Superior replacement for PSPVideo9?

[Surly73]

I had trouble deciding which forum to put this in since it's video processing, but a pretty specific application for a "console".

I have been using a PSP principally for entertainment while commuting for over 5 years now I'd say. I generally convert movies and television series from downloads, rips, or by converting from my SMB mounted mythtv storage directory. I keep coming back to PSPVideo9 to manage my content but it's been pissing me off for multiple reasons for a while now and I need something else.

I'm running firmware 3.04 OE-A. Yes, it's old, but I'm honestly unsure what to upgrade to and what path to take since most guides don't go back this far. This could be part of some of the problems I'm having with playback from PSPV9, I know, but that's really a different thread. A recent batch of conversions from AVC MP4 files which play but every 2-10 minutes in the playback file they encounter some kind of badly formatted data which causes it to exit indicating that the file cannot be played. Now I'm on the prowl for something better. Considering it's a glorified wrapper for ffmpeg, why is this so hard?

What I don't like about PSPv9:

- I have to keep going back to v2.25 because of stupid bugs - either in the conversions (lots of files that show up as "corrupted data") or problems with the software (like 6.00 crashing with an exception when I click "edit profile" out of the box.
- bugs in setting CPU priority
- more and more focus on being adware instead of a good converter
- I could care less about fetching new content - just make it easy to convert files on disk/smb
- When converting 4:3 material I couldn't figure out the pattern of settings/versions which led to sometimes showing me three zoom options on playback and sometimes only two. When watching letterboxed SD (mostly from mythtv) conversions the "zoom" option would fullscreen the letterboxed 16:9. Google and lots of trial and error never revealed a pattern - just lots of "me toos"
- poor documentation - lack of description of what some options do.

What I like about PSPv9:
- includes a multithreaded ffmpeg (quad core). This seems to be hard to find
- great support for MPEG-4 AVC and native PSP resolution. AVC doesn't seem well supported and the focus is on MPEG-4.
- supports a lot of input formats transparently - I've found other software I've tried restrictive in that regard. mythtv MPEG2 transport streams in particular
- I like the built-in library management including copying the thumbnail. Although it isn't as necessary now as when the filenames were restricted to ANV00001.mp4. I could live without it
- Profile support - I set up a couple of standard profiles and stick with it. I don't need to hand tweak every option for each individual conversion ala MeGUI
- good batching - click-shift-click for selection, convert at BelowNormal priority (if it works), change order of queue, queue conversions with different profiles
- good enough quality using 1-pass AVC @ native res. I convert to watch a show once, not permanent archival.

What I wish:
- fewer bugs
- lose some of the adware clutter that gets in the way of control placement (v2.25 isn't bad. Everything after is laughable)
- ability to run something newer than 3 years old without getting crashes from trying to operate basic features like altering a profile
- conversions that reliably play - not "corrupted data", or exit every 10mins with "the video cannot be played" or "unrecognized format". PSPv9 v2.52 has been the best I've used so far.


Any pointers?

Thx,

 

[Joe Average]

HandBrake.

/thread

But, if you need a secondary option, EncodeHD can work as well.

 

[MasterTactician]

mediacoder is great for just about any audio / video conversions, and supports batches. Its also 100% free.

 

[Surly73]

HandBrake.

/thread

But, if you need a secondary option, EncodeHD can work as well.

I have looked at Handbrake before for other purposes but haven't had it installed since I went Win7. I downloaded the latest and took a look. The first thing I notice in the notes:

There are no more presets for the PSP, PS3, or Xbox 360. Quite frankly, they didn't work well. None of the development team members own the devices, so testing was minimal and support was nonexistent. Keeping up with the firmware vagaries and ambiguous specifications of these devices was not fun--we get enough of that from Apple's kit, and those we all have around to test on. The new "Normal" preset should work perfectly fine on any device that supports standard Main Profile H.264 with AAC-LC audio in an MP4 file, which the PS3 and 360 ostensibly do.

My key settings are to hardcode the video to 480x272, set video codec to AVC, set video bitrate to ~512, audio to AAC 96 or 128. I did this with a one minute test vid. The PSP can read all of the file format info and display it, but can't play the video. Went through every screen locking audio to 48kHz, locking framerate, googling and setting some CABAC and Trellis options. "Can't be played". Change to MPEG-4. Can't be played (that's always worked). More research required.

It could be my firmware too, I suppose, but MPEG-4 has always been a working (but inferior) fallback so...

 

[Joe Average]

Try this video:

http://www.mediafire.com/?or9x251gqh5yxq7 TRON:Legacy Trailer 1, MP4, 10.1MB (8.5MB Zip)

Lemme know if it plays.

 

[SilverMK3]

Have you tried Miro Video Converter yet? It is freeware and has a preset for PSPs.

 

[Surly73]

Try this video:

http://www.mediafire.com/?or9x251gqh5yxq7 TRON:Legacy Trailer 1, MP4, 10.1MB (8.5MB Zip)

Lemme know if it plays.

"This video cannot be played".

The grey film strip shows in the thumbnail shown on the PSP. I knows that it's AVC and selecting information shows what seems to be valid data about the file (11MB, 2'29", 480x208, AVC - kbps (conversions by PSPv9 never show rate either), AAC 127kbps, freq 48kHz).

On my PC, WMP played it but MPC-HC 1.3.1788.0 said it was starting to play w/ DXVA and never showed the vid.

 

[Joe Average]

Yah, to be honest the PSP is a complete bitch to encode for and get great results but given the limits of the hardware, you do the best you can I suppose. I had one for a short period of time, hated the experience of trying to encode for it, gave up and got an Archos 5 at one point and never had to worry about transcoding again.

Was using my HTC HD2 for a portable media player but I sold it a few days ago and damned if I don't miss it already.

This Zip archive has two files in it, labeled based on the encoder used, give them a shot and tell me which one works (one of 'em should work, that much I'm positive about):

http://www.mediafire.com/?3nymtuzd73a8axx (Zip archive, 2 mp4 video clips inside, 24.1MB)

 

[Surly73]

This Zip archive has two files in it, labeled based on the encoder used, give them a shot and tell me which one works (one of 'em should work, that much I'm positive about):

http://www.mediafire.com/?3nymtuzd73a8axx (Zip archive, 2 mp4 video clips inside, 24.1MB)

OK... The Handbrake file says "unsupported data" right in the file browser. I've also seen "corrupted data" from some conversions (usually by newer versions of PSPv9). The EncodeHD one plays and gives me all three zoom options ("full screen", "zoom" and "original"). As I was trying to remember in one of my previous posts I sometimes get those three options, and other times I only get "4:3" and "original" on playback. One day it just seemed to start giving me the latter - no idea what if anything I changed. No pattern, just "me too" on google.

My Handbrake 512k from last night at least was recognized by the PSP and didn't show "unsupported data".

Unless I'm missing something, EncodeHD is just a little too simple for me - I can't even specify bitrates or resolution. I see an FFMpeg flags box, I guess I could figure out the command line but that's not what I had in mind. On the other hand, it actually seems to output video that can play. Hrmph. The supplied vid is 480x204, presumably because of the AR of the source file.

Thanks for taking the time to futz with this.... Maybe I'll get a chance to spend some time with google and make a second attempt to get a working profile for the latest Handbrake. A firmware update may help, but I'll need to figure out how to navigate from 3.04 OE-A to something current. I've tried to figure out the best course of action before but google usually led me to kids making firmware decisions on pointless things like logo coolness. I use some custom firmware functionality, but not a lot. I might even be able to go official at this point but...

 

[Joe Average]

Yah, when you mentioned "hard coded 480x272" that caught my eye because most widescreen stuff isn't going to match that particular AR each time. HandBrake is "smart enough" to know that you only have to provide the width and the height will be calculated automagically during the encoding; EncodeHD is doing that as well. The only time that would be a problem is if you're dealing with older SD material that sticks to a solid 4:3 AR since the PSP and most everything nowadays does have some widescreen aspect to it.

The whole idea with EncodeHD is to make it as absolutely simplistic as possible: feed it a file, get the encoding, you're done. No tweaking, no screwing around, and it does work for the devices that it has presets for (was just testing the HTC Desire and EVO presets to see what it could produce compared to my own encodes done with HandBrake for the HD2 I had, they're almost all the same devices really) and the lack of being able to specify the audio bitrate irked me.

I can't stand 128Kbps audio, no matter what's used to encode it. I typically will do 160Kbps on some occasions based on the material, but 192Kbps is where I find myself more often than not with the audio soundtrack, so HandBrake is still my preferred encoder of choice and will remain so for a long time to come.

The visual quality with the latest EncodeHD is much better, that much I can say for sure, but it's because he finally updated the ffmpeg encoder to the latest one (as of when he built that last version of EncodeHD). I might drop him an email on the audio bitrate thing - that's the biggest downside to EncodeHD is no tweaking or customization, but that was his intention with it and with Encode360.

For what they are, they get the job done with minimal muss and fuss which makes them great for quick encodes, but I don't do anything long term with 'em, obviously.

Am I correct in assuming you have the original PSP 1001? You said 5 years sooo... I know that one was the one that I owned for that short period of time, and I had the CFW installed on it the day I got it, paid some guy on craigslist $20 to come by with his Pandora battery and get me situated. Made it a lot more useful than the "stock" ever could be.

 

[Surly73]

Yah, when you mentioned "hard coded 480x272" that caught my eye because most widescreen stuff isn't going to match that particular AR each time. HandBrake is "smart enough" to know that you only have to provide the width and the height will be calculated automagically during the encoding; EncodeHD is doing that as well. The only time that would be a problem is if you're dealing with older SD material that sticks to a solid 4:3 AR since the PSP and most everything nowadays does have some widescreen aspect to it.

Well, what I mean is that I tell the encoding tool I want 480x272, but also tell it to preserve AR. Since I watch a lot of broadcast-origin content I usually end up with 16:9 content. My biggest point was that I wanted to convert at native res - not 720x480 or any of the smaller resolutions. When I started doing this 480x272 wasn't available at all. Only in later firmwares was it unlocked and even then most converters (other than Sony's) couldn't produce working files.

On the 4:3 AR - as I mentioned there seems to be two playback modes in the current firmware at least. One gives zoom, full and "original" - the other gives "4:3" and original. I could always feed 480x272 files but sometimes I get one way, sometimes the other. It's as if it depends on the source codec or material and not the encoding codec settings. *shrug*

The only real complaint I've had is the inability to move beyond PSPv9 2.52 without major issues and the occasional red bleeding which I have read is a feature of the ffmpeg of the time. Even using PSPv9 6.00 I get audio problems. After any silent period (like between sentences) the next sound will do a funny phasing glitch where it will pop loudly left, then right, then sound normal. Distracting.

The whole idea with EncodeHD is to make it as absolutely simplistic as possible: feed it a file, get the encoding, you're done. No tweaking, no screwing around, and it does work for the devices that it has presets for (was just testing the HTC Desire and EVO presets to see what it could produce compared to my own encodes done with HandBrake for the HD2 I had, they're almost all the same devices really) and the lack of being able to specify the audio bitrate irked me.

Yes, it does seem to work (although I think it's only using 2 threads instead of 4). I may start using it just because it uses a much newer encoder than PSPv9 2.52. SOME settings would be nice, though. I'd still be interested in figuring out what settings/firmware would be required to get Handbrake encoded videos to play. It seems like a better general purpose tool and it's batching interface looks like it would get the job done.

It seems like everyone and their dog is trying to support encoding for mobile and has a PSP mode, even software I consider to be straight rippers like DVDFabHD. Unfortunately 90%+ of them seem to suck.

I can't stand 128Kbps audio, no matter what's used to encode it. I typically will do 160Kbps on some occasions based on the material, but 192Kbps is where I find myself more often than not with the audio soundtrack, so HandBrake is still my preferred encoder of choice and will remain so for a long time to come.

My content is heavy on dialog and medium AAC bitrates don't bother me as long as it is well encoded.

The visual quality with the latest EncodeHD is much better, that much I can say for sure, but it's because he finally updated the ffmpeg encoder to the latest one (as of when he built that last version of EncodeHD). I might drop him an email on the audio bitrate thing - that's the biggest downside to EncodeHD is no tweaking or customization, but that was his intention with it and with Encode360.

For what they are, they get the job done with minimal muss and fuss which makes them great for quick encodes, but I don't do anything long term with 'em, obviously.

Am I correct in assuming you have the original PSP 1001? You said 5 years sooo... I know that one was the one that I owned for that short period of time, and I had the CFW installed on it the day I got it, paid some guy on craigslist $20 to come by with his Pandora battery and get me situated. Made it a lot more useful than the "stock" ever could be.

Yes, I believe my unit shipped with firmware 1.50 or earlier so I didn't need a Pandora battery. As a matter of fact, in the couple of years I sort of followed firmware and the like I don't think that technique was ever discovered. I remember that some upgrades had a path of sequential loads you needed to do to get it right. I'm a little nervous to just jump on board a random high version of custom firmware without seeing a clear path from what I'm running to the end game.

I'm still using the original battery too (every day), although it's coming time to get another one.