YIPPEE!!

     I got a PSP. Ok, I’ve had it for a week or two. The funny thing is, I can’t blame it for my lack of posting, much. I have been trying to perfect getting video to it (as opposed to playing game, apparently). I’ve been trying to do that for MONTHS before I got it, mind you. Now that I have one, I’ve been trying to get a good balance of quality and file size. I’ve had a little bit of luck, but nothing I’m sticking to. I’m using PSP video 9 for my conversions from other formats. I’m happy with that. What I am NOT happy with, are videos that come off of the net already in .MP4 format (be it mpeg-4 or H.264). There is no real (noticeable) comparison between those and the one’s I convert myself except for two things: 1) Sony stupid file naming convention, and 2) a header tag (Sony’s idea, no doubt) on the ones I convert in pspvideo9.

     Apparently, thanks to Sony, you can’t just put an .MP4 file on to your PSP and play it outright. That would be too easy. You see, 1) you have to name your file in a specific way: M4VXXXXX (mpeg-4 AKA SP) or MAQXXXXX(H.264 AKA AVC) (The x’s represent a 5 digit number from 00001 to 99999) and 2) there seems to be the aforementioned tag file on the front of the file(a header file). PSP video 9 puts this on any video it converts. The problem is, it doesn’t appear to come on most of the .MP4 video from the net (example: Nerd TV, Digitallife TV, commandN, 1up show (until the last ep), etc). You know, I haven’t tried Ipod formatted video. I’ll have to try that.  Anyway, there has to be a way to add the needed header file. Yes, you can rename M4V files, but that doesn’t work. You can’t do it in psp video 9 and any .MP4 file you rename doesn’t have the tag. In fact, it comes up in psp video 9 and says NO MSV TITLE TAG FOUND in the title part. If you’ve used this program, you know this already. I don’t know what to do about it, but I am still looking. If anyone has a solution, let me know. And yes, I have been googling for it…