Hack22.Get Video on Your PSP

Hack 22. Get Video on Your PSP

Got video? Here's a variety of different ways you can squeeze that video onto your Memory Stick Duo card.

Besides being able to watch UMD Video disks on your PSP [Hack #21], you can also store MPEG4 video files on your Memory Stick Duo card for watching movies on the go. This feature of the device is one of the things that has had many people online referring to the PSP as "the Video iPod" (before Apple released their video-capable iPod). With a little effort and a big enough memory stick, you can cram all the video you like on your PSP. I'm going to walk you through a variety of different ways you can go about enjoying video on the go on your PSP.

3.3.1. Get a Bigger Memory Stick

Unfortunately, Sony only includes a 32MB Memory Stick Duo card with the PSP. This is fine for saving games, keeping a few pictures, and even storing a few MP3s. If you try to put your own video content on your PSP, however, you'll quickly find that 32MB is simply not enough.

I recommend that you get the largest Memory Stick that you can afford and that you settle for nothing smaller than 256MB. You can get Memory Stick Duo cards in sizes as large as 2GB, but those are still a bit pricey. Fortunately, since the introduction of the 2GB Memory Stick Duo cards, the 1GB cards have fallen drastically in price. You can easily find one available online in the $125150 USD range, but if you are patient and watch sites like DealNews (http://www.dealnews.com), you can probably snag one for under $100 USD. If you sign up for a free account with DealNews, you can create an alert for Memory Stick Duo cards, and they will email you whenever any new deals are listed. Recently, I've seen a 1GB Memory Stick Duo card for as low as $76 USD.

Once you have a larger Memory Stick with some room to spare, it's time to find out how and where to put your videos on the stick.

3.3.2. The Basics

In order to view video using your PSP's Memory Stick Duo card, you will need to set a few things up first. Either connect your PSP to your computer or mount your Memory Stick Duo card on your computer [Hack #2]. Once the Memory Stick shows up on your computer, you will need to create a new folder in the root directory of the Memory Stick, called MP_ROOT. Inside the MP_ROOT folder, you will then need to create another folder and name it either 101MNV01 or 100MNV01. The manual that came with your PSP tells you to name the folder 100MNV01, but if you use iPSP or PSPware to automatically manage your videos, they will create a folder named 101MNV01. Both folders seem to work for watching video. Whichever name you go with, this folder is where all of your MPEG4 videos must go.

The PSP cannot play MPEG4 video encoded at anything higher than 768kbps, so certain high-quality MPEG4 files will need to be converted to a lower bit rate, and the PSP will not recognize the file unless it has a name in the format of M4V10001.MP4. The file needs to start with M4V followed by five numbers, and then it must end in .MP4.

For MPEG4 files that have been specially formatted for the PSP, there will usually be another file alongside it. If your movie file's name is M4V10001.MP4, this file will be named M4V10001.THM. The THM file is a simple 160 x 120 thumbnail saved in JPEG format at 72dpi that is associated with the video file. As long as the name of the THM file is the same as the MP4 file, this picture will be displayed alongside the video file in the PSP's Video interface.

Once you have the proper directories set up on your PSP's Memory Stick, drop some videos into either /MP_ROOT/100MNV01/ or /MP_ROOT/ 101MNV01/, disconnect from your computer, and navigate to Video on your PSP, select Memory Stick, hit the X button, select the video you want to watch, and hit the X button again. Sit back and enjoy. If you don't have any video yet, then read on to find some free content online and to learn how to convert your own videos to PSP-friendly MPEG4s.

Version 2.0 of the firmware added support for another video file format: AVC. These files follow a similar naming convention to the regular .MP4 files, as they are named MAQxxxxx.MP4, where xxxxx is five numbers. AVC edges out MP4 in the image quality department.

3.3.3. Videos Online

Fortunately, a wide variety of videos are already available online, and some of them are even preformatted for the PSP. This is just a short list of places you should consider looking for free content for your PSP. Don't be afraid to jump on your favorite search engine and find some others. Some popular search engines have specialized video searches, such as http://video.search.yahoo.com/ and http://video.google.com/.

If you are running Version 2.0 of the firmware, then you can use the PSP's browser to navigate to video files, and if they are hosted online without any compression (.ZIP, for example), you can download the video directly to your /MP_ROOT/100MNV01/ or /MP_ROOT/101MNV01/ folder. To do this, select the link to the file, then hit the Triangle button, navigate to the File menu, hit the X button, select Save Link Target, and hit the X button again. Make sure you save the file in the correct video folder. After it finishes downloading, you can immediately navigate to the video and watch it on your PSP.

3.3.3.1. PSP Connect.

The first place that you'll want to look for free video content is Sony's PSP Connect page (http://psp.connect.com/). This site features a video tutorial that autoloads when you visit; this video covers the basics of getting video onto your PSP. Since you already know these basics, just click the Stop Video link underneath the virtual PSP and scroll down to the next section on the web page. If you like the tutorial video and want to share it with friends, there is a PDF version of the tutorial available (http://psp.connect.com/tutorial/tutorial.pdf).

Here you will find an assortment of videos that have been prepared for the PSP by Sony. To the right of each video, there is a small graphic indicating the space that the video will take up on your Memory Stick, as well as what size Memory Stick is needed for each video. If you just opened up your brand new PlayStation Portable or simply haven't yet had the chance to grab a larger Memory Stick, you'll be pleased to find that a few of the provided sample videos are geared to fit on the included measly 32MB card. Download a few, drop them on your Memory Stick, and watch away. Here are some other sources of video for your PSP:

Atom Films

For a little more than a month's time after the North American release of the PSP, Atom Films (http://www.atomfilms.com) offered three of their short films preformatted for the PSP. Unfortunately, this trend was short-lived, and neither the films nor new ones like them are available from the site. Nevertheless, they could change their minds, so keep checking back. Even if they don't offer any content specifically geared for the PSP, there are several videos available in downloadable formats on their site, so it is a good place to check for files that you may want to download and convert into PSP-compatible MPEG4 files.

Creative Commons Video

The Creative Commons Video page (http://creativecommons.org/video/) is a good place where you can both share your videos freely with the world and find videos online that others have decided to share.

Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive

If you're not familiar with the Internet Archive, you should take a careful look at the entire site, but, for our purposes, make sure that you look at the Moving Image Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/movies). Here you will find a wide array of video content that is either in the public domain or released under a Creative Commons, License (http://creativecommons.org/) and that you may freely download. There's even a section of freely available feature films (http://www.archive.org/details/feature_films). Nearly all of the videos offered through the Internet Archive come encoded in both 64Kb and 256Kb MPEG4 variants. Unfortunately, although these files are MPEG4, they were encoded with 3ivx (http://www.3ivx.com/) at a setting that isn't readable by the PSP, so you'll still have to convert the files you find on this site.

PSP Hacking 101

PSP Hacking 101 (http://www.psphacking101.com/) is indicative of the kind of cool free content that the PSP is inspiring across the Internet. This site features a downloadable, preformatted-for-the-PSP videocast (think podcast [Hack #32] and add video) that covers the basics of what's going on in the PSP homebrew scene [Hack #40]. As of this writing, they've released four videocasts, so make sure you check them out.

Rocketboom

Rocketboom (http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/) with Amanda Congdon is one of the most widely known videoblogs (a weblog that consists of videocasts) on the Internet. There's a short, three-minute show released daily during the week, featuring a mix of parodies, interviews, and oddly mixed video fun, alongside snarky op-ed glances at current events. Even cooler, they now offer PSP-formatted ports of each show (http://www.rocketboom.com/port/). You can get the regular video of their shows delivered automatically via your RSS feed reader or via iTunes as a video podcast [Hack #32], but unfortunately, the ease of automatic download is only available for the QuickTime Movie file version of their show; if you choose to download the show this way, you're still going to need to convert it to MPEG4.

BitTorrent

BitTorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com/) has clients for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you're not familiar with BitTorrent, it's a peer-to-peer file-sharing technology that distributes the load of downloading large files between all the people currently downloading the file. You can find a plethora of video content online via BitTorrent through various tracker sites. Few of these files will be preformatted for the PSP, but conversion, as you will see in the next section, is easy enough.

iPSP Movie Loader

iPSP Movie Loader (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/ipspmovie.php) is a cool little free program that promises to allow you to download PSP compatible movie files directly to your PSP. Unfortunately, not many content providers have jumped onboard with this program. As of the writing of this hack, the only content provider linked to on the iPSP Movie Loader site is 29HD Networks (http://www.29hdnetwork.com/psp_guide.html).

3.3.4. Convert Video to PSP-Compatible MPEG4

Fortunately, there is a variety of tools available for converting your video files to PSP-compatible MPEG4. This section will cover the main players.

Keep in mind that depending upon the encoding options used on the original file, some files will not want to convert nicely into MPEG4 or AVC. If you run into any files like this, try first converting the files into some other format, like AVI or MOV, and then reconverting into MPEG4.

3.3.4.1. iPSP and PSPWare

Both PSPWare (http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware; $15 USD) and iPSP (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/; $19.99 USD) are available for both Mac OS X and Windows, and both programs do a very good job of automating the process of converting your movie files into a properly formatted MPEG4 format for your PSP and automatically transferring these files to your PSP. Both of these products offer a variety of options for encoding your video, so you can choose to either have a higher-quality video taking up a large footprint on your Memory Stick or to squeeze numerous lower-quality videos onto your Memory Stick. Figure 3-6 shows iPSP converting a video downloaded from the Creative Commons web site.

Figure 3-6. Using iPSP to convert a video

3.3.4.2. PSP Video 9.

PSP Video 9 (http://www.pspvideo9.com/) is a free, Windows only program for converting videos into MPEG4 files properly formatted for the PSP. PSP Video 9 can also be used to automatically transfer converted videos from your PC to your PSP, and can be used in conjunction with Videora (http://www.videora.com/) to automatically download, convert, and transfer videoblogs (such as Rocketboom) to your PSP.

3.3.4.3. ffmpeg

The magic key to all the video compression at work in iPSP, PSPWare, and PSP Video 9 is actually a little bit of open source goodness that is developed under Linux, but which can be downloaded and compiled for either Windows or Macintosh: ffmpeg (http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php). There are a variety of options you can set for encoding files with ffmpeg, but the basic procedure for converting your videos to PSP-compatible MPEG4 files via ffmpeg is:

 ffmpegi example.movb 300s 320x240vcodec xvid \   ab 32ar 24000acodec aac example.MP4 

The file following i is the source file, so replace example.mov with the location and name of the file you are converting. b 300 sets the bit rate to 300kbps. You can make this number higher if you want higher-quality video, but keep in mind that the higher quality the encoding, the larger the file size, and if you go over 768kbps, the file won't play on your PSP. s 320x240 sets the pixel size for the video, and vcodec xvid forces the codec to be used to xvid.

The next set of instructions contains the audio settings for the encoded file.ab 32 sets the audio bit rate to 32kbps, andar 24000 sets the frequency to 24000 Hz, whileacodec aac sets the codec to be used to aac. Finally, you need to specify the path to the new file (example.MP4).

If you're on Mac OS X and you don't like the idea of compiling ffmpeg, you can always use ffmpegX (http://homepage.mac.com/major4/; Shareware $15 USD), which provides a GUI front end for ffmpeg and automates all these settings for you. Its most recent version, shown in Figure 3-7, even includes a PSP MPEG4 preset to make things easier.

Figure 3-7. ffmpegX, the Mac OS X GUI front end for ffmpeg

3.3.4.4. Kinoma Producer.

If you're looking to batch convert a large number of video files from a variety of formats, then Kinoma Producer (http://www.kinoma.com/products.html?producer; $29.99 USD) might be the PSP video-encoding solution for you. Kinoma Producer can convert dozens of files simultaneously and is available in both Windows and Mac OS X flavors. Figure 3-8 shows Kinoma Producer converting a Creative Commons video into MPEG4.

Figure 3-8. Kinoma Producer

3.3.5. Hacking the Hack

You can encode any video you've filmed yourself or downloaded off the Internet, but one of the things that really adds value to your portable PSP viewing is the ability to time-shift your favorite TV shows onto it for portable viewing.

If you have a newer model TiVo with TiVo-to-go or any ReplayTV with an Ethernet port, you can easily transfer video from your digital video recorder to your computer over a local network connection.

With a lot of time and a modicum of effort, you can copy the contents of your DVDs to your computer and recompress your favorite videos into MPEG4 for watching on your PSP.

Of course, for each DVD you want to convert to MPEG4, you can expect to spend a good 512 hours of intensive processing time on your computer (depending upon your processor's speed). If you have the patience and the time to spare, then go for it. If not, consider going out to your local media outlet and buying the movie on UMD [Hack #21] to help support the growth of the PSP platform.

Most DVDs use DeCSS encryption as a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to prevent widespread piracy. The problem with this solution is that besides not really being an effective means of preventing piracy, the DRM also gets in the way of law-abiding consumers like you and me, who only wish to exercise our fair use rights with a product we've purchased and own. This is a particularly nasty catch-22, and I recommend that you get involved with trying to undo this bad law. See the web site for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) for more information about DRM, and current and proposed laws that essentially (or potentially) infringe on your rights. Examples of potential threats include the "broadcast flag," which involves use of encoded signals in the content that trigger anti-copying features inside your very own home devices. Although an FCC rule requiring manufacturers to implement broadcast flag technology was overturned in court, its supporters are committed to resurrecting it. See Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag.