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The constraints of the standard 32MB Memory Stick Duo is obviously pushed to the extreme, with it only able to cope with short video files, but the larger capacity Memory Stick Duos are likely to drop in price enough to ensure that you could copy a whole DVD across (after conversion to MPEG4).

Preparation
The first thing you need to do is get hold of a free conversion utility called 3GP_Converter, currently on version 0.31. This can be found at http://www.nurs.or.jp/~calcium/3gpp/. The page is all in Japanese, but it's enough to find the file download link. Unzip the file and run SETUP.EXE.

This will present you with a window of strange characters - DON'T PANIC! Use the drop down list at the bottom to choose English as the language (or one of the other supported languages if it's more useful to you). Thankfully the list of conversions is then displayed in English.

Scroll down the list and select Model: MP4, for PSP (Direct, renamed), which, as its names suggests is the conversion for the PSP.

When you select this, the utility gives a handy little message of where on your PSP Memory Stick the video file needs to be copied to. On our Japanese PSP, this is \MP_ROOT\100MNV01. Whether this will always remain so, or will change with US and European models we don't know yet. Why this wasn't simply in the PSP\VIDEO folder, heaven only knows; we can assume though that maybe that structure is a clue to the file/folder movie structure on UMD movies. Make sure that you create that folder using a Memory Stick reader/writer, or via a USB connection.

Click the Apply button, and you're ready to begin!

Conversion


The main dialog is very simple. A drag and drop box to drop your videos onto, a drop down to choose which format you want to convert to (frame rate, video bitrate, mono/stereo audio and audio bitrate), and a button to choose the destination directory where converted files will be written.

On the drop down, most of the items are classified as QVGA (which is 320x240 pixels) – less than the PSP native resolution of 480x272, but we are stuck with that for the time being. Someone will crack how to get full resolution videos onto the PSP, but there is the possibility that Sony have deliberately knobbled this functionality so that users feel more inclined to buy UMD movie releases.

The frame rate setting, as with any video conversion, can effect how choppy the video is. 3GP gives us the choice of 15fps or 29.97fps, with the higher rate obviously giving the better performance. Bitrate also affects the quality, and ranges from 216kbps up to 1500kbps. There are also a number of variable bitrate settings (VBR), which will change the bitrate being used depending on what the video requires at any given moment.

These settings give a range of 15fps@216kbps+mono/48kbps all the way up to 29.97fps@1500kbps+stereo/128kbps. It's not difficult to see that this difference will create very different final file sizes and of course video quality.

We carried out some tests using the same source video clip. The original source was a 640x496 DivX file with 128kbps MP3 audio running at 25fps/163kbps. The original file size was 33226KB, and the video ran for 3min 24 seconds.

Conversion	Final file size	Estimated saving
QVGA/15fps/216kbps Mono/48kbps	6713KB	79.8%
QVGA/15fps/216kbps Stereo/96kbps	7911KB	76.2%
QVGA/15fps/384kbps Mono/48kbps	10879KB	67.3%
QVGA/15fps/384kbps Stereo/96kbps	12077KB	63.7%
QVGA/15fps/512kbps Mono/48kbps	14046KB	57.7%
QVGA/15fps/512kbps Stereo/96kbps	15245KB	54.1%
QVGA/29.97fps/768kbps Stereo/128kbps	22299KB	32.9%
QVGA/29.97fps/1500kbps Stereo/128kbps	38888KB	17.0% increase!
QVGA/29.97fps/QB4 Stereo/96kbps	19700KB	40.7%
QVGA/29.97fps/QB7 Stereo/96kbps	12402KB	62.7%
QVGA/29.97fps/QB10 Stereo/96kbps	9514KB	71.4%

It's hard to say which setting to use, as it depends entirely on your source material and how much space you have available on your Memory Stick.

This conversion process will leave you with two files called M4Vxxxxx.MP4 and .THM. The xxx's appear to be a random number, as converting the same source file using the same settings produces a different number. Anyway, the PSP only needs the MP4 file.

Copy this onto your Memory Stick Duo, in the folder mentioned earlier (\MP_ROOT\100MNV01) and then go to the video playback menu, and you will see your video available to select and play.

That's all there is to it, really, if you already have a format that you can work with. Converting a DVD involves a few extra steps at the beginning of the process, in order to get the DVD content onto your PC and converted to a format that can be accessed by the software, but once that is done, everything else in the walkthrough should be the same as detailed above.