Table of Contents

PSP

I have a PSP 1000 (the very first model) that I use to playback video on, just for fun. ffmpeg used to have a preset output for it, but no more. Encoding for the hardware is simple enough, with the right settings.

These playback settings are designed to run with the most recent firmware, version 6.61.

Playback is at 480×270, with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

The video player does have support for chapters, but adding them to the MP4 doesn't have any effect. [Note: when using HandBrake. Probably need to use the proper supported subtitle formats for MP4]

If you're encoding something video that's widescreen, then scale the width to 480 so that you're using the entire length and have black bars on top and bottom. On the other hand, if it's fullframe, then do a height of 270 so it's not stretching the video, and you have black bars on the left and right.

Playstation Manual

The official manual lists these MPEG4 formats that can be played:

  • MPEG-4 Simple Profile (AAC)
  • H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Main Profile (CABAC) (AAC)
  • Baseline Profile (AAC)

The baseline profile has less features than the main. The x264 encoding settings using the Main profile will set the amount of B-Frames to 3. However, the PSP won't work with any encoding higher than 1. So any changes to the default encoding here reflect that one difference. (also note that the linked article above disables more features than this – I started with his configuration – which worked great – and then tweaked until I found mine)

ffmpeg

  • Scale video automatically
  • Use x264 encoder, main profile except limit B-frames to 1
  • x264 medium preset for encoding level
  • Drop # of audio channels to 2 (stereo), although in this sample it's already set to 2
  • Drop any subtitles

For a video source that is wider than it

Trace: • psp