I went ahead and shelled out the $20 for this and man I am impressed. Its not perfect, but its well worth $20. The biggest downside is you have to connect your PSP memory stick to the PC to convert video. Considering a 2 hour movie can take 3-4 hours to convert means you won't be using your memory stick for awhile. However, I will probably just hook it up before I go to bed and have everything ready in the morning. Just to note that this is a major downside and many may want to pass for this reason. Another downside is spotty support for divx and xvid. Some it will convert some it won't.

Not sure if this software was discussed in detail already, but I wanted to give a quick review. This software works so well that my opinion of the PSP has really gone up big time.

Excellent drag and drop for music and photos. You can set it to automatically reformat your pictures for the PSP resolution to save space. No need in most cases to have your 5.1 megapixel pics on your PSP at that resolution anyway so this is a very nice feature. Works with MP3 and WMAs, but I believe you need V2.5 to use the WMAs. It will also reconvert any audiofiles you want downgraded or that are in other formats. Not a good idea though. You can also rip CDs right to your PSP as well if you need to.

Excellent podcast and videocast support. You can add any podcast feeds to it and it will automatically download them or you can do it manually. This can all be done without a PSP connected. When you transfer them it will do any conversion that might be necessary especially for video podcasts so they work correctly on the PSP. Audio Podcasts are also grouped into subfolders to help keep them organized.

Backup your memory stick. This is a nice and easy bonus. You can keep a backup of your memory stick and just in case something gets deleted it will be on the PC.

Video conversion. This is obviously what this product is all about and why I really like it. First of all it converts in h.264 and gives the best quality of any product I have tried including PSPVideo9 and Kinoma Producer. Of course this means you must have 2.0 or up firmware. It can automatically tell if the video file is anamorphic and adjust the encoding to give the best image possible. It is still limited to 340X240 for standard video and 368X204 for widescreen video, but the quality is very good. You have a low quality and high quality setting and both are very watchable, but the high quality is excellent. File size is fairly big though. A 2 hour movie at high quality h.264 will be around 770MBs so a 1GB stick is a must and a 2GB stick would be the best way to go.

One thing to note is though you have to encode to your PSP you are free to copy the files back to your PC and save them for later viewing using Windows Explorer. They are not locked to your memory stick. Format support is fairly broad, but it does not play well with divx and xvid and I'm not sure why. If converting those is important you may want to pass. I'm going to experiment more with this though and see.

The biggest thing that has sold me on this product is it will rip DVDs directly to your PSP. That is flat out amazing and something I thought for sure Sony would block. It has no trouble reading the IFO files and coverting the VOBs. There is a catch though. If the DVD is copyprotected it won't work. Well that is unless you install a little program called DVD43 on your PC. With that installed you will be free to rip any DVD you want directly to your PSP.

Encoding speed is slow. A 2 hour DVD movie will take 3+ hours to convert, however, I think part of that is the high quality it converts at so I am going to let that slide. You can look at that one as a negative if you like.

From my standpoint though this product is a must have for PSP owners that use their units for multimedia which is probably most PSP owners. The divx problem is a downside and if you get a lot of stuff off of bit torrent you will probably need another converter for that. I think this problem is an issue with what formats Quicktime can read since the Media Manger uses QT7.

I think its definitely worth $20 and worth considering.

Update: I uninstalled all my current divx and xvid codecs and downloaded Divx 6.1 from the divx site. Now most of the divx videos are showing up, but there are still a few that are not. So I have at least partial Divx support now.

Second Update: Another mistake on my part. You only have to have the PSP memory card connected with importing video. This is still a hassle, but if you have an extra memory card and a card reader you can use your PSP for something else while the video is converting.

What is word on Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max?

Very positve. Probably the best version of it ever released outside the arcades.

Capcom is offering a replacement D-pad for Street Fighter Alpha 3 Extreme if you order the game from their site. Apparently it snaps on top of the current D-pad and allows smoother digital control for something like a fighting game.

Is that the same d-pad that came out in Japan? When you stick it on, isn't it on permanently, or does it come on and off easily?

It snaps on to the current D-pad so it is probably removable and yes it's the same one that came out in Japan.

Darkside,

You said that media manager had no trouble converting .VOBs? I looked on their website and it doesn't list .vob as a supported file....

Just want to reconfirm before I plunk down $20 since converting my dvd collection is the only thing I really want it for....

It DOES read IFO and convert a .vob file? with no audio/video synch problems or anything like that??

Thanks!!

I've been messing with this thing for days and let me give you what details I can as I have had more experience with the program.

If you pop in a DVD and have a program like DVD43 that kills the encryption it will directly read the DVD and convert it to the memory stick. However, if you simply rip the VOB files to the PC it won't recognize them. The way around this is to just rename the VOB files to AVI or MPG and then it will see them and encode them.

Video looks amazing, but I am running into audio sync problems with the high quality files. Its real hit and miss. Encoding directly from DVD seems to cause major audio sync issues and I have stopped doing it. Encoding from the hard drive works much better. Maybe because its doing each VOB as a separate 18-20 minute file instead of one big 2 hour file. However, I am still getting 1 out of every 4 files with the audio out of sync. I have yet to have any audio sync problems with the low quality encoding though, only the high quality.

My PC is way above their specs so I don't think that is it. I'm a little stumped really as to why I am having some audio sync issues. What I have been trying to do is dump a bunch of files in there at night and then check them in the morning. If any have sync issues I will reencode those and so far all have encoded correctly on the second try.

Again this may be more hassle than you want to deal with, but the quality of the video is so amazing that I think its worth it. I had Corpse Bride on my PSP and it looks like a UMD disc instead of a lower res encode.

However, if anyone finds a better H.264 encoder please let me know because I would like to hear about other options. Currently I haven't found anything that can match the video quality of the PSP Media Manager.

Some opinions:

Maverick Hunter X has a lot of annoying quirks, one being the addition of childish voice-overs - similar to the GBA Nintendo remakes. There are also quite a few bugs. Overall though, it's a great game, and the second play-through with Vile makes the game worthwhile. It's almost criminal as to how easy it is to destroy the bosses with his arsenal. The anime movie is pretty cool too.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX rules, plain and simple. Once you adjust to the controls, it becomes a superb game. Even then, they aren't that bad. The stick that Capcom is giving away can't be removed once attached, just to give you the heads up. The graphics are on par with the Saturn version (which was actually a little smoother than the arcade version), with no slowdown. There are also more characters than the Dreamcast version. The loading times are a little annoying though, and probably the only downside. Otherwise, a must-buy.

Agreed on all points this port kicks ass, but you kow what would have ruled? SF III 3rd Strike! I can dream right?

I doubt SFIII will fit on a UMD. It barely fit on the Dreamcast GD-ROM.

GD-ROM: 1.2 GB
UMD: 1.8 GB

Someone posted this in the HD forum, but part of the article is about UMDs and Sony is definitely doing what many of us hoped they would by bundling UMDs with DVDs.

This is excellent news. Granted I'm not sure how this will shake down in retail prices, but if I can score the UMD disc for only $5-$10 more I will buy the bundle most of the time. I've picked up 4 UMDs so far and borrowed several from a friend and its really a nice format if the price is right.

I'm probably going to have Mad Max, Crouching Tiger and Snatch on my buy list for sure.

Received it today and played the three levels and this is pretty much my opinion of it. I like the mix of fast driving hot pursuits and the shooting, but this is something that is going to get repetitive in a hurry. I'll probably play the demo levels from time to time, but this is not a game I'm paying $40 for.

Is that little Dpad snapon available separately? I'd like to have it, but not a huge SF fan.

Maybe on eBay.. though I'd imagine if someone went through the trouble to order the game from Capcom's site they'd want to keep the D-pad. If you REALLY want it, I'd order the game, get the D-pad and eBay the game.. you'd probably only be out a few bucks.

So the dpad does not come off easily... how obtrusive is it? Does it just make the dpad better, without significantly changing the form factor? Or will I only want it to play fighting games?

Also, what is this "PSP TV adaptor" that's on sale at Fry's for 50 bucks? Does it just output the PSP screen to your TV? I didn't even know the PSP had a video out.

As posted back in June of '05...

Link



Link

I have ripped two movies to my hard drive as .VOB files. I renamed them to .mpg so that media manager would see them. Dragonheart is 4.7GB in size, and Princess Mononoke is about 7.5GB in size.
When I load them into media manager, Dragonheart shows up as 38MB and 5 minutes long! Mononoke shows up as 31MB and 4 minutes long!!!!
What is wrong? why won't it see the entire movie?
(I have also tried a .avi and .mp4 extension and get the same result)

I tried to download them to my psp anyway, and it crapped out during princess mononoke, saying the card in the PSP wasn't big enough........its an empty 2GB card!!

Any ideas from anyone would be a great help!

Thanks.

How are you ripping the DVDs to your HD? With DVD Decryptor or DVD Shrink you should get several VOB files for each movie. Find the VOBs for the film you want to put on your PSP and rename each piece to MPG. For instance I did Waiting the other night and it was in three pieces. I named them Waiting 1.MPG, Waiting 2.MPG and Waiting 3.MPG. Then just transfer them in PSP Media Manager.

I'm still having issues with the program BTW. I transfered Waiting the other night and it came out perfect. I transfered Van Wilder last night and it was completely ruined with every clip having the audio way out of sync. I tried emailing Sony, but as usual their customer service is awful and they are no help at all. They also don't give refunds on the software if it doesn't work.

I tried encoding files on two different PCs, but I'm still having the same sketchy results. Sometimes it transfers perfectly and sometimes it ruins some or all of the segments. I tried out a trial of Video Vault for the PSP as well and ever single long clip encoded with that software had major audio sync issues. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong and if there is any way to fix the audio sync problems I'm having. You would think a 2.2Ghz PC could encode 30 minutes of video without messing it up.

This link has all the information you'll need to go from DVD to PSP. It's very easy.

Mod Note: This is a link to a guide and not a direct link to any software. Remove if you see this as a problem.

Just another quick update on the audio sync problems and encoding with PSP Media Manager. I want to give this product as fair of a review as possible.

I went through my system and made sure to uninstall all the old Divx and Xvid codecs (I had missed an xvid one the first time) and reinstalled the latest version from Divx.org. Now PSPMM sees all my Divx and Xvid files (mostly old MST3K TV Recordings) and I encoded a bunch of them. All encoded perfectly even files over 90 minutes. I also encoded a bunch of video podcasts and other various funny video clips from online and all of those encoded perfectly.

DVD encodes are still hit and miss, but I think its because this software is just not designed to handle those files and though I can fool it into doing it the results are sometimes good and sometimes bad.

So the program is worth getting for standard AVI stuff, music, photos and RSS feeds, but you should probably try something else like the free PSPVideo9 encoder for DVDs. Hopefully with future updates Sony can make the encodes faster, but overall its still worth $20 for the things it does do well.

I am borrowing a friend's PSP with a few games, notably Mega Man X and PoPoLoCrois. Mega Man X is a decent remake.. though the new extras I feel aren't very good (the movie and Vile mode), I actually thought the Powered Up demo showed more promise. PPLC LOOKS like a game I would really like.. but the intro bored me and I shut it down before getting to the game and went back to my DS, so I'll have to give that another shot, probably tonight.

I was at BB last night contemplating whether or not to pick up a PSP. I ended up not getting one. The only game that really caught my interest was the Mega Man X game and of course I would have to get Hot Shots again because I had lots of fun with that. I also want to use my PSP for emulation so that would mean a downgrade to 1.5? I know HSG would work with 1.5 but do any of the new games work with 1.5 or do they all require you to upgrade to the latest version? This would be a problem for me because I want to play UMD games and use it for emulation but I'm not going to go through the hassle of downgrading/updating my PSP everytime to do so.

There are a couple more games coming out in early March that have my interest...Untold Legends 2 and a Y's game so I might hold off getting one until then. Anyone know if they've updated the emus to work with the newer PSP versions or they still need 1.5 in order to work. That's probably going to be the deciding factor on whether I do get another one.

I don't remember the status on 2.0 but SOME homebrew works on 2.5+ via an exploit but you have to have a copy of GTA:LCS for it to work.