Monday, January 14, 2008

The PSP Connect

The first place that you'll want to look for free video content is Sony's PSP Connect page (http://psp.connect.com/). This site features a video tutorial that autoloads when you visit; this video covers the basics of getting video onto your PSP. Since you already know these basics, just click the Stop Video link underneath the virtual PSP and scroll down to the next section on the web page. If you like the tutorial video and want to share it with friends, there is a PDF version of the tutorial available (http://psp.connect.com/tutorial/tutorial.pdf).

Here you will find an assortment of videos that have been prepared for the PSP by Sony. To the right of each video, there is a small graphic indicating the space that the video will take up on your Memory Stick, as well as what size Memory Stick is needed for each video. If you just opened up your brand new PlayStation Portable or simply haven't yet had the chance to grab a larger Memory Stick, you'll be pleased to find that a few of the provided sample videos are geared to fit on the included measly 32MB card. Download a few, drop them on your Memory Stick, and watch away. Here are some other sources of video for your PSP:

Atom Films
For a little more than a month's time after the North American release of the PSP, Atom Films (http://www.atomfilms.com) offered three of their short films preformatted for the PSP. Unfortunately, this trend was short-lived, and neither the films nor new ones like them are available from the site. Nevertheless, they could change their minds, so keep checking back. Even if they don't offer any content specifically geared for the PSP, there are several videos available in downloadable formats on their site, so it is a good place to check for files that you may want to download and convert into PSP-compatible MPEG4 files.

Creative Commons Video
The Creative Commons Video page (http://creativecommons.org/video/) is a good place where you can both share your videos freely with the world and find videos online that others have decided to share.

Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive
If you're not familiar with the Internet Archive, you should take a careful look at the entire site, but, for our purposes, make sure that you look at the Moving Image Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/movies). Here you will find a wide array of video content that is either in the public domain or released under a Creative Commons, License (http://creativecommons.org/) and that you may freely download. There's even a section of freely available feature films (http://www.archive.org/details/feature_films). Nearly all of the videos offered through the Internet Archive come encoded in both 64Kb and 256Kb MPEG4 variants. Unfortunately, although these files are MPEG4, they were encoded with 3ivx (http://www.3ivx.com/) at a setting that isn't readable by the PSP, so you'll still have to convert the files you find on this site.

PSP Hacking 101
PSP Hacking 101 (http://www.psphacking101.com/) is indicative of the kind of cool free content that the PSP is inspiring across the Internet. This site features a downloadable, preformatted-for-the-PSP videocast (think podcast and add video) that covers the basics of what's going on in the PSP homebrew scene. As of this writing, they've released four videocasts, so make sure you check them out.

Rocketboom
Rocketboom (http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/) with Amanda Congdon is one of the most widely known videoblogs (a weblog that consists of videocasts) on the Internet. There's a short, three-minute show released daily during the week, featuring a mix of parodies, interviews, and oddly mixed video fun, alongside snarky op-ed glances at current events. Even cooler, they now offer PSP-formatted ports of each show (http://www.rocketboom.com/port/). You can get the regular video of their shows delivered automatically via your RSS feed reader or via iTunes as a video podcast, but unfortunately, the ease of automatic download is only available for the QuickTime Movie file version of their show; if you choose to download the show this way, you're still going to need to convert it to MPEG4.

BitTorrent
BitTorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com/) has clients for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you're not familiar with BitTorrent, it's a peer-to-peer file-sharing technology that distributes the load of downloading large files between all the people currently downloading the file. You can find a plethora of video content online via BitTorrent through various tracker sites. Few of these files will be preformatted for the PSP, but conversion, as you will see in the next section, is easy enough.

iPSP Movie Loader
iPSP Movie Loader (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/ipspmovie.php) is a cool little free program that promises to allow you to download PSP compatible movie files directly to your PSP. Unfortunately, not many content providers have jumped onboard with this program. As of the writing of this tips, the only content provider linked to on the iPSP Movie Loader site is 29HD Networks (http://www.29hdnetwork.com/psp_guide.html).

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