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(Tutorial) Video Conversion Guide for the PSP (version 5.7)



This tutorial will teach you multiple methods to get video and music
onto your PSP without using any commercial retail software, you simply
do NOT NEED IT, plus the commercial stuff isn't anywhere near as
capable as the free stuff. Everything downloaded in this tutorial is
100% free and 100% LEGAL, and you do NOT need Modded Firmware to put
videos or music or pictures onto your PSP.

Each Section is set up in simple step by step instructions that are
easy to follow as long as you follow along WHILE you're reading the
instructions. Don't try to read it all first, then do it, that only
results in problems.  Read the step, DO the step, it's very simple
as long as you don't try to make things deliberately difficult for
yourself.

I will say right here and now that all videos will be transferred to
the VIDEO folder (all caps) outside of the PSP folder unless
otherwise specified. If you don't have the folder, you can either make
it, or you can backup all your important data from the memory stick,
then format it using the option in the System Settings menu of your
PSP.  It will make all the folders you need, then you just transfer
the data back to the stick in the proper folders.  The MP_ROOT folder
structure is no longer used or needed on your memory stick, and if you
try to use it, you're only making things more complicated than they
need to be.

There's 5 types of MP4 files, and only two of them are supported by the
PSP, and even then, only specific resolutions are supported.
Any deviation from the accepted formats or resolutions and the files
will show up as Unsupported or maybe even Corrupted Data.  The PSP can
only run 3 kinds of video files, MP4, MP4-AVC, and MotionJPEG AVI files.
The PSP absolutely CANNOT run standard AVI files and it can't run all
MP4 files either, just because you might have a file in "MP4 format"
does NOT automatically mean it's compatible with the PSP, there are
very specific resolution restrictions, and specific video and audio
codec restrictions, again, any deviation from those accepted codecs or
resolutions WILL stop the videos from running on the PSP, the files
will show up as Corrupted Data or Unsupported Data.  Corrupted usually
means it's the wrong kind of MP4 or it's using the wrong video or audio
codecs, very seldomly will the file actually be corrupted unless
something happened during the file transfer from your PC.  Unsupported
usually means it's the wrong resolution.



Table of Contents...
Section 1. Downloading Youtube or other Streaming Videos
Section 2. Installing Xvid4PSP v4.115
Section 3. Converting Videos with Xvid4PSP v4.115
Section 4. Converting Videos with Xvid4PSP v5.037.5
Section 5. Recommended Video Bitrate Settings
Section 6. Converting DVD's to PSP formats
Section 7. Creating MP3 Playlists with WinAMP
Section 8. Fixing Corrupted MP3 files with WinAMP
Section 9. Creating your own PSP Wallpapers using Irfanview
Section 10. About Conversion Speeds and "Website Converters"

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Section 1. Downloading Youtube or other Streaming Videos

For those that want to convert Youtube videos to the PSP, you've got a
few choices, you can either use a website converter to download and
convert the file for you, and hope it works on your PSP, or you can
download the file, and convert it manually and make sure it works on
your PSP, personally I prefer the latter simply for the sake of
reliability.

www.Keepvid.com
www.Vixy.net

http://www.downloadhelper.net/

Thanks to s3phir0th115 for the Downloadhelper link.  It only works in
FireFox to my knowledge so all you 3 remaining Internet Explorer users
are SoL.

Using DownloadHelper is MUCH easier than using the other sites, and it
usually works when the other sites don't.  Simply load a page that has
a video embedded on it, and click the down arrow just to the left of
the URL bar and you'll see the list of videos embedded at that URL,
select the video you want and click Download.  Ignore the
Download & Convert option because there is no option for PSP conversion.

If you're using the DLH plugin on YouTube, you'll see several download
options for most videos, pick the best quality version, look for the
MP4 or FLV with the [HQxx] prefix, and pick the one with the HIGHEST
number for the best quality source file.

Keepvid is just a standard filegrabber, it downloads the raw FLV or MP4
file for you, then you manually convert it with any of the methods
listed below.  Or you can choose to download the higher quality MP4
file and convert that, converting from a higher quality source file is
always recommended.

Vixy will convert the file for you, but it will only work if your PSP
has the most up to date firmware, or close to it, it doesn't work on
older firmwares, as of this writing it's right around 5.00 and up.

Also, Vixy tends to get slammed at high traffic times of the day.
The most reliable method to get Vixy to work, is to wait until after
9PM in your area (possibly even later), then download the file to
AVI+MP3 format, then convert manually using one of the methods below.

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Section 2. Installing Xvid4PSP v4.115

Remember, this process is ONLY for those with firmware 3.30 and higher.

1. First, download the recommended version of Xvid4PSP and install it
with ALL options checked, leave the install folder alone, don't change
it.

As I can no longer directly link to Xvid4PSP v4.115, all I can tell you
to do is "Google it".  Basically go to Google and type in
"Xvid4PSP v4.115 (full)" into the search and the very first link should
get you what you need guaranteed virus and malware free.

A special note for any of you still running Internet Explorer,
especially older versions of it, you might need to manually add the
EXE file extension to the Xvid4PSP installer, especially if Windows
asks you which program you want to use to open it with.
It's an installer, just doubleclick it.

2. Now, if you don't already have the dotnet framework 3, or
Direct X 9.0c installed, do that, they're available from MicroSoft's
site.  If you already have them installed, skip this step.

3. If you're going to be converting Realmedia files, or if you're going
to be downloading videos from iTunes or Google video, or any other
Quicktime format videos (.MOV or .M4V), you'll need to Google and
install the latest KLite Codec Pack, or the latest CCCP (Combined
Community Codec Pack).

4. Since you just installed all those things at once, take a break and
restart your PC, then we'll get started on setting up Xvid4PSP and
converting video, even adding subtitles if you have them.

Please keep in mind that the latest STABLE version of Xvid4PSP as of
this writing is 5.037.5 (and there's a v6.0 Beta version but it's
kinda unstable right now) and the version I just linked to is an older
version, but it IS far more capable because the programmer started over
from scratch with the v5.xxx series, and hasn't finished adding
everything back in yet.

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Section 3. Converting Videos with Xvid4PSP v4.115

Now for the actual conversion process . . .

This part of the tutorial covers ONLY version 4.115, the higher version
will be covered in another section.

1. Click File in the upper left corner, go to Open, and pick a video
you want to convert, a new preview window will pop up.

2a. If your video does not have built in subtitles, or multiple audio
tracks, just click the OK button and move on.

2b. If your video DOES have multiple audio tracks, go to the upper
right corner and highlight the Tracks box, and pick the audio track
you want.

3. If your video has embedded subtitles, go to the upper right corner
and choose the Subtitles option and enable it if you want the subs to
show up in the final video.

4. If you want to Crop your video (to remove encoded letterboxing), this
is where it's done, just click on the arrows to the right of the video
until the crop is where you want it, then click the OK button and move
on to the next step.

5. In the Core box in the upper left corner, there are multiple options,
set the Format option to MP4 PSP 330.

6. Go to the Presets box, leave the first 2 options alone, and select
2-pass Ultra.

7. Now to the Video box (upper middle) for a first run we'll choose the
following options . . .

Codec = x264
Bitrate = 512
Size = XXX

Leave the Size box alone for now, I'll cover what that one effects
in a bit.

Resolution settings and cropping settings should be left alone, they're
automatically calculated, and every time I mess with them, the
conversion stops with an unknown error, so I leave them alone.

8. That should be it for now, unless you have a video with a seperate
subtitle file (.srt - .idx - .sub), so click on the Advanced Tab at the
top, and go to the Subtitles box at the bottom and add the subtitle
file manually if it wasn't autoloaded.

Once that is done Click the OK button, that video has now been added to
the batch.

9. Now just click the Start button and wait for the encode to finish.

Now for the explanation of the Size box, if you want to set your video
to be an exact size when it's done, you set the size in that window, so
if you want your video to be exactly 100mb, you set it to 100, and this
alters the video bitrate numbers to get that filesize. This is NOT a
good option for those who like QUALITY in their videos.

Setting the Mode to 2-Pass does two things, it lowers the filesize just
a bit, and gives a better quality video. Yes this option takes longer,
but the results are worth it.

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Section 4. Converting Videos with Xvid4PSP v5.037.5

http://www.winnydows.com/#Downloads

Installing v5.037.5 is much the same as v4.115, just leave all the
option boxes checked, just change the installation folder to something
different if you intend on running both the older and newer versions at
the same time.

You can have both versions of the program instlaled at the same time
safely, just install them to different folders, they won't interfere
with eachother that way.

1. Once the program has started, click the Open button and find the
video you want to convert.  Open it and wait for the Caching process
to finish, once you see the preview of the video, then you select the
video type you want to convert to.

Underneath the Open button, it says "Format", with several dropdown
boxes.

2. In the top box choose MP4 PSP AVC, leave the Denoise/Sharpen box,
and the Brightness/Contrast box alone for now.

3. Next to the Video Encoding box is a button with the letter E on it,
click that button.

In the new popup box that opens up, where it says "Encoding Mode",
choose 2-Pass Bitrate.

Where it says "Bitrate (kbps)" choose 512, leave all the rest of the
boxes alone and press the OK button.

4. Click the E button next to the "Audio Encoding" box, and choose the
bitrate you want, for now, set it to 64 and press the OK button.

The main reason for these settings is because they produce a known
result, you'll get right around 200MB per hour of running time with
these settings, and the quality will be good.

5. Go up to the top and click the Save button, choose the output file
destination, and save it.

It's now added to the batch, if you want to add anymore videos to the
batch, just repeat the steps above until you're done adding videos.

Once you're done adding all the videos you want, just click the Encode
button at the top and wait for it to finish.

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Section 5. Recommended Video Bitrate Settings

I listed the setting of 512kbps video bitrate and 64kbps audio bitrate
above because it produces a known filesize result while still giving
decent video and audio quality, usually around 200MB per hour of
runtime, so a 2 hour movie would come out around 400MB to 450MB on
average.

However, some movies you'll want to bump up the bitrates on, especially
if you're outputting to a TV.  Keep in mind that higher bitrates mean
higher filesizes, there's really no way around that.

Horror Movies, or other movies with lots of dark or night-time scenes,
especially anything that's Black & White, use at least 1024kbps video
bitrate to cut down on the "squaring" you'll see in those dark areas.

Action or Martial Arts Movies, use at least 768kbps video and 128kbps
audio, the higher audio bitrate makes the gunshots and explosions sound
so much better, and the higher video bitrate cuts down on the
choppiness and blurring from the fast paced action.

Anime or Animated Movies, the 512kbps video setting is just fine for
this kind of stuff, 30 minute Anime episodes usually run in the 100MB
range and convert quickly.  Audio bitrate depends on the source
material and personal preference.

Music Videos or Concerts, leave the video set at 512kbps unless you've
got HD source material, and crank up the audio bitrate to at least
256kbps or higher.

Everybody's personal preference for Quality vs Filesize is going to be
different, the best way to guage your own preference is to find
something like a music video or movie trailer (preferably using HD
source material of 720p minimum), then convert that video multiple
times at multiple settings and transfer them all to your PSP at once
and watch them back to back.  Figure out for yourself what the lowest
video bitrate you can accept is going to be, and use that as a
baseline for your conversions.

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Section 6. Converting DVD's to PSP formats

This method is NOT illegal, it does NOT break the CSS encryption or rip
the DVD to your harddrive in VOB form.

Using Xvid4PSP v4.115 . . .

Insert the DVD into your PC's DVD drive and click the DVD button in the
lower bar of the program.  A popup box will come up saying "MPEG File
detected. Create index file?", click yes and wait for the indexing to
finish.  This will take about 5 to 10 minutes for a full movie
depending on the length of it, and just a few seconds if it's something
like a TV episode.  If you don't see the percentage meter rising, that
DVD can't be converted with this method.

Once the indexing is done a new popup box will come up showing a
preview of the video, in the upper right corner is the Streams box with
3 drop-down boxes, Titles, Tracks, and Subtitles.

Choose the option in the Titles box that matches the running length of
the movie (or episode) you want to convert.  It may or may not need to
index again depending on how the DVD is set up.  If you want to change
the audio option, that's up to you but don't count on the Subtitles
option working, it's remained "Disabled" for every DVD I have, so for
now, just leave it on English unless you actually understand the other
languages without needing subs.

Leave the "Aspect" box alone, it's calculated automatically.

Go to the Crop box and remove the black bars if your DVD is
letterboxed, the auto-cropping should do a good enough job on it's own
but you can crop it further if you want.

Now click the OK button and the settings options will pop up.  Refer to
Section 3 for what to do here, it's the same.  Once you're done, just
click the OK button and the movie (or episode) will be added to the
batch list.

If you have no further videos to add to the batch, just click the Start
button and let it convert.

Using Xvid4PSP v5.037.5 . . .

Start the program and click the DVD button, a browse box will pop up,
browse to the DVD and highlight the VIDEO_TS folder and press the OK
button.  A preview screen will come up, and at the top where it says
Select Title:, select the option that matches the running time of what
you want to convert and click the OK button.  It will now start
indexing, just wait until it finishes.  Again, if it fails to index,
that DVD can't be converted through that method.

Once it's done indexing, you'll get the option to change your audio
track and even set the delay time if necessary.  Just click the OK
button for now.

Once the preview screen is showing, make sure your Crop settings are
correct by going to the Video option at the top and go to
Resolution/Aspect.

Change the settings in the Crop top, bottom: and the Crop left, right:
to match your preferences, then click the Apply button, leave the other
boxes alone for now and click the OK button.  Refer to Section 4 above
to choose your video and audio bitrate settings, then click the Save
button in the upper middle.

The video is now added to the batch list, if you have no further videos
to add, click the Encode button and let it go.

Please don't ask me about extracting subtitles from DVD's.  This is a
long and involved process requiring several programs and is more hassle
than it's worth.  Google it, the info on how to do it is easy enough to
find, try it on your own.

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Section 7. Creating MP3 Playlists with WinAMP

Now for the Music stuff, I'll put in the WInAMP method of organizing
your music on your PSP without resorting to renaming all the files.

First, if you don't already have it, go to www.winamp.com and download
WinAMP, then install it.  It's free.

Put all the music you want onto your PSP, put it inside a single folder
inside the MUSIC folder. Leave the USB mode ON and the window open.

X:\PSP\MUSIC\MyPSPMusic

Or alternatively in the X:\MUSIC\MyPSPMusic folder, they both work at
the same time so it gives you more sorting options.

Start up WinAMP, and make sure the Playlist window is open.

Now left click and HOLD onto the MyPSPMusic folder, and drag that
folder onto the Playlist window of WinAMP.

Now sort your music however you want by dragging the files up and down
the list.

When you're done, at the bottom of the playlist window should be a
button labeled List, click that button, and Save the playlist inside
the MyPSPMusic folder, name it whatever you want, that's the name that
will show up in the XMB.

Name the folder whatever you want, it won't show up in the XMB under
that name, only the name of the playlist file will show up.

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Section 8. Fixing Corrupted MP3 files with WinAMP

Some music can show up on the PSP as Corrupted Data, this can be caused
by file corruption, and even by ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags embedded in the
MP3 itself.

To fix a song that's corrupted in the file itself, simply put the
broken file into the playlist by itself, then going to the Preferences
and Output options and using the DiskWriter plugin to output the file
to a seperated .WAV file.  Then use any number of free MP3 converters
to put that .WAV file back into MP3 format.  There's also a few MP3
output plugins that can do all that in a single step, just google them.
Now just put that new MP3 onto your PSP and it won't show up as
"Corrupted Data" anymore.

That method can also be used to convert songs in other audio formats
unsupported by the PSP from iTunes or other services so they'll work
on the PSP without any problems.

Other files can be corrupted by embedded information such as ID3 tags,
embedded cover art that's too big, or even embedded lyrics files that
the PSP doesn't display.

Just put those songs into WinAMP's playlist, highlight the individual
song, and press ALT+3 on your keyboard.  This will bring up the
properties box for that song.  Just uncheck the ID3v2 tag box, as well
as the Lyrics tag box.  You can add cover art to individual songs this
way, just keep the cover art to 200x200 or smaller, the PSP can't
display huge cover art pics.  Then press the OK button in the lower
left and the file will be saved.

If you want to add or remove album art from the MP3 files themselves,
especially large batches of them, then use MediaTagger.  Just Google
it and a tutorial for it.  It's free.

If your music is organized into multiple subfolders, you can make each
subfolder have it's own icon show up in the XMB.  Just shrink the album
art to a 200x200 file and call it Cover.jpg and put it in the music
folder you want to have that icon.

To organize your pics or gamesaves, or even the order that your videos
appear in, use PSP Content Manager 1.8, this is a free PC app that
organizes memstick content (pics, saves, games), allows you to add
website bookmarks to the PSP easily by copying and pasting the direct
link into the program, and even does RSS MP3 feeds through your PC Wifi
setup.

Again, I'm not able to directly link to this, just google
"PSP Content Manager 1.8", you should find it easy enough.

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Section 9. Creating your own PSP Wallpapers using Irfanview

I created this section for all the people asking for wallpapers or
specific PSP wallpaper sites when it's very easy to create your own
from any image on your PC that's big enough.

First, go to www.irfanview.com and download and install both the main
program and the plugins pack.  This is a 100% FREE program and has tons
of picture editing abilities.  Don't install the Google toolbar, you
don't need it and it's usually picked up as malware or spyware by some
of the scanners out there.

Once the program and plugins pack is installed, open up the picture you
want to use for your wallpaper.  You'll get the best results if that
picture is LARGER than 480x272 resolution.

Left click your mouse on the picture and HOLD IT, now drag a crop box
around the section of the picture you want to use as your PSP
wallpaper.  If you don't get it exactly right the first time, don't
worry about it, you can adjust the crop box once you let go of the
mouse click.  Keep adjusting your crop box until the ratio up in the
top bar reads 1.765, it will be the very last number at the top of the
program, above the options.  It should look something like this.....

Filename.jpg - Irfanview (Zoom: 889x667)
(Selection: 107, 86; 835x473; 1.765)

You'll get different numbers but that last ratio number is the most
important one.

Once your crop box is at the right ratio, click the Cut button
(scissors icon) then left click anywhere OUTSIDE of the crop box to
remove it, then go up and click Edit and scroll down to Paste.

You now have a 16:9 ratio image but it still needs to be resized, so
go to Image at the top then scroll down to Resize/Resample.

Look down to the lower left of that pop-up box and check the
"Preserve aspect ratio" box, then check the Set new size box, in the
Width box put in 480, and the Height box should automatically come up
as 272.  If it doesn't, your crop ratio was wrong so you'll have to
redo it.  If it's right, just click the OK button.

You now have a 480x272 image so go up to File, then scroll down to
Save As... and save it wherever you want on your PC as a .JPG or .PNG
file, then transfer to your PSP via the USB cable.

You can play around with the Effects options, or the Color corrections,
Color Swap, or Negative options to create different effects in your
wallpaper, customize it however you want it.

Once it's on your PSP in the proper folder, just view the picture and
press the Triangle button and select "Set as Wallpaper" and you're
done.

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Section 10. About Conversion Speeds and "Website Converters"

First about the numerous "website converters", honestly don't waste
your time with ANY of them, odds are they won't have any quality
options to choose from and some of them don't properly support the
PSP's video restrictions so you're just going to get a broken file.
Take the time to download the video file to your PC and run it through
a proper converter so that way you KNOW it will work once it gets to
your PSP.

For those having problems with the Video conversion speed, conversion
time depends on numerous variables.....

1. The running length of the original file, longer movies take longer
to convert, duh.

2. The resolution of the original file, higher resolution files take
longer to shrink down to the PSP's resolution, especially going from
1080p down to 480x272.

3. The speed of your PC.  If you have a slow PC that hasn't been
upgraded in years, it's going to take longer to convert videos.

4. The amount of crap you have running in the background on your PC.
Got 70+ processes running in the background that you're not using???
Turn that crap off, they sap valuable system resources and drastically
slow down conversion speeds.

5. The SETTINGS YOU CHOOSE for the conversion.  Extra options like
Sharpening, Saturation changes, Hard-Subbing, and other visual filters
add a lot of time to a conversion, use those ONLY if you want a
quality final product or you're outputting to a TV.

The best thing to do is to set up a batch to run while you SLEEP and
set Xvid4PSP to shut your PC off when it's done, so then you won't
care about how long it takes, and when you wake up, you'll have new
stuff to transfer to your PSP.  The older version of Xvid4PSP is better
to do this with because the Shutdown command works on a batch, and it
doesn't work on a batch in the newer version.

And here's something you DON'T want to hear...........you CANNOT have
fast conversions and good quality, those things are mutually exclusive.
You can either have the slower conversion and the superior final video
quality, or you get a fast conversion and crap video quality, you
CANNOT have them both.

Now one final thing, for those constantly looking for a non-conversion
solution for video on the PSP, don't bother because given the literally
THOUSANDS of different combinations of audio and video codecs found in
most files these days, there won't be anything that could ever play them
all.

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