PSP encoding

I picked up a PSP when I was in Hawaii and it's been kick ass! I've got three games and one movie: Untold Legends, Metal Gear Ac!d, Twisted Metal, and Appleseed. I've synched some photos using PSPWare and have even begun encoding movies to playback from a 1GB MSDuo. It would be great if someone could design a slim HD that used the MSProDuo interface so that we could really store a lot of stuff for our PSP's. It's a great little platform with a lot of potential.

I have some stuff to figure out about PSPWare: I'd like to know what's up with the QT encoding toggle for starters. It's a pretty slick interface and I don't have any complaints so far. I've been burning the PSP format movies to take home. Right now, I don't think I can take more than 2 movies with me on the go with just one 1GB card. The 2GB cards are over $300 freaking bucks right now! Ouch.

I found this post from the psp411.com forum:

There are many ways to get DVD -> PSP, as you pointed out. My preferred method, which you didn't mention above, is using ffmpegX. The PSPWare developers recommend HandBrake though. Personally, I haven't had and success with HandBrake at all.

This is how I do it.:

1) Use MacTheRipper to create a single VOB, click on MODE, then choose 'Title Only Extraction' (and choose the Main Feature, marked with MF) or to select a specific chapter to rip, use the 'Title - Chapter Selection' option.

At this point, you can drop the VOB file directly into PSPWare, however, you may end up with a movie that has the wrong soundtrack, or plays the commentary track etc. I would recommend using a single chapter extraction to test first. I rarely actually do this, preferring to proceed to step 2...

2) run ffmpegX, and drag the VOB file into the FROM field. At this point there are two paths to take...

2a) You can choose the PSP preset in the TO side of the window, and pretty much just click encode from here. This gives a very small file size. And the file can simply be added to the drop box in PSPWare, or can be copied to the correct directory structure under ~/Documents/PSPWare, and it will appear in the movie list when you next refresh the movie page in PSPWare.

OR

2b) (the option I usually take), leave the TO side as default. The advantage to doing this is that you can change various streams if need to, and you can also choose subtitles if you want them, such as when converting Anime titles. Click on the AUDIO tab. Here you can change the Audio Track, and you can also up the Audio Gain. I tend to set it to +9. Next click on the FILTERS tab. Here you can choose to add subtitles (tick the VOB Subtitles checkbox), and you can choose the subtitle stream in the next drop down. To ensure you have what you want, use the preview in the bottom right hand side of the window, this lets you preview anywhere in the movie. Now just hit Encode and wait.

3) Once the AVI file has been created, just drag that to PSPWarem and it'll output the PSP-ready file, with the correct audio & subtitle streams.