Quick Guide: Watching video on the PSP.

deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
edited April 2006 in Hardware
I'm not sure how many people here have a PSP, but as well as being a killer portable games machine it's also a pretty good portable media player. Get yourself a GB memory stick and you can easily fit a couple of films (movies) and some music on there. The only problem is to put films on there you need to have your files in a specific format and placed in a specific location on your PSP. To sort out the file format the best free software is probably 3GP:

Linkage

Download the zip file from there and extract it somewhere handy. The first thing to do is set our preferences. Run the setup.exe and you should see something like this:


3GPsetup.jpg

(if all you see are strange looking characters, just set the language preference in the bottom left to 'English')

this screen lets us select a 'model' for our conversion. The model is a template that contains format information, and naming conventions for various media appliances. For the PSP we want 'MP4, for PSP (Direct, renamed)'. This will convert the file for us and also rename it to something that the PSP will recognize and play. Click apply and the main window should launch:


3GPmain.jpg

You can play about with the quality settings later, but for now select the highest quality setting (the bottom one in the drop down list). Set your output directory using the 'browse' button. For now this can be anywhere on your PC, we'll copy it to the PSP later. Once all the config is out of the way all we need to do is drag and drop a video file into the box (handily labelled 'Drag&Drop files here) and 3GP will wander off and convert it for us. Depending on the speed of your PC this can take a while, but once it's done you'll now have a renamed video file sat in your output directory. Hurrah. Now to copy it to the PSP.

Link up your PSP to your PC using a standard USB A to mini B cable (available at most good computer stores). From the PSP main menu select 'settings' and then 'USB Connection' to enable your PSPs USB link. The PSP should now appear in your PCs 'my computer' as a removable drive. We now need to create the directory structure for our video files. Open the PSP drive in my computer and in the root of the drive (NOT in the PSP folder) create a folder called 'MP_ROOT' then go into that folder and create a folder called '100MNV01'. This is the folder that PSP video files live in. Copy your newly created video file into here and it will show up in your PSPs video menu.Press the '0' button to start the video playing. Once it's playing the triangle button brings up the player controls.

Other media folders are created by default when you format a memory stick in your PSP, but for your information here they are


MP3s go in \PSP\MUSIC
Pictures go in \PSP\PHOTOS
Video goes in \MP_ROOT\100MNV01

Comments

  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    I use the same program to convert video to the M4P format ( or whatever it is ) for the video Ipod, it will ONLY convert AVI's though, but still
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited March 2006
    Ah, I wasn't aware of that, most of the stuff I watch is avi anyway, cheers for the pointer :)
  • NightwolfNightwolf Afghanistan Member
    edited March 2006
    Thanks, and here to think my little bros about to go out and spend 20 bucks on a movie that he can only watch on a 4" screen!
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited April 2006
    Armo wrote:
    I use the same program to convert video to the M4P format ( or whatever it is ) for the video Ipod, it will ONLY convert AVI's though, but still

    Actually, since this post was made I've found out that's incorrect. You can convert just about anything. I've just converted a .wmv for my PSP.
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