Organizing Video Files on a Memory Stick Duo

If you recall, long ago (in Chapter 6), I introduced the concept of file formats and told you that PSP movies have to be in the MPEG-4 (MP4) format; otherwise, your PSP won't know what to do with them. That's still true, so don't bother with MPEG-2 or AVI files. If you copy them to your Memory Stick Duo, all they will do is sit there and take up spacesort of like that uncle who mooches off your father all the time.

Thus, the first thing you should do is get some MP4 files, which you can acquire readily on the Web. Check out the PSP sections of FilePlanet (www.fileplanet.com), PocketMovies.net (www.pocketmovies.net), and Sony's very own CONNECT (http://psp.connect.com; Figure 7.1). You'll find all kinds of movie files readily formatted for your PSP. Just download the files, unzip them if necessary, and prep them for transfer to a Memory Stick Duo.

Figure 7.1. PSP CONNECT is a great source of PSP-ready video files.

After you download video files, what do you do with them? In preparation for transfer to the PSP, you have to put them somewhere on your computer's hard drive, and after the transfer, you need to have them in the proper folder on the Memory Stick Duo.

Both conundrums are easily solved. First, I suggest creating a folder right in the C drive (or whichever hard drive you use the most) root directory called PSP or PlayStation Portable. That's what I do, anyway.

Within that folder, I have many subfolders, one of which is called Video. Thus, I have a folder just for my PSP videos at the location C:\PSP\video.

When I download PSP videos, I put them in that folder. If the videos are zipped, I choose to open them rather than save them and then extract the zipped videos into that folder.

When you elect to download something through Internet Explorer, you have the choice of saving it or opening it. Although it's usually advisable to save files before opening them, zipped files are an exception. Rather than have a bunch of .zip files in my PSP folder in addition to the media files, I elect to open the zipped files right from the download prompt and, when prompted, extract the contents to my PSP folder.

By far the easiest way to transfer video from a PC to a PSP Memory Stick Duo is through a media-manager utility, such as MAX Media Manager for PSP (Figure 7.2). This program (available from FilePlanet and other sites) is popular, incredibly capable, and described in full in Chapter 14.

Figure 7.2. MAX Media Manager, or something similar, is necessary for transferring video to a PSP.

Why can't you transfer video files to your PSP manually? It's an incredibly complex process. Video files come with extra files that indicate the title, length, and other data, and everything must be placed in the proper directories, which have cryptic names. MAX Media Manager for PSP is free, and it also helps you with your other media, such as pictures and music.