Sony PSP

What’s the point in knowing,
…when all you do is nothing!
– P.O.D. in Rise Against.

In this page, I’ll try to list all the tips and useful information that I know about the Sony PSP. I’ve owned the PSP for 3 years now. I upgraded to the PSP Slim & Lite last summer. It’s a great little device, but out of the box, the PSP does not show its true power. There are a lot of tips and programs that make you get the most out of this device.

This page is under construction.

Please visit soon.

GENERAL TERMS

• XMB: Cross Media Bar. It’s simpy the interface of the PSP. It’s also used in PS3 and Sony’s latest HDTVs.

• There isn’t much to say here. The built-in Photo viewer of the Sony PSP is a good one except for its need to process the image every time it’s resized or panned. This makes the image look pixelated until it’s fully processed. This process takes around 1-2 seconds. Could take longer on bigger images.

• The Photo viewer can view large images, but larger images will show up as Unsupported. There isn’t a known maximum size supported, so if you get this problem, resize the image to a smaller size. In general, you will rarely encounter this.

• Folder Structure
In the recent PSP system versions (firmware), the photos should be placed in X:\PICTURE (X stands for your PSP Memory Stick drive when shown in Windows after connecting the device to the PC by a USB cable). You can create sub-folders in this folder, but no further sub-folders. For e.g. folders like these work: X:\PICTURE\Family and X:\PICTURE\Jack, but not X:\PICTURE\Family\Jack. The latter won’t show up on the PSP.

• Pressing while a folder is highlighted will start a slideshow of the contents of this folder. Press to bring up more options. You can choose a slideshow speed. Press while a slideshow is playing to pause, and press again to resume.

• While you’re viewing a photo, press + Analog to zoom in and out. Press + L or R to rotate the image. By pressing while you’re viewing a photo, you can browse the XMB and go to MUSIC and play a song. The image will be shown in the background while the song is playing.
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• Also not much can be said here. The music player of the PSP is quite robust. It can play MP3s at 320 kbps while viewing a photo slideshow without a single gap.

• The folder structure is identical to that of the photos. You should put your music in X:\MUSIC\ and sub-folders.

• Also pressing while a song is playing will bring you back to the XMB where you can go and view photos at the same time. The song playing (or folder) will show a twirling little thing beside its title. If you left a playing song by pressing , and left MUSIC altogether, you can resume the song you left at exactly the same point, by pressing at the MUSIC icon.

• You can bring up a visual interactive animation by pressing while a song is playing.

• You can choose a preset equalizer by pressing anytime. Holding this button will mute the sound.
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• The video player of the PSP is also quite robust. It’s the most solid video player I’ve ever come across. With a sufficient memory stick, the PSP can be an amazing video player. The large high-definition display is also a big bonus. However, the PSP is very picky when it comes to the formats of video it can play. Only precisely coded videos in certain formats can be played. So, we need to know how to make videos the PSP can play.

• Supported Frame Dimensions (in newer firmwares)
720 x 480 px
480 x 272 px (fills the whole screen)
372 x 272 px
340 x 240 px
640 x 480 px (may work in firmware 5.00 +)

• The folder structure is identical to that of the photos and music. You should put your videos in X:\VIDEO\ and sub-folders.

• You can use PSP Video 9 to create videos for your PSP. It’s a free Windows program. It contains advertisements, though. Download version 2.25 from here. The later versions are unnecessarily more complicated and is stuffed with even more ads.

PSP Video 9 Tutorial

• Video Wizard
The video wizard is recommend for people who find encoding and such things complicated. It’s an automated process that doesn’t require any knowledge of computer lingo. You just choose the video you want to convert, and it does the rest.

• Custom Converting
If you need more options or you want to choose specific criteria to your videos, you can make your own profiles. Below is a screenshot of the window of the conversion process.

• Editing profiles
Profiles are like folders that contain the settings you choose. You can create as many profiles as you wish. I will list the settings I use that I find are most suitable.

Click New Profile to create a new profile (recommended) or Edit Profile to edit an already existing one.

• General settings
Here you can name your profile, choose the type of encoder (the one below is the most recommended), and choose the duration of encoding. For example, if you want to encode only the first 10 minutes of a video, you will set the encoding duration to 600 seconds. However, you shouldn’t play with the starting position, because from my experience, it results in audio/video off-sync.

• Video settings
Here’s the settings I use for high-quality fullscreen video.

However, the Bitrate (kbps) should be changed to 1000 if you’re converting a high-quality video which is nowadays presumably encoded at over 3000 kbps. The loss of quality will not be very apparent, but you’ll save so much space by reducing the bitrate. Recommended bitrates are between 600 to 1000 for high-quality videos and 300-500 for low-quality ones.

• Cropping the video
If you have a square-shaped video (4:3), and want it to fill the whole wide screen of the PSP (16:9), you can crop the top and the bottom parts of the video. The most common square-shaped video frame dimensions is 640 x 480, so you’ll need to crop 56 from the top and 56 from the bottom.

• Audio settings
And here’s the audio settings. This should be constant in any video you want to convert. 96 kbps is a universally good value for portable videos.

• Converting many videos successively
If you wish to convert many videos successively without the need of starting each one individually, you can use the One-Click-Convert feature. First, you choose the profile you want to use to convert your videos.

Then, don’t forget to save this setting by clicking Save Converter Settings.

Then, go to screen below, and click One-Click Convert. You can then choose the videos you want and they will queue up to be converted.

• Transferring videos to your PSP
After the conversion process has been completed, click on Library, connect your PSP to the PC, choose the video file, and click Copy to device (keeps a copy on the PC) or Move to device (removes the copy from the PC).
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Here are the games I play(ed) and like(d) very much. In my opinion, they are among the finest PSP games. Each one is from a different genre. Please click the links and buy the games to support the developers and the PSP. All links go to Amazon.com, a respectable online store. I don’t get any credit for linking to them. I just try to support the games I like.

• Namco Museum Battle Collection [Compilation of Arcade Games]
• WTF: Work Time Fun [Minigames and Interactive Gadgets]
  
• Me And My Katamari [3D Platformer]
  
• Outrun 2006: Coast to Coast [Racing]
  
• Kingdom of Paradise [Action Role-Playing]
  
• PoPoLoCrois [Standard Role-Playing]
  
• LocoRoco [2D Platformer]
  
• Metal Gear Acid 2 [Turn-based Strategy]
• Mercury Meltdown [Action Puzzle]
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords [Matching Puzzle]
• Space Invaders Extreme [Static Shooter]

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Coming soon.