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PSP and video

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thomasp hero character
recently got myself a PSP, mainly intended as a portable video device for carrying around work-previews, demoreel and for misc. stuff. not really wanting to play games on it.

anyway, i was wondering if anyone of you have tried the various PC->PSP video encoding tools? i'm trying to figure out a workflow to avoid recompression as much as possible. i'd rather feed still image sequences straight from the compositor into the encoder to lose as little image quality as possible.

however, is it only my impression or do all the encoders REQUIRE an audio track to be present or else you will get all sorts of misleading error messages? mad.gif
in that case (never had anything to do with audio editing at all) i assume it's possible to record an "empty" dummy audio-file and use that to fill up the audio track?

can't find that kind of info on the net. i can understand that one would want to have audio on ripped movie dvd's and porn though and therefore few ever stumbled over that issue grin.gif

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  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Get a GP2X ( www.gp2x.de ) and you will need no reencoding and you can output it in full resolution on a TV as well tongue.gif
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    I use pspvideo9 and its been all I need so far, its at http://www.pspvideo9.com/ . no idea about the sound thing, give it a try though.

    JK I know the gpx is cool and all that but hes already got the psp..
  • bearkub
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    bearkub polycounter lvl 18
    Rooster: apparently you were under the assumption he read fully and had the decency to respond to the question asked. Boy, were YOU wrong. =]
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Got to reach 1000 posts tongue.gif (+1)

    *runs and hides*
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    Glad no one got a gizmodo.

    I remember walking past their store last year near oxford circus in london. Very glam and flashy, they even had a new car in there for some reason. My only thought was "this will flop!". Played some snow boarding game at 2 fps which then crashed.

    Low and behold, they are now 5 million quid in debt. All management resigned becuse they were proven to be convicted criminals. What a turkey.

    GP32X seems like a good buy, but hell a samsung phone can do that now. Get one on contract and it's next to free! The GPx2 is coming out soon.

    gamepark_gpx2f100.jpg

    Theres always PSP2TV if you get desperate and gogle now offer a psp video service.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    This might be way off but my cousin was able to put nes emulators and snes emulators on his psp which I thought was great. Now to the point, the reason I brought it up is because you might be able to just run an mpeg file for example off the psp since it seems to have some sort of hardrive built in. Again it's just speculation here since I have never bothered to look into the psp specs. But if I'm right you might be able to run a video file straight off the thing and perhaps bypass the issue you are having. I'm assuming of course that you have to encode to the specific format so the video runs from the disc when you burn it.

    Well it turns out I was wrong but I did find out that someone made it so you can play flash movies on the psp. I forget if you can embeded a movie file into a swf file but since the PSP only has 32 megs of ram that idea might be well stupid. But maybe you can burn it to a disc and it would work. In theory you could make an app in flash that plays your video sequence but the file size might be an issue unless you can add memory cards to the psp, but I just skimmed through the different pages and down't own a PSP so I really have no clue.

    As for the video encoding from what I read it seems pretty straight forward.

    I seems you can download codecs for the pc that let you write and read the MP4 format. If that is the case you can render out a movie file directly from max or whatever 3d app you use in that codec. In theory anyway. I just looked up all the extra codecs I have installed on my machine and my 3d apps says it can output to them.

    Oh to avoid the recompression issue altogether render out your avi without any compression the first time and then convert that huge file to the MP4 format. Later. Oh if I'm totally wrong sorry, I guess it means I'm an idiot. wink.gif

    Alex
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    This might be way off but my cousin was able to put nes emulators and snes emulators on his psp which I thought was great.

    If he bought his PSP recently the firmware is too new for that.

    And you probably mean stuffing it on a memstick because UMDs aren't writeable.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    KDR_11k I have no clue how he got the emulators on the PSP. He wasn't using a UMD though that was the first thing I was curious about. After seeing that though I suddenly had an urge to go buy a PSP. wink.gif I didn't bother asking him about it either.

    Alex
  • flaagan
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    flaagan polycounter lvl 18
    Pspvideo9 is probably your initial best choice. Sony has released a media manager software that they charge for (wtf sony?) which is pretty good too. I've copied over some movies with no sound on them no problem using pspvideo9. The only problem I have with it is when it converts video over to that mpg4 format the psp will recognize it never wants to check what files are already on the psp, and thus will create new movies with the same name (this can be fixed by manually renaming the files, but it's still annoying). A buddy of mine grabbed software that allows him to rip dvd's down to a file size small enough for his psp mem card. Not sure what it's called, I'll bug him about it next time I see him.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Sage: Older PSP firmware can be exploited to run anything you like by putting certain data on a memory stick. That's been fixed in newer firmware so if you were to buy a PSP today (or play any newer PSP game) you wouldn't be able to play emulators on it.
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    which basically has stopped me buying any new games. way to go sony!
  • monster
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    monster polycounter
    Well, there's a save exploit in GTA:Liberty Stories that lets you launch emulators on any version of the firmware.

    There also a homebrew psp app that lets you play divx files off your memory card.

    Oh, and I think the Sony 2 Gig cards just came out.
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    to my knowledge the GTA:LC thing has limits on what you can run, not everything is compatible- love to be shown wrong though
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    love to be shown wrong though

    At first I thought "showing love" would be some limit, referring to the Hot Coffee debacle...
  • poopinmymouth
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    poopinmymouth polycounter lvl 19
    I have a 2 gig card, the 4 gigs just came out. 750 bux though.

    poop.gif
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    yep, i'm aware of the gta exploit but i find this method to run homebrew rather cumbersome wink.gif my PSP is indeed a newer one with a homebrew-unfriendly OS-version.
    so for the time being i'm forced to use the builtin media player but i guess the hacks will come back sooner or later.
    it's really a pity how sony tries to prevent people from using their devices to the fullest extend, isn't it? looking forward to being able to run a neo geo emulator with the complete metal slug series on this puppy one day smile.gif

    anyway on the topic of movie encoding the problem really seems to be that all those movie encoders (i tried psp video 9 first, then switched to 3gp encoder which at least was more verbose when errors happened) internally just call the freeware ffmpeg-encoder and feed it the necessary command line options. which unfortunately in all cases seem to include audio stuff.
    so what i'll do next is to try to run ffmpeg from the commandline but without the audio switches. nothing is more annoying than having audio snippets on short, loopable cg clips.

    as for video types i think you can already use a variety of codecs, but these have to be wrapped into a container format that the PSP builtin player will accept.
  • Withers
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    Withers polycounter lvl 18
    It is not entirely true that if you buy a psp in store today you cannot run homebrew. I just bought mine in December, and I can run anything I want. It depends on what package you buy, and what firmware comes installed on it.

    For instance, if you buy the "Gigapack" (psp & 1 gig mem card for $299.99), as I did, it comes with the 2.0 firmware, which can be downgraded to 1.5 using a photo exploit widely available online. This makes all homebrew and emulators run perfectly, and can also be bounced back and forth between 2.0 in under a minute. (So you can still play GTA, and Socom)

    The only problems come in if you update beyond 2.0, as the newer games are requiring.
    Which is a real kick in the crotch, becuase I would have bought Street Fighter Alpha 3 in a heartbeat if it did not require 2.5 to run.

    Also, as far as converting video, I have tried several different apps, and the "Psp Movie Creator" is my favorite so far. It will input just about anything, and will output directly to the psp in the correct format (Mp4).
    Not to mention it seems lightning fast according to the others I have tried. I have encoded entire movies from divx to mp4 in under an hour, and the quality is surprisingly good.

    But, it should be mentioned that firmware again plays a role, newer upgrades allow for different video formats I have been told. (Not just Mpeg4)
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    GP32X seems like a good buy, but hell a samsung phone can do that now. Get one on contract and it's next to free! The GPx2 is coming out soon.

    gamepark_gpx2f100.jpg

    Theres always PSP2TV if you get desperate and gogle now offer a psp video service.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Got a GP2X already, but you are right the 'official' launch should be soon, but you can get one right now if you don't mind a buggy firmware. But the picture you posted is quite old since there is no white version (just a black one).
    It is a sweet machine, and I will probably do a review for the polycounters when it is launched officially smile.gif

    Oh and isn't that PSP2TV that crappy camera that you attach to your screen to output it on TV? -> Worst idea evar.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    oh my, i played around with it again. i have to say PSP video 9 is really the biggest pile of **** under the sun. like everything else it's merely a frontend to the ffmpeg encoder, yet it gives no feedback, whatsoever. throw in a file with an incompatible codec, audiotrack or whatever and you'll never know what went wrong. no logfiles, no messagewindow, no nothing. but at least a deinstaller, thanks for that.

    seems, hacking the PSP and running a player that handles more common formats and can playback at native resolution is the way to go if one want's to avoid ugly recompression.
    the common freeware tools are totally lacking, definitely.

    the PSP's builtin restrictions to help sell UMD's are totally hilarious so far. i'll keep these methods in mind for if i ever come around considering a PS3.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    ok, avisynth and it's scripting abilities do the trick. lets you feed imagesequences straight into the encoder and bypasses input format restrictions. i've tried it with jpeg-sequences, mixed in an empty audiotrack and had to suppress interleaving - which for some odd reason was done by default.

    for my tests i've used 3GP with the mp4 codec at 1500kbps bitrate. looks slick, except for minor blockiness in low-constrast areas. i expect the more recent AVC codec to do a better job at this but it seems it's not widely available as of yet.

    image quality is far superior to the horrible stuff that comes out of this encoder (or psp video 9) by default since you're no longer forced to encode the same footage twice.

    that will do it for now! i'm off to build myself a little pipeline now.
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