PSP Hacks: Tips & Tools for Your Mobile Gaming and Entertainment Handheld

2017-07-07 02:10:07

Hack 23. Get Music on Your PSP

Don't have an iPod? Get yourself a decent-sized Memory Stick, and you're set to listen to your favorite music on your PSP.

Did you spend all the money that you would have used on a new iPod or MP3 player on your PSP and various games for it? No reason to fret. Your PSP can double as a music player. This hack will show you how to streamline the process of getting tunes on and off of your PSP.

3.4.1. The Basics

While you can cram a few MP3s on the 32MB Memory Stick Duo card that came with the PSP, you are going to need to invest in a larger Memory Stick to really get the most out of the PSP as an MP3 player. I recommend keeping an eye on Memory Stick pricing at DealNews (http://www.dealnews.com) or their sister site DealRam (http://www.dealram.com), since they regularly have links to 1GB sticks for less than $100 USD.

Once you have the extra space, you need to know where to put your tunes. If you mount your PSP on your computer (attach the PSP via a USB cable, navigate to Settings USB Mode, then hit the X button) you can simply copy the songs from wherever they reside on your computer to the PSP folder at the root level of the Memory Stick.

If you have a PSP with Version 1.01.52 of the firmware, then your PSP will recognize any MP3s placed within this folder. If you have a PSP with Version 2.0 of the firmware, your PSP will recognize any MP3s, songs in Sony's ATRAC3plus file format (although these files need to be in /OMGAUDIO/), and even files you have encoded with Apple's AAC format (although DRM-protected tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store will not play on your PSP, and you will need to change the file extension of the AAC files you have encoded to .MP4 for the PSP to recognize these files).

Are you looking for a quick way to convert your iTMS-purchased songs to DRM-free AAC tracks? Simply burn the tracks to audio CD and then rip them back to your computer, making sure that you have AAC selected under the encoding section of the Advanced menu in iTunes.

If you want, you can use this method to manually manage the songs on your PSP: mount your PSP, copy the songs over to the MUSIC folder inside the PSP folder, dismount your PSP and navigate to Music Memory Stick, hit the X button, then select the song you want to hear and again hit the X button. There are, fortunately, easier ways to do this, described next.

3.4.2. Automate the Process

Both PSPWare (http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware; $15 USD) and iPSP (http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/; $19.99 USD)two of the more popular media managers for the PSPoffer automatic syncing of music to the PSP, using a playlist of your choosing from your iTunes Music Library. This is great if you use iTunes, but if you prefer to use different music managing software on your computer, these two solutions may not be ideal.

Again, keep in mind: these tools will only be able to manage iTunes playlists containing MP3s or AAC files that are DRM-free and have had their file extensions changed to .MP4.

3.4.3. Firmware Version 2.0

If you are running a PSP with Version 2.0 of the firmware, then you can download music from the Internet directly to your PSP's Memory Stick. This is particularly useful for grabbing new music and podcasts [Hack #32] from various web sites while you're on the go and connected to a wireless network.

To do this, simply launch the web browser by navigating to Network Browser on your PSP, and hit the X button. After your browser launches, navigate to a page that contains links to audio files in a PSP-compatible format. Unfortunately, the PSP cannot handle compressed files, BitTorrent, or WMA (Microsoft with DRM format)unless you are running Version 2.6 firmware or laterso the files will need to be in uncompressed and unprotected MP3 or AAC format. When you click on the link to the corresponding audio file, an overlay screen will pop up asking whether you want to download the linked file. Hit the X button, as shown in Figure 3-9.

Figure 3-9. After selecting a link to a song file and hitting the X button, a confirmation screen will appear

If, for some reason, the PSP doesn't recognize the file type and tries to open the file as a website, cancel the loading of the page (hit the Triangle button and then select Cancel) and then go back to the original page (by hitting the L trigger). This time, place your cursor over the linked file, but instead of hitting the X button, hit the Triangle button and navigate to File, then hit the X button. A menu will pop up, as in Figure 3-10. Select Save Link Target from this menu and hit the X button.

Another overlay will appear asking for confirmation of the location where you'd like to save the file and the name you would like to give the file (see Figure 3-11). If the location did not default to /PSP/MUSIC/, select that field, and hit the X button to select this folder (or a subfolder inside the MUSIC folder). Feel free to change the name of the file to something you will recognize. Just remember to keep the proper extension at the end of the file. If the file you are downloading is an AAC file, go ahead and change the extension on the file to .MP4 so that your PSP will recognize it.

Figure 3-10. Select Save Link Target to download the file

Figure 3-11. After confirming the download, the PSP prompts you for the file name and destination for the file

After downloading the files, hit the Home button on your PSP to exit out of the browser. If you hit the button by mistake, you can either hit it again or hit the X button to return to the browser. Navigate to Music, select Memory Stick, and hit the X button. You should see your freshly downloaded audio files in the list of available tracks.

This method of grabbing songs can be particularly useful for serving up songs from your networked music collection on your home network. All you need to do is set up a networked folder containing any music files you would like to have ready for your PSP, then direct your PSP's web browser to this folder. For example, if your computer has an IP address of 192.168.1.4 on your local network, and you have a folder called PSPMUSIC that you have set up to be available to other computers on your network, you can launch the PSP's web browser and navigate to http://192.168.1.4/PSPMUSIC/nameofthesongyouwant.mp3 to download that song file. Consider building a music index page that links to all these files.

If you've installed Version 2.6 of the firmware, you now have an option called RSS Channel under Network. Now any RSS 2.0 feed containing embedded MP3s can be subscribed to through the PSP's browser, and all the songs on that feed can be streamed to your PSP over a live Internet connection through the RSS browser interface.

3.4.4. PSP as MP3 Player

Once you have your music on your PSP, it's time to listen. Here's a quick overview of the PSP's controls and functionality as an MP3 player.

To keep your music organized into albums, all you need to do is keep a group of audio files in a single folder by the name of the album placed within /PSP/MUSIC/ on your Memory Stick. The preview image associated with the Album folder will be taken from the image associated with the first file in the list of tracks contained within the folder (see Figure 3-12).

Unfortunately, the PSP can only see folders one level deep here, so you cannot do things like create a folder called The Beatles, which you then fill with separate folders for each of The Beatles' albums. So, if you want to categorize by artist, make sure you keep all the song files within that main artist folder, rather than embedding folders within folders.

Navigate to Music Memory Stick and hit the X button to see a list of all the songs and albums located inside your Figure 3-12. Selecting an album

A list of songs will appear, as shown in Figure 3-13. As you scroll through the different songs, you will notice that certain bits of metadata associated with the song files will be displayed, including the name of the song, the artist, and any album artwork associated with the song file. As with all the other files on your PSP, if you select one of the tracks and hit the Triangle button, a menu will appear on the right side of the screen with options for Play, Delete, or Information. If you select Information and hit the X button, the full list of all metadata associated with the track will be displayed, including the title, artist, album, genre, size, date and time it was updated, Length, Sampling Frequency, and Codec at which the track was compressed.

Otherwise, simply hit the X button to play the song.

Once the song is playing, you have a variety of options. If you hit the Triangle button while the song is playing, the control panel will open, displaying all the available controls (see Figure 3-14).

The control panel in Figure 3-14 is from Version 2.0 of the firmware. If you are running a previous version of the firmware, some of the controls discussed in this section will not be available to you, although many of them will be identical.

The controls available in the control panel of Version 2.0 of the firmware are Previous Group, Next Group, Previous Track, Next Track, Fast Reverse, Fast Forward, Play, Pause, Stop, Group Mode, A-B Repeat, Play Mode, Clear, Display, and Help. Selecting the Display option adds an overlay along the top of the screen with the name of the track in the upper-left corner and the number of the track next to how many tracks are in this group in the upper-right corner of the screen. Selecting the Help option (the question mark) will display the basic Music Help screen in Figure 3-15. This screen shows you all the basic controls on the PSP for navigating through your songs. The L trigger goes to the previous track or the beginning of the current track, the R trigger goes to the next track, the O button stops play, the X button plays, the Start button either plays or pauses the track, and the left and right buttons on the directional keypad rewind or fast forward the track.

Figure 3-13. Selecting a song

Figure 3-14. Song playing with Info and control panel displayed

Figure 3-15. Music Help screen

The Group controls all have to do with different albums or folders you have placed inside /PSP/MUSIC/. A-B Mode lets you select first an A point in a track and then a B point in the track, which will continue looping until you choose Clear. The Play Mode control lets you choose either Repeat One, Repeat All, Shuffle, or Repeat Shuffle, and if you toggle the Group mode selection, all of these settings (with the exception of Repeat One) will use all the files in your MUSIC folder rather than just the songs in the current album folder. The other options available in the control panel are mostly self-explanatory.

3.4.5. Hacking the Hack

If you are on a Mac running OS X 10.4, make sure you check out "Automate Mac OS X File Transfers" [Hack #25] for instructions on writing an AppleScript to automate moving your tunes to your PSP. If you're savvy in other scripting languages, you may want to look over that hack, as well, for some ideas for your own automated script.

If you're running Version 2.0 of the firmware and you want to take full advantage of your networked music collection, you'll want to create a Music page that contains an index and links to all the files within your PSPMUSIC folder. This will allow for easy picking and choosing of songs you want to grab off of your network for on-the-go listening on your PSP. Why not build the same support system for a few videos, too?

Also, if you are homebrew savvy [Hack #40], make sure you check out some of the homebrew MP3 players available for the PSP.