Are you (planning) on using the multi-media features?

[Gadfly2317]

I bought the PsP for gaming. Mp3? I have a Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Mp3 player that holds 30gigs of music. . . I LOVE it; and so, really, I can't see the Mp3 aspects. BUT, does anyone know if there will be custom soundtracks in games using your Mp3's on the memory card? I WOULD use that!

Movies. Watched the second half of Spiderman 2 at work today at lunch. I don't have a portable movie player. It was actually a pretty cool time killer, laying down in the back of my car watching a movie because I was hung over and dog tired from staying up all night playing PsP and God of War.

BUT, would any of you BUY UMD movies for this? IF you could hook the PsP up to a TV and feed the movie image to your bigger screen, MAYBE. But the thing is, like most of you I already have a bunch of DvD's, and it would be cheaper to buy a portable DvD player and just use the DvD's I've got rather than buy a bunch of UMD's replacing movies I've already got. Will these UMD's play on anything besides the PsP?

MOVIES. Like I said, this little bugger IS cool to watch movies on. My question is, how would you go about ripping content off DvD's you currently have and converting them to a movie file format you could place on your 1 gig mem card and run on your PsP? I don't care about movies, but I would love to be able to have stuff like Invader Zim, Southpark, Family Guy, Fawlty Towers, Absolutely Fabulous and the Pee Wee Herman Show. . . you know, short TV stuff. . . to watch on the PsP when I don't feel like going out to eat and socializing with co-workers, reading a book, or gaming on my lunch hour.

FEEDBACK guys. I know a lot of you planning to get the PsP are a lot more computer and tech literate than I am. I want to hear what you are doing with this thing. The PsP seems to have so much versatility and potential. I'd like to hear how to get more out of it.

[theWacoKid]

Basically, you need to convert video files to mpeg 4 format. That's the big trick, so you'll need some type of video conversion program. ipsp is one, can't vouch for it yet, although at some point this weekend, I'll try it. They have a demo you can download for free. if you register with them, then its $20. There are other programs as well.

http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/

There's a windows and mac version. This is a management uitlity tool for more than just video files. It's also for photos, music and game saves.

For pictures, you need photos in jpeg format and music files in mp3 or atrac format.

There's also this site. You get sample mpeg4 files and a tutorial on downloading mpeg4 files to your psp.

http://www.connect.com/psp/

Imagine a whole episode of speed racer on your psp. Woo-hoo!

Keep in mind, you're going to need a much bigger memory stick. I picked one up tonight, a half gig from costco. Its amazing how such a dinky little chip can hold so much. There are 1 gig sticks around. Actually there are 4 gig sticks around but super expensive. You should be able to get a half gig for around $60 to $70 US. I paid $90 canadian for mine.

[Gadfly2317]

Basically, you need to convert video files to mpeg 4 format. That's the big trick, so you'll need some type of video conversion program. ipsp is one, can't vouch for it yet, although at some point this weekend, I'll try it. They have a demo you can download for free. if you register with them, then its $20. There are other programs as well.

http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/

There's a windows and mac version. This is a management uitlity tool for more than just video files. It's also for photos, music and game saves.

For pictures, you need photos in jpeg format and music files in mp3 or atrac format.

There's also this site. You get sample mpeg4 files and a tutorial on downloading mpeg4 files to your psp.

http://www.connect.com/psp/

Imagine a whole episode of speed racer on your psp. Woo-hoo!

Keep in mind, you're going to need a much bigger memory stick. I picked one up tonight, a half gig from costco. Its amazing how such a dinky little chip can hold so much. There are 1 gig sticks around. Actually there are 4 gig sticks around but super expensive. You should be able to get a half gig for around $60 to $70 US. I paid $90 canadian for mine.

So these programs you're talking about for Mpeg4 conversion. . . will they actually rip content from a DvD in your computers DvD drive and convert it? I'd gladly spring for a 1gig memory card if it's not a terribly complicated procedure to convert DvD content into Mpeg4 files to put on the PsP.

ALSO. . . crap, I just remembered. I haven't figured out a way yet, or seen it in the manual. . .how--or can you--convert data on one psp memory card to another? I've started playing on this little freebie that came with the system but since I'm going to get at least a 1/2 gig or more soon, will I lose all my game saves (I don't want to have to be swapping memory cards. . . I just want ONE.) Is there a way to put the data on one card to another?

[Renzatic Gear]

Once someone figures out how the PSP OS works they'll make a software divx decoder you can slap on a memory stick. That way you can crunch down a half hour of almost MPEG4 video into about 120 megs...probably less considering the PSP's resolution.

And memory sticks...go for broke and get a gig or 4. Save your money if you have to, it'll be better in the long run.

[theWacoKid]

So these programs you're talking about for Mpeg4 conversion. . . will they actually rip content from a DvD in your computers DvD drive and convert it? I'd gladly spring for a 1gig memory card if it's not a terribly complicated procedure to convert DvD content into Mpeg4 files to put on the PsP.

ALSO. . . crap, I just remembered. I haven't figured out a way yet, or seen it in the manual. . .how--or can you--convert data on one psp memory card to another? I've started playing on this little freebie that came with the system but since I'm going to get at least a 1/2 gig or more soon, will I lose all my game saves (I don't want to have to be swapping memory cards. . . I just want ONE.) Is there a way to put the data on one card to another?

This is what ipsp's site claims. Can't verify as yet.

iPSP can make PSP-ready .MP4 video clips from the following formats:


MPEG files - .mpg extension

Video for Windows files - .avi extension

QuickTime Files - .mov extension

Windows Media files - .wmv extension

DVD Video Object files - .vob extension

Digital Video files - .dv extension

High Definition Video - .m2t extension

Basically, your dvd ripping should be the dvd vob files. So far, I've just transferred some jpegs and music files. My music files were in mpeg4 format and it converted them to mp3 for transfer. Ipsp has a game save function. Its supposed to automatically back up your psp game save data to your pc. The download's free, gad, try it out, and see how it works.

I tried manually to drag and drop my jpegs, but i wound up with a lot of corrupted data files on my card, so I restarted. With the program, I didn't have any corrupt data files.

[T.Tashi]

I used this.

http://www.nurs.or.jp/~calcium/3gpp/ (http://www.nurs.or.jp/%7Ecalcium/3gpp/)

It seems to have problems with wmv files though.

[Aylmer]

One easy way is with a card reader. They are cheap, usually $20 or so. They plug into and draw power from your PC's USB port, and your Windoze machine sees it as just another drive. Just make sure that it reads Memory Sticks. The multiformat readers usually do, the slot is marked MS. You can also use this method (a multiformat card reader) to get digital pics from non-Sony cameras into your PSP.

That way, you can back up all your PSP data to your PC, and swap it out when you need to, rather than keep buying those expensive MS cards.

[theWacoKid]

Well, today I've been ripping some material from my dvds. Tried the simpsons, but no luck. However, I ripped a pair of old twilight zone episodes, 3 Daffy Duck cartoons, an episode of seinfeld, and Jak-Jak Attack from The Incredibles. Oh, and also Runaway Brain a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Runaway Brain and Jak-Jak Attack are native widescreen. The 4:3 material I encode at 320x240 and the widescreen material is encoded at 368x208. Visual quality is pretty good and the audio is quite clear. I use 2 pass encoding.

So how much video can you put on a 512MB stick that formats out to 467MB. Well, I'm getting about 25 minutes of video for a 100MB. So, you can get close to 2 hours on a 512MB stick. Definitely has me itching for mem stick prices to go down on the higher capacity sticks.

When everything is said and done, the psp is really quite neat, toss in some mp3, some short vids and have a game or two handy, you're really all set. Getting the video to the psp takes a bit of work, the encoding and converting is fairly slow. But, it beats paying for umd movies at $20 a pop. Besides, for the psp, shorter stuff is better.