I have had my Playstation Portable (PSP) for over a month now and I am starting to play around some more with it. The biggest thing I wanted to get it doing is to have my PSP play video. The wide screen is nice and large, the resolution is pretty good, and the brightness is awesome.

Anyhow, the other night I finally got it working properly. Sony has made this rather confusing to play video files from your computer on your PSP. Perhaps this is intentional, but I don't know.

The biggest help in doing this is PSP Vault's Page On PSP Video where they have a specific section on playing PSP video from the memory stick. There's is the most up to date. A lot of the online guides do not contain the latest instructions and the version of firmware can change how you do it. My biggest recommendation is to download PSP Video 9. It is free and will do 90% of the work for you. If you are on Mac, I have not tried it, but VisualHub is recommended.

You will a few things to be able to get the video on.

• A Playstation Portable.
• Memory Stick Pro DUO (minimum would be 256 MB)
• PC to do encoding with software (your laptop or computer)
• Video file (remember how big your memory stick is and the size of video you want to put on the PSP)

Note About Versions

There are a lot of other guides on the internet, but they are usually older and don't take in the changes in the latest firmware. PSP Vault's PSP Video page is the most up-to-date I have found. Read there to see the version differences. But here is a summary:

For a detailed list of firmware changes see PSP Vault's Firmware Guide.

There are a few different steps you need to take. This is assuming you have downloaded or ripped from a DVD some random video format. Therefore you will need to do all of the steps.

1. Download or rip a video file on your PC/laptop.
2. Convert the file to a PSP format.
3. Ensure the converted files are named properly.
4. Ensure the proper folders exist on the PSP.
5. Transfer the files over to your PSP.

I had original done the steps 2-5 individually, but the software PSP Video 9 can do it all for you and it works awesome. You even tell it what firmware version you have so it will do what it knows is compatible (even custom firmware is supported).

Getting Video

You can find video in a variety of places. You will know how if you are looking this up. Bittorrent sites, ripping your DVD's, sharing between friends, saving files you found on the web (like YouTube), or a variety of other places.

Encoding Video

I have tried a number of programs, but PSP Video 9 has been awesome. It is free with a "pro version" available, but you don't need it to just get video working.

Basically just download and install the program from my link in the above paragraph. When you start it up for the first time, you have to choose a few options. Pick your PSP's firmware version. You can find this out by going to Settings -> System Settings -> System Information. It will give a System Software value that will be your firmware. Mine is currently Version 3.71.

You will also need to connect your PSP and have it in USB mode (Settings->USB Connection) so the software can detect what drive number it is.

When you are in the software, you just follow the instructions. Pick a file you want to encode and press the Convert Video button.

Transferring Video Onto Card

Without using PSP Video, this can be a bit confusing. Basically, MPEG4 files need to be named liked M4V10001.MP4 and have the file M4V10001.THM with it. They need to be placed in the folder MP_ROOT\101ANV01.

MPEG AVC files can be any name as far as I can tell and they need to go in the folder VIDEO. If the are encoded as AVC, they will not work in the other folders.

The best option is to use PSP Video 9. It will do whatever your PSP supports. It keeps track of your library of PSP encoded videos for you. You just click on the Library button, pick the video you want transferred (it will show you the ones already on the PSP) and then click Transfer.

Playing the video

This is the easy part. Just go to the Video section on your PSP's menu and then press X on the Memory Stick option. It will show you a list of videos and you can go from there.

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Category: Computers

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