How does PSP Media Studio 3.0 work? This software allows you to put home movies, DVD's, downloaded content and TV on your PSP in two simple steps. You can watch them in fullscreen landscape mode. What you need is: - PC with Windows XP. For DVD support you'll also need a built-in DVD-player. - 4 Gigabyte of free space on a harddisk (for a 100 minute movie) to store temporary files - Sony Playstation Portable - Memorystick Duo of at least 32 Mb (or 128 Mb for DVD support).

Before you start

- Make sure you have Windows Media Player 9 or 10 installed on your system.

- Make sure your system has a software DVD player (such as PowerDVD or WinDVD), if you want to convert DVD content.

- Make sure you have a harddisk with at least 1 Gigabyte of free space. By default the software will look for the C:\ drive as the temporary drive. You can change this in DVD Settings Menu \ Temp Drive.

Quick Guide

[1] Source Drive . Click the type of content you want to open. This can be stored on a hard disk, CD-Rom, DVD-R(w), DVD-Video, removable drive, flash drive or anything else. Press Open to start.

The content you picked will start playing in the Preview Window. You can right-click in the window for more preview options. Such as a fullscreen preview.

If the source drive is a DVD-Video or DVD-R(W), select it. DVD's can contain multiple titles, such as (home) movies, trailers, etc. By default, the software will pick the largest title. Usually this is the main movie.

[2] Action / Advanced You can start immediately by pressing the Action button. The file or dvd conversion will begin right away. If you need control over the picture quality, language settings etcetera, you click the Advanced button.

Click on Action and the PC will start converting. The preview video will stop playing to save processor cycles . Conversion takes one step with content coming from harddisk or CD. But coming from DVD, it takes two steps. DVD's are now captured using Cyberspeed technology. During Step1, the video and audio from the DVD will be saved to a temporary file, this may take between 10 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the speed of your processor, harddrive and DVD drive. If you have a brand new DVD disc, a relatively fast PC, diskdrive and DVD-rom, you may see speeds of up to fifteen times realtime. In that case a 90 minute DVD will be captured in 6 minutes. But if one of your components is slow, or your DVD disc is dirty or scratched, it will form the bottleneck and your speed may drop to 2 times realtime. After Step 1, Step 2 will start automatically. This step compresses the file further to the final PSP movie file. This will take approximately 2 times realtime on a 2Ghz PC. So 45 minutes for a 90 minute movie. On average, you may expect to transfer a DVD to your PSP in less then an hour.

[3] Source Size You need to tell the software what size the source content is, so that it can calculate the optimal playback size on your PSP.

Most DVD's have a 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen) and most TV shows have a 4:3 dimension. For feature films shot in Academy Standard 16:9, the widescreen-setting is automatically chosen. In case your DVD was shot in Cinemascope , you need to pick the Cinemascope (2.35:1 aspect ratio) setting. This will correct the 'egghead' effect that you may see. When finished press Next.

[4] Zoom Level . Choose the zoom level. Then press Next.

If you prefer to see the whole movie in widescreen, choose 'Show All'. This will give you the whole picture, but it will show black bars on the PSP. The reason is that film sizes (so called aspect ratio's) and the size of your PSP screen are different. You will notice that the shots are missing abit from the left and right side. If you choose 'Zoom In', the software will chop the black bars off and blow-up the picture.

[5] Encoding Quality. Choose the encoding quality. Then press Next.

If you prefer a better video quality, choose 'Better Picture'. This will give improved video quality, but will consume more diskspace. This is recommended for most (home) movies. 'Better Sound' will result in more blockiness in the video. However, it wil result in stereo FM-like sound.

[6] Episodes, Language and Subtitles

Next, you will see the episodes and language settings, the Episode , Audio Dub and Subtitle options appear.

A) Episode Menu. If your source material is a DVD, you have the option to select an alternative title from the disc. For example a 'behind the scenes'-documentary, or another episode from a DVD containing several tv-shows. The longest video on the disc will be shown by default, usually that's the main movie.

B) Audio Dub Menu. This allows you to set a foreign audiotrack. For example if you want to watch a movie in Spanish, you would pick that language and override the default English setting.

C) Subtitles Menu. If you choose subtitles, you will see a droplist of possible languages on the disc.

By default the setting will be no subtitles. For example if you would need Danish subtitles, you would click 'yes'and then pick Danish from the droplist that appears.

[7] Action. You press Action and the PC will start converting. The preview video will stop playing to save processor cycles. Conversion takes one step with content coming from harddisk or CD. But coming from DVD, it takes two steps. DVDs are then captured using Cyberspeed technology. During Step1, the video and audio from the DVD will be saved to a temporary file, this may take between 10 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the speed of your PC and the speed of your DVD drive. If you have a relatively fast PC and DVD drive, you may see speeds of up to fifteen times realtime. In that case a 90 minute DVD will be captured in 6 minutes. After Step 1, Step 2 will start automatically. This step compresses the file further to the final PSP movie file. This will take approximately 2 times realtime on a 2Ghz PC. So 45 minutes for a 90 minute movie. On average, you may expect to transfer a DVD to your PSP in less then an hour.

[8] Transfer

When conversion is finished, a new window will pop-up. This allows you to move the video file directly to the PSP, or to the desktop, so that you can move it manually. The three text boxes indicate the total space on your Memorystick, the free space and the size of the video file you've just converted. If the size of the video is bigger then the free space, you will be prompted to delete files first. Press Refresh to recalculate the free space after you've deleted some video files.

From the PSP Settings Menu, pick the drive letter that the PSP represents on your PC. To find that letter, connect your PSP with the USB cable to your PC, set the PSP in USB mode and go to 'My Computer'. The PSP will mount as an external drive in your PC. Set the same drive letter that you see in My Computer, in the PSP Settings Menu. After you've done this once, the software will remember this setting the next time. Then Press the PSP button to move the file to the game console.

If, for whatever reason, you're not able to transfer the movie file to the PSP, you can press the Desktop button. The movie will be transferred to the desktop and will be called M4V12345.MP4 or similar. You can move it to the PSP manually. It needs to go in a folder called F:\MP_ROOT\100MNV01, where F:\ is the drive letter of your Memory Stick.

[9] Playback On your PSP, press the X-button (Button 3) to leave USB-mode, then scroll to the Video Player with the right arrow controller button (Button A). The software will search for compatible files on your memorycard. In the right column, you see the video's and their duration. You can scroll through them with the left controller buttons. To play a clip, press Button 2. To get it in fullscreen-landscape mode, do the following: Press Button 1, then press Button A, several times untill you see the Screen Mode Icon lights up. (see picture below).Now press Button 1 untill you're in Zoom Mode. Finally, press Button 1 again, to turn off the overlay information. The sound volume can be adjusted by pressing the Vol buttons + and - on the PSP.

Menu Options

[1] DVD Settings \Temp Drive You set the disk drive that you would like to store temporary files on. Choose the biggest available harddrive that you have. Temporary files may take up to 4 Gigabytes space that need to be stored on this drive.

[2] DVD Settings\Cyberspeed Leave this option ON by default. If you turn this OFF, your DVD conversions may take 5 times longer. Only if you experience problems opening or converting DVD's, you can try turning this option off.

[3] PSP Settings\Memorystick Size Pick your memorycard size and the software will make sure that all video files will fit the card.

[4] PSP Settings \PSP is Drive This setting allows you set the PSP drive letter if you connect it via USB. If you want to push videos to the PSP over USB, you need to set this correctly. From the PSP Settings Menu, pick the drive letter that the PSP represents on your PC. To find that letter, connect your PSP with the USB cable to your PC, set the PSP in USB mode and go to 'My Computer'. The PSP will mount as an external drive in your PC. Set the same drive letter that you see in My Computer, in the PSP Settings Menu. After you've done this once, the software will remember this setting the next time.

[5] Download\Video This menu item allows you to download free video content from Youtube and Altavista.

If you encounter problems with the software, please consult the Tech Database: http://www.makayama.com/psp300engfaq.html for common questions and solutions.

updated: 23-november-2006