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DVD To MP4 Guide By Engadget
This weeks How-To is only going to apply to the lucky six or seven
of you whove managed to already get your hands on a PSP, the rest
of you will just have keep this one in mind and come back to it when the
PSP comes out here in the States in March. Were going to show you
step-by-step how to get video clips on to your PSP without having to spring
for any additional software.
When you format a Memory Stick Duo or Pro Duo stick in your Sony PlayStation
Portable (PSP), you will get a new PSP folder, with sub-folders for game,
music, photos, and savedata. But nothing
for videos? Whats up with that? Well, it turns out that you need to
put MPEG-4 video files in their own special folder, one thats not
in the PSP directory, but in the main root directory of the Memory Stick.
Just create a new folder in the root directory named MP_ROOT, and then
make a folder called 100MNV01 in there. So your .MP4 files should go into
E:\MP_ROOT\100MNV01, where E:\ is the drive letter of your Memory Stick.
You also need a PC, as the converter software does not work with Macs. This
MP_ROOT directory structure is directly cribbed from Sonys UX/VZ Clie
PDA series, which also plays MPEG-4 videos. Sony does offer up Image Converter
2.1, but they charge 1000 yen (around $10) for it. Were going to show
you how to do it for free.
First, we need to download 3GP Converter, currently in version 0.25 in
our download section.
Unzip the 3GPC .ZIP file into a directory of your choice, and run setup.exe.
You may see a bunch of weird characters, but dont worry, its
set to Japanese by default. Scroll down to the bottom of the 3GP Converter
Setup window and select the English radio button, select Customized: MP4,
for PSP (Direct, renamed) the then press Apply. This is the setting for
conversion of video files to MPEG-4 format that can be played by the PSP,
and renamed so your PSP recognizes it (such as M4V31337.MP4). Unfortunately,
the PSP currently wont recognize file names such as TheUsualSuspects.MP4
or TheOCSeason2Episode4.MP4.
Now, the 3GP Converter program window is open (if not, you can double-click
the 3GP_Converter.exe program to run it). Click the Select button to choose
where you want your converted PSP MP4 video files to reside. We just chose
C:\3GP_Converter.
The program may ask you to install QuickTime Authoring before being able
to convert your video files. A simple click of the Do It Now button will
suffice.
The drop down box is what level quality setting you want your MP4 video
to have. All outputted videos will have QVGA (320x240) resolution. You can
choose from 15 or 29.97 frames per second, with 29.97 fps being a lot smoother.
The third item listed in the quality settings is the video bitrate, the
higher the bitrate, the better quality your video will turn out, with the
highest quality being 1500kbps. The QB# settings appear to be variable bit
rate (VBR) settings, where the converter will use a higher bitrate when
necessary. The QB4 setting is the lowest quality VBR option, and QB10 the
highest quality VBR. Next is the options for audio, choose between Mono
or Stereo. The last bitrate is for your audio quality, you can choose from
32kbps (lower quality) to 128kbps (highest quality). The higher quality
setting you choose, the slower it will be to convert.
Now drag whatever file you want to convert into MPEG-4 format into the
blank area of the program window. Here we chose a Shark Tale trailer, originally
in DivX Pro HD format, to convert with the QVGA/29.97fps/1500kbps
Stereo/128kbps setting, the highest quality setting that 3GP supports.
When the program is finished converting the video into MP4 format, the program
will rename the file to something like M4V04895.MP4.
Now setup the USB connection (or take out your Memory Stick Pro Duo and
stick in a reader) on your PSP to copy the video files over. The correct
folder name for videos is E:\MP_ROOT\100MNV01 (where E: is the drive letter
of your PSP). Copy your .MP4 video(s) over (the .THM files that 3GP Converter
creates are not necessary for playback), and then disconnect the PSP USB
connection by pressing the X button.
Scroll over to Video in your PSP menu and select it by pressing the O button.
It should list your converted MP4, with title, date, and length of video.
Press O again and it will start playing
There are four screen display modes, which you can choose from by pressing
the triangle button. Scroll up to Screen Mode (2nd from left on the top
row) and use the O button to scroll between Normal, Zoom, Full Screen, and
Original modes. Normal is fine for regular 4:3 show viewing, Zoom gives
you a closer view of the center of the video, Full Screen is perfect for
16:9 widescreen videos, and Original looks like it displays the video in
a 320x240 pixel format.
With the codec and video expertise of our favorite geek friend, Craig,
we tried to convert a video into MPEG-4 format with a 480x272 resolution,
which is the native resolution of the PSP LCD. A 480x272 video file should
be of higher quality than a stretched 320x240 pixel picture, but unfortunately,
all of our attempts failed, no matter what we tried. We would always end
up with Incompatible Data or Corrupted Data displayed on our PSP, though
it played perfectly on a Windows box.
We came up with the theory that as the PSP uses the same video format as
their Clies, and since those play videos just fine Sony didnt want
to put in the extra work involved to get native 480x272 resolution MPEG-4
support. We also guessed that any potential UMD movie titles would be shown
in the full 480x272 resolution (just as games are in shown in the native
screen resolution), but that Sony didnt want to have videos from Memory
Sticks (potentially copyright infringing) to be competing with the UMD discs
which they would be making money from. In effect, they crippled the video
playback capability from Memory Sticks. This is of course, just speculation,
but this is Sony that were talking about here.
Using a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop with a 2 GHz Intel Pentium M processor
with 2GB of RAM, we processed a few video files for fun. It took 3GP Converter
1:40 for a 18.5MB .WMV (of the Pistons/Pacers fight) to be converted into
.MP4 format, with an output file size of 19.8MB for QVGA/29.97fps/1500kbps
Stereo/128kbps, the highest quality available. It took just 48 seconds when
we dropped down the quality level to QVGA/15fps/216kbps Mono/32kbps, with
a resulting filesize of 3.2MB. There is a noticabe difference in quality,
with the lower video bitrate resulting in annoying pixilation (which we
hate). If you can spare the space, definitely go for the higher quality.
We still think the holy grail of a portable video player is drag and drop
support for all major video formats without any transcoding necessary. Converting
video (just like converting MP3s to ATRAC in previous Sony music offerings)
is just a pain and should be avoided if at all possible. This current way
to put videos on the PSP is also a somewhat of a burden, as the process
is more for the hacker type (and we mean hacker as in tinkerer).
Sony has released Image Converter 2.1 (available for 1000yen), which has
an iTunes-like drag and drop functionality, converting videos, renaming
it, and putting it in the correct directory. We have heard a few reports
of the software bloating a video file on conversion (turning a 20MB file
into 30MB or bigger for no reason). We have no first-hand experience yet
with the Sony software, but the 3GP Converter is quite adequate in its own
right, with a host of encoding quality options.
The converted videos using the QVGA/29.97fps/QB10 Stereo/64kbps mode (we
assume QB10 is the highest quality variable bitrate mode, as QB4 video was
loads worse) looks good in terms of video, but since the audio bitrate is
half of the highest quality videos 128kbps, you do notice the difference
in audio quality, with the 64kbps audio being more hollow sounding and tinny.
The filesize of the QB10 setting was 14.2MB, offering a bit of filesize
saving over the 19.8MB of the 1500kbps video quality setting.
We successfully converted Windows Media Player (WMV), MPEG-1/2, DivX, and
XviD formats into PSP-capable MP4. Of the various formats we tried, only
a Quicktime MOV file failed to be converted by 3GP Converter.
Heres a quick guide to convert parts of a DVD into MPEG-4. You can
convert movies into MP4 format, but unfortunately, you will not be able
to get a full movie to fit onto a 512MB Memory Stick unless you are willing
to take a serious hit on video quality. What can work well is converting
TV or anime episodes (30 minute or hour shows) from DVD, but any converting
of clips 30 minutes or more will take quite a bit of time. First, decide
what part of the DVD you want converted by previewing it in a standalone
player or in a Windows DVD player. Write down the corresponding chapters
which contain the episode or section you want.
You will need DVD Decrypter. After installing the program and running it,
we will need to set the program to IFO Mode, select Mode, then IFO Mode.
http://www.dvddecrypter.com
You will now see the Input window with VTS and PGC sections. Below that
is a checklist of Chapters on the DVD. Check off the chapters you wrote
down earlier and then click on Stream Processing. For simplicity, we checked
the video stream, one audio stream, and one subtitle stream. Now that we
have selected all that we want to rip from the DVD, click on the DVD disc
to Hard Drive icon. The time for the ripping process will depend on the
speed of your DVD-ROM, but in the meantime, grab Auto Gordian Knot.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/AutoGK.htm
We will need Auto Gordian Knot (AG Knot) to convert DVD Decrypters
VOB file into AVI format. After installing the program and some associated
programs, we can load it up. In Step 1, select file input, for Input File,
put in the VOB file from DVD Decrypter. For output file, choose a filename
and location to place it. Select the audio track from the drop down box,
and choose subtitle if need. For the output size, choose Custom Size. We
got a 166MB VOB file in our 4 minute, 30 second clip from Ali Gs Indahouse
from DVD Decrypter. So to be safe, we put in a 83MB output filesize, half
the size of the original VOB, just to be safe. Then we clicked Advanced
Settings and changed the Fixed Width to 320, as the PSP MPEG-4 video format
is 320 pixels wide. Now click the Add Job button and the Start button (below
Step 4). After conversion, use the above 3GP Converter guide to convert
the AVI file from AG Knot into MP4.
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