it through in AOTC where they should’ve in regular English playback (for example, when they’re speaking in some alien language). It’s odd, but I think I may have not set the option on the encoding. That’s something else to play with.
- This stuff is SLOOOOOOOW on my iMac. At home, ATOC took about 270 minutes to encode (4 hours, 30 minutes). On a dual-G5, I’ve seen it encode in 2 hours or so. This is using two-pass encoding with Trellis quantization enabled. I’m not including the time it took to rip the movie from the DVD (on both computers it took under an hour, probably close to 30 minutes).
- iPSP is SLOOOOOOOW, much slower than FFMPEGX. Not sure why, but I’ll try to get some comparison times to put up.
I’ll update with more information as I get it. It’s nice having a portable video player. 
Update: I updated my process in this new post on 5-6-2007.
Categories: Technology News
7:03 pm | 12 comments
April 22nd, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Could you find some way to convert the movie at this site and send it back to me.
PLEASE!!
mms://wm.nhl.na-central.speedera.net/wm.nhl.na-central/comp/feature/top10_OTgoals_97playoffs_700.wmv
Thank you,
Alex.
April 30th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
I’m on a G4 550 mghz Mac and I’ve tried a million different ways to convert my DVDs to PSP and not get the dreaded out of sync problem. It happents 90% of the time. The only way I’ve found to avoid it (and it’s worked 100% of time so far) is to run it through altshiiva twice.
breaks down like this:
rip it using Yade X
encode it using altshiiva
re-encode it using altshiiva at the exact same setting as the first encoding.
It’s takes more time, obviously, but it works.
FYI
settings that I’ve benn using for altshiiva:
On the ‘Crop & Scale’ window, check the Scale button and set the width to 320 and height to 240. Leave ‘crop’ and ‘displayed size’ unchecked.
On the ‘Video’ window, check ‘Encode Video’ and ‘XviD’. Quantiser should be set to 4, and BFrames to 0. FPS should be set to 29.97fps and Key frame interval at 240. Leave Bitrate unchecked.
Forget about ‘Subtitles’ window. On the ‘Audio’ window, check ‘Encode audio’, when the pop-up window appears, set it to 24kHz Stereo.
In the ‘PSP’ check ‘Optimize for PSP’ and type in a Title for the file (this will appear in the list of videos on the PSP). Check ‘Create THM file’, find a frame of the video you like on the preview (at the bottom of the window) then click ‘Take THM from Current Preview’. This will create a preview icon for display on the PSP.
Finally on the ‘Processing’ window, click ‘Go!’. The program will create two files. Rename them M4V00001.MP4 and M4V00001.THM and copy them into \MP_ROOT\100MNV01\ on the PSP.
April 30th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
that’s a weird way to do it… I’ve had no problems with the other movies I’ve tried with FFMPEGX and iPSP. Something about the Incredibles is throwing off the programs… I’ll try your method when I get some time.
May 26th, 2005 at 1:05 am
Me and my brother were having trouble decoding his company video to show full resolution on the PSP using FFmpegX/altshiiva. He finally gave up on those programs and used PSPware. I’m not sure if it has a full-screen option, but whatever he did worked. His video showed full screen on his PSP, but was a bit chunky looking. Not too much to notice off-hand (have to watch it a couple times to catch it). Anyhoo, i checked the file and its resolution was 368×208 which is a really weird resolution. Maybe you guys can try that resolution to see if it works on your PSP. I’ve tried it once or twice on smaller movies using FFmpegX, but haven’t gotten it to work. Hopefully this helps!
May 26th, 2005 at 1:18 am
iPSP also supports that resolution (it’s the hacked actual resolution, I think, of the PSP). You have to do some funky header manipulation of the video to get the PSP to accept the video, but some programs do it.
June 9th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
There is a utility that will allow movies created in ffmpeg X in the widescreen 368x 208 resolution to play on the PSP located at http://www.pspwiki.org/images/4/4a/PSPREZmac.zip . As sujal mentioned, it patches the header to fool the PSP. Works well if you want the flexibilty of ffmpegX versus iPSP and PSPware.
June 9th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Thanks WarMace!
August 17th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
Hey, I missed that (PSPREZmac.zip went down) if someone could forward me the file? I’d certainly mirror it on my webspace. The addy is: callumalden [at] Gmail.com
It works, right? Someone needs to produce a full screenshot-ed how-to on this stuff… I’ll do it! as soon as my White PSP arrives from Lik-Sang. *December…. Next year*
August 30th, 2005 at 9:38 am
The latest version of ffmpegX does not longer need to use psprez after encoding, it can directly create working 368×208 PSP movies.
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:20 am
Am trying to get my video podcasts from my mac running tiger to my psp. Not having any luck. any suggestions? thanks joe
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:41 am
what have you tried already, Joe? Have you downloaded FFMPEGX and given that a go?
April 24th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
hay, ever tryed imovie? trust me it works but you need to export using expert setings and movie to mp4 encoding it only comes in 320-240 res but so what! also 669 kbs is good video and 96 is good sound.i typed this on a psp! ps. apple rules and all hail ilife!