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This is a short introduction on how to use the PSP to watch videos from the Memory Stick. It contains information on where to save the video files as well as how to create videos that can be used on the PSP.
Update: I've added information on how to create movies for the PSP in Linux using ffmpeg.
To watch videos on the PSP you will have to create the directory for them yourself as the PSP doesn't do this for you when it formats the Memory Stick.
Create a directory in the root of the PSP, where there is a psp directory and two .ind files. This directory should be called "MP_ROOT", without the quotes. In this directory you will have to create another directory called "100MNV01", also without quotes. This is where the video files should be saved for the PSP to find them. The reason they are saved like this is presumably because that's where video files are saved on Sonys digital video cameras that also use Memory Sticks. It's also very important that they are created with capital letters, like shown, or the PSP won't recognize the directories.
Use the following commands to create the directories:
> mkdir /mnt/psp/MP_ROOT
> mkdir /mnt/psp/MP_ROOT/100MNV01
This isn't all though. The PSP can only show movies saved in the MPEG4 format, that usually has the file extension .mp4. The videos need to be saved in MPEG-4 Simple Profile at 320x240 resolution to work properly it seems. The files also needs to be named in a specific way, they have to be called "M4V03770.MP4" or something similar. That is "M4V" followed by five digits and with the extension .MP4. It is also very important that all letters are in CAPS or the PSP won't find the files.
Converting movies in Windows
At the moment there seems to be only two programs on Windows that can properly create mp4 files that the PSP can play. These are the Image Converter 2.1 which can be bought from Sony for a mere $10 and the 3GP Converter which can be found at this location:
http://www.nurs.or.jp/%7Ecalcium/3gpp/
Converting movies in Linux
A patch has been added to the ffmpeg program recently that adds compatibility with the PSP. You will need to download the latest version of ffmpeg from their CVS. Run this from a terminal window to get the sources:
> cvs -z9 -d:pserver:
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:/cvsroot/ffmpeg co ffmpeg
Now you can enter the ffmpeg directory and configure, compile and install the program, make sure to compile with at least the "--enable-faac" option (which means you also need the faac package).
> ./configure --enable-faac
> make
> sudo make install
If everything compiled and installed without problems you should now be able to create MP4 movies which work on the PSP. If you did encounter problems, you can check out the homepages of the programs for more information.
Here is how to convert a movie to the MP4 format, using the new option added in ffmpeg:
> ffmpeg -i sourcemovie.avi -f psp -r 14.985 -s 320x240 -b 768 -ar 24000 -ab 32 M4V00002.MP4
This will create an MP4 movie with a frame rate of 14.985 (-r 14.985), a resolution of 320 by 240 (-s 320x240), a video bitrate of 768kbps (-b 768), an audio sampling frequency of 24000 Hz (-ar 24000) and an audio bitrate of 32 kbps (-ab 32).
According to the English manual for the PSP from the FCC website that's circling the internet the maximum video bitrate the PSP can handle is 768. The maximum resolution is 320x240 for movies played back from the Memory Stick so don't go any higher than that. As a final note, the ffmpeg developer who added this PSP functionality mentions that there has been problems with other framerates than 14.985 so to be sure it will work you should stick with that. I've heard reports of other values working as well though, so you could try different rates if you want to experiment. |
