PSP video guide

Encoding videos suitable for PSPs

IF YOU HAVE A PSP AND HAVE ANY FEEDBACK ABOUT THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

I find Sony very frustrating for not publishing information on what video formats are supported by the PSP, it seems to me that they’re only hurting themselves, unless they think it will make more people buy their software. Through a combination of high level reverse engineering of some files created with the High AVC and Low AVC profiles in Media Manager that someone put on-line, and some trial and error and scouring the internet, I have come to the following conclusions about the PSP’s capabilities with recent official firmwares.

Restrictions

• BIT_RATE <= 768 kbps
• Up to 640×480 (official firmware 5.00 or later)
• Up to 30 fps
• H.264 Main Profile up to Level 2.1
• Up to 2 reference frames
• LC AAC 2-channel audio up to 48kHz (Media Manager uses 128kbps)

Note: Apparently the PSP cannot decode any h.264 streams which use multiple slices, so if you’re using an older revision (<607) of x264 and want to use multiple threads to encode your PSP files, you’re out of luck. However, you shouldn’t have any problem updating to the current development code for x264.

For one pass:

ffmpeg -i INPUT -ac 2 -ar 48000 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -r FRAME_RATE -s WIDTHxHEIGHT -vcodec libx264 -vpre slower -vpre main -level 21 -refs 2 -b BIT_RATE -bt BIT_RATE -threads 0 -aspect WIDTH:HEIGHT -f psp OUTPUT.mp4

For two pass:

ffmpeg -i INPUT -an -pass 1 -r FRAME_RATE -s WIDTHxHEIGHT -vcodec libx264 -vpre slower_fastfirstpass -vpre main -level 21 -b BIT_RATE -bt BIT_RATE -threads 0 -aspect WIDTH:HEIGHT -f psp OUTPUT.mp4

ffmpeg -i INPUT -ac 2 -ar 48000 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -pass 2 -r FRAME_RATE -s WIDTHxHEIGHT -vcodec libx264 -vpre slower -vpre main -level 21 -refs 2 -b BIT_RATE -bt BIT_RATE -threads 0 -aspect WIDTH:HEIGHT -f psp OUTPUT.mp4