Posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 11:25 pm by Philip Devitt
This isn’t a tutorial as such, its more of a quick guide to what tools you’ll need to download or research in order to playback your own DVD’s on the Sony PSP, in other words, how to copy your dvd’s to your psp.
1. Extracting the VOB files from the source DVD
The first step you’ll need to do is extract the MPEG2 VOB files from the source DVD. My personal tool of choice is DVD Shrink, it’s been around for years and is pretty reliable. As an added bonus, DVD Shrink can also reduce the file sizes by recompressing the video while it’s ripping the VOBs. There are plenty of tutorials on the Internet which detail how to use DVD Shrink if you need any help with this part.
2. Converting the VOB files to AVI (DivX/XDiv)
The second step is to convert the VOB files you extracted from part one into an AVI. As with DVD Shrink you will be able to find a wealth of tutorials on the Internet that explain in simple steps how to convert from VOB to AVI using a tool called AutoGordianKnot. AutoGordianKnot is bundled with the Swiss-Army knife of video/audio editing, a utility called VirtualDub that can be used independantly for programatic video rendering/conversion. Make sure that you choose an output size (from Step 3 in the dialog) that will fit on your memory card. Experiments show that 700Mb (1 CD) should be large enough for most movies, but you should aim for smaller files. You will have to change some of the default options in order to produce a file that will be suitable for playback on the PSP. Click on the “Advanced Settings” button. In the dialog box that appears select “Fixed width” and enter 320 in “Output resolution settings”.
As the PSP video player can only display MPEG4 files that are 320 pixels wide (QVGA) you might aswell reduce the video size at this point rather than in the next step. Press the “Add Job” button to start your processing and go for a coffee, well, several coffees. The process can take 90 minutes for a 2 hour film, but that will vary depending on the source VOB, HDD configuration and CPU speed. Please note that the first time you run a conversion AutoGordian will open a copy of VirtualDub in the background which will create a minimized modal window that asks you to confirm some terms and conditions; if you don’t press the OK button the process will hang.
3. Converting the AVI file to MPEG4
Once you’ve got your AVI, drag it into the 3GP converter; you’ll have to run the setup program before you run it for the first time to choose you language and output file preference. Choose English (doh!) and PSP, you’ll also need to select an output format of “QVGA with AVC”. Once you start up the program drag the AVI file you want converting into the box at the top and the process will kick off, this will take an hour or so. The resulting film must be renamed with an appropriate PSP compatible naming convention and stored in the correct directory structure before the PSP can see it (see the instruction/hint box on the 3GP converter setup program for full details)
Where to find the tools
You should be able to find the tools mentioned above by searching Google but if you can’t be bothered then I’ve provided links to current verions here. AutoGordianKnot can be obtained from the AutoGK Homepage. At the time of writing the most recent production release is version 2.40.
If you can’t be bothered learning how to copy your dvd’s to your psp and all the above seems a little to much work and you want a ‘one-click’ solution then take a look at DVDXRip, it looks to be a comprehensive DVD ripper.
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