I’ve been playing around with the PSP Media Manager from Sony, and I think it’s an excellent piece of software. It’s a shame this wasn’t bundled with the PSP and released for free, but for only $20 I think it’s well worth the money.
I’ve commented on the PSP Media Manager in previous posts, and having played around a little more with it I’ve found a nice undocumented feature – the ability to rip movies from a DVD and convert to AVC on the fly. There’s a catch, and a workaround.
If you click on the video tab with a DVD in your DVD-ROM drive, the PSP Media Manager will automatically recognize it and scan the disc for VOB files to convert. Under the size column, the interface will show the file size after conversion for high and low AVC conversion, based on what is selected in the dropdown menu above. This is nice to determine which AVC target work best for your media storage.
The one problem is that it won’t recognize and convert from a DVD that is copy-protected. To get around this, simply rip the DVD to your hard drive via DVD Decrypter in ISO mode. Then mount the image using Daemon Tools, which creates a virtual drive that the software will recognize. Then, load up the PSP Media Manager and it should automatically recognize the virtual drive and allow you to select the appropriate VOB file for conversion. Since the encryption on the ripped image has been “cracked,” so to speak, the software has no issues with converting the file.
A couple potential stumbling blocks. First, I couldn’t get the PSP Media Manager software to recognize a DVD ripped via DVD Decrypter in IFO mode, even with creating a new IFO file with IFOEdit. Second, you may need to have Quicktime 7 to get AVC conversion to work. At least that happened with me, and I still can’t preview a VOB file. And third, it might not look like the conversion is working when you transfer the VOB file to the PSP, but it is – it just is really slow. My estimates for a 90 minute film is just a tad under five hours for High AVC conversion, and the end result file size will be about 550 MB.
And one wish list item – I would like to be able to convert video without having to dock the PSP. Right now, it will only let you convert video if the PSP is connected, presumably because transfer and conversion happen on the fly. But it would be nice if it converted and saved to a hard drive, and transfer could be done later when the PSP was docked. Reason being, I just don’t like my PSP going through a transfer for five hours straight, even though it is plugged into the AC adapter.
So there you go. This program is excellent, but with a couple minor tweaks it could be even better. Good job, Sony.
Jeremy
/ November 11, 2005So after about four hours, my video was done and ready to watch on my PSP. The problem is after all that, the audio was out of sync. So that means I’ll have to do it all over again.
As far as the video quality, I converted it in High AVC. It was good, definitely better than any video I’ve converted with PSPVideo9. However, it had a soft look and lacked the pixel-detail that you get in UMD Video. So as of right now, I would recommend if there is a movie you like enough to watch it on the go, it would probably be worth the extra $20 to double-dip on the purchase rather than spend the time and trouble of converting it.
I’m going to reconvert tonight and try some anime to see how it handles animation. One thing about anime, especially when dealing with subtitles, is that you have to convert to an .avi file first to “burn in” the subtitles. So I’ll have to convert the VOBs to an .avi at max quality, then reconvert to the PSP. There’s got to be a better way sometime in the near future, but for now it’s decent. It’s all the other features in the PSP Media Manager that make it worth the $20 (easily).
Jeremy
/ November 11, 2005One more comment about the PSP Media Manager. If you have any vidcasts in your feeds, it will automatically convert to the AVC setting of your choice. I recommend using Low AVC to conserve flash memory space. After all, it’s not like these vidcasts are feature film quality.