Thursday, 23 February 2012 23:00
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This guide covers how to convert almost any video so that it will play on your Playstation Vita (PS Vita) with the highest quality possible. Your video will be converted to an MP4 file with H.264 as the video format and AAC as the audio format.
I was inspired to make this tutorial because there are very few (if any) quality tutorials regarding PS Vita video conversion. Most tutorials link you to commercial programs which produce low quality videos and must be purchased. Xmedia Recode is a great free program and will do the job better than most commercial programs.
- Xmedia Recode - for converting the video to an MP4 file so that it can be played on a PS Vita.
- Playstation Content Manager Assistant - Required for copying files to your PS Vita.
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Open XMedia Recode
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Drag the video you want to convert into the drop area.
Note: You can add multiple videos to XMedia Recode.
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Make sure your video is selected. (Click on it)
Note: If you added multiple videos, make sure you select all of your videos
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In the lower half, you should have the Format tab selected. Next to Profile, choose Custom.
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Change Format to MP4.
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Beneath Video Codec, change Codec to MPEG-4 AVC/H.264.
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Beneath Audio Track 1, change Codec to AAC and do the same for Audio Track 2.
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Switch to the Audio tab and make sure it's set to General.
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Choose the audio stream you would like to keep. There may be many streams to choose from depending on how many languages your video contains.
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Make sure Modus is set to Convert.
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Set Bitrate to 256. 256 is a great quality, but you are more than welcome to set bitrate to whatever you want.
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Important: Object type must be set to LC (Low Complexity).
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Optional step 1 of 3: On the left, switch to Volume Correction Volume correction tweaks the audio so that it's not too loud and not too quiet.
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Optional step 2 of 3: Change Volume correction to Volume Normalization (dB).
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Optional step 3 of 3: Click analysis and wait for it to finish. When it's finished, Track Volume and Track Gain should be filled in with the correct values for normalizing the audio.
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Switch to the Filters/Preview tab.
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Change Width to 960
Change Height to 544
Note: The maximum resolution of the PS Vita is 1280 width, 720 height
Note: The PS Vita does not play well with strange resolutions, so to keep things simple, I recommend always using a resolution of 960 width and 544 height.
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Change Scaling mode to Lanczos Lanczos is a much better resize method compared to bicubic and bilinear.
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Change Aspect Ratio to 16:9
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Zoom is entirely up to you.
Letterbox will put black borders at the top and bottom of your video. Nothing will be chopped off. This is similar to the Fit to Screen option, but not as thorough.
Medium will put black borders at the top and bottom of your video, but will chop off a bit from the left and right of the video. This is like a middle-of-the-road option. It tries to make the video use up more of your screen without chopping off too much of the video.
Pan Scan will show no black borders what-so-ever, however the left and right of the video will be chopped off. I personally prefer Pan Scan because I hate borders, but this can sometimes cause certain things to be missing from the video if they are positioned very far to the left and right. I personally do not mind this behavior.
Fit to Screen will show black borders either on the top/bottom OR on the left/right. The video will never be chopped off. I recommend choosing this for standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio videos (such as old TV shows that are not formatted for widescreen).
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Switch to the Video tab and make sure you have General selected.
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Important: Change Level to Level 3.1. If the video is set to anything higher than Level 3.1, then it will not play on the PS Vita.
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Change Preset to whatever you want. I recommend choosing Medium because it is a good middleground between speed and quality. The slower the preset, the higher the quality. The faster the preset, the lower the quality. If speed is no issue, then I recommend choosing either Slower or Placebo.
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Optional: Change Tune to something matching your video footage. If you're not sure what to pick, then please skip this step.
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Important: Change Framerate to either 23.976, 29.97, or 30 (depending on your video). I do NOT recommend leaving this value as Keep Original because Xmedia Recode will sometimes choose an incorrect framerate and your video will have issues playing.
If you're not sure which framerate to choose, I recommend using 30.
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Change Rate Control Mode to Constant Quality
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Type in a value for Quality between 17 and 25. The higher the number, the lower the quality. The lower the number, the higher the quality. If you're not sure what number to use, just choose 20. 20 is a good balance between quality and filesize.
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Important: Change Color Mode to YUV 4:2:0 Planar 12bpp.
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On the left, switch to BluRay.
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Important: Check Blu-ray compatible. This ensures that no matter what settings you've chosen for your video, your video will be Blu-ray compatible. This means that the PS Vita will be able to play it, as well as any Blu-ray player including the Playstation 3. This is a very important step and should NOT be skipped.
When you're finished setting up your video, go to the top of Xmedia Recode, click
Add Job and then click Encode
After you have finished creating the MP4 file, you should install the Playstation Content Manager Assistant (if you haven't already installed it).
From there, you simply copy your video to your Videos folder in Windows. You should then have access to it from your PS Vita. You will have to connect your Vita via USB and then copy the video to your Vita.
If you have any questions or problems, please leave a comment and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability! Good luck!
Download Elephants Dream for the PS Vita. This video was converted using Xmedia Recode!
Q. I receive an error that says "This file is not compatible" or "Some files cannot be copied" whenever I try to copy the video to the PS Vita.
A. 90% of the time, this is because the Vita thinks your video is incompatible. Double check all of the steps in the guide to make sure you followed them and try reconverting your video.
Q. The file copies but stops at a certain point and will not continue.
A. If the file is copying, this usually means the Vita thinks the file is compatible, but something is preventing the file from copying. This could be a faulty cord, a faulty USB hub, or a corrupted file. Try connecting the cord directly to your computer or converting and copying a completely different file until you have narrowed down the problem.
Last Updated (Saturday, 03 March 2012 18:26)
Comments
In order to add subtitles after the conversion, you will need to use either YAMB (for MP4 files) or MKVToolNix (For MKV files) to Mux the subtitles into the video.
These will not be hardcoded, of course.
Ah I see O_O'', I do see a subtitle tab... but it doesn't seem to do anything, that's disappointing because I wanna watch my anime ahhaha
Yeah, I always pay attention to this site. XMedia Recode does let you save *some* settings, but it's not 100% accurate. If you go up to File > Save Settings, XMedia Recode will let you save a preset of all of the settings you've selected so far. The next time you want to convert a video, simply load that preset. You will notice that a lot of your settings will return, but some will not. You have to discover which settings were and weren't preserved and reconfigure them accordingly. It's kind of annoying.
Quoting nosef:
I've been asking the creator of XMedia Recode to add subtitle support, hardcoded and nonhardcoded... and so far he hasn't done anything about it. Sorry.
In order to add subtitles after the conversion, you will need to use either YAMB (for MP4 files) or MKVToolNix (For MKV files) to Mux the subtitles into the video.
These will not be hardcoded, of course.
The video speed preset has a drastic effect on the conversion time of your video. Placebo takes an inordinate amount of time to convert almost anything. The quality difference isn't extremely drastic unless you are starving your video of bitrate. In your case, you chose a Constant Quality of 17, which is a lot of bitrate.
If I were you, I'd set the Constant Quality to 19 or 20 and set the preset to either Default or Slow.
That will produce a file with a smaller filesize and it shouldn't take nearly as long to convert. You shouldn't notice a huge impact on quality.
If you're really curious, try converting a small sample of 30 seconds and comparing qualities and speed presets. In the end, it's really up to you what you prefer.
Glad you like the guide.
Thanks again
Hi, it's hard to know what bitrate to suggest because it depends on your desired file size and your video. If it as a movie with LOTS of motion, a very low bitrate will starve the video of needed bits and it could end up looking bad.
A video with very little motion can look great with very little bitrate.
However, I would say, try to choose a bitrate no lower than 600kbps, and a bitrate no higher than 5000kbps.
XMedia Recode includes a bitrate calculator.
Thank advance
I've just determined that version 3.0.8.4 of Xmedia Recode is not converting the audio properly. The only option right now is to downgrade to version 3.0.8.1 or wait until a new version comes out that will address this problem.
Here's a link where you can download version 3.0.8.1:
www.digital-digest.com/software/XMedia_Recode_history.html
Sorry about that.
Quote:
-Neil
Glad to know you figured out the problem.