Hi All-
How exactly do I locally put video onto the pS3 - and what formats can it take? I have a plethora of H.264, Divx, and Avi files I'd love to play from the PS3 hard drive. I can connect an external HDD and copy over files to the internal drive, correct? What formats will the PS3 play? I really would like to not have to convert my 60gb or so of video for the PS3 - has anyone had experience with this? I'm not interested in streaming my video from my Mac (too much of a headache).

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You will have to convert them to the format the PS3 supports. None of those you listed is supported by the PS3. I don't really know for sure which format the PS3 recognizes, I've given up hope on my PS3 as a media player/center.

Actually it does support H264. Just about any MPEG file actually.

It even plays .PS and .TS files but there's bugs with them currently.

It doesn't support AVIs though.

The file types it supports are listed here: (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/video/filetypes.html)The following types of files can be played under (Video).

Memory Stick Video Format
MPEG-4 SP (AAC LC)
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Main Profile AAC LC
MPEG-1 (MPEG Audio Layer 2)
MPEG-2 PS MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AAC LC, AC3 Dolby Digital, LPCM
MPEG-2 TS (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2)

For converting try Red Kawa's PS3Video9 (http://www.redkawa.com/videoconverters/ps3video9/).

As for external drives, yes you can connect them to the USB port and play files directly off there (or copy them to the internal HD) but the catch is the drive has to be formatted with FAT32 (not NTFS), and that means 2GB file size limit.

It also plays raw HDV files (.m2t) without a hitch. I've loaded a bunch of short films I made with a canon XLH1 HD camera. All 1080i/60 at 25Mbps. They look beautiful.

They still have some work to add a bit more support in what file formats they play.

Or give Linux a go.

Wait, how does it play back the M2T files? I've got a Canon HV10 and would love to be able to play them on the PS3. usually the M2T files have seperate WAV files for sound, some apps wont play the sound file...the PS3 natively knows how to play the m2t file along with the sound??

Question 2: With the 2gb limit, how are you moving files around....when the average 1 hour M2t file is about 13gigs in size.....Hmmmm, i wonder if there is a setting in my capture software to break up the files...

I bought the PS3..set it up..played the motorstorm and genji demos....and its been collecting dust in my AV rack ever since :P (haven't opened up Resistance yet, its slated for this weekend on the projector!).

Someone in here post that if u install Yellow Dog 5 and YLC player, you will be able to play back most of the format including .mkv file.

The m2t files I use contain both video and audio. I'm capturing using Sony Vegas 7 from a Sony HDV deck. Capturing straight from the canon camera shouldn't be any different. I'm also editing in Vegas, then rendering back out as an m2t using the 1080i/60 template. So far the videos are short, 3-6 minutes so space hasn't been a limitation.

What's funny is I first burned the file to a CD and tried playing it. The CD of course, just didn't have the speed and bandwidth for a 25Mbps video so it was choppy. Burned it to a DVD and it played without any problems and of course you can just copy straight to the hard drive as well.

I'll have to play around with the original, larger than 2gig files to see how I can get the PS3 to play them, or if I can create a playlist of somesort if the files are split.

I've used the PS3Video9 to convert some other files. They have all worked so far, I just need to make some better templates to up the quality.

When I capture in Pinnacle I get an .M2V and a .WAV file.

If you drop the bitrate down to 19-20 you shouldn't lose any quality but be able to fit more onto a DVD-R, or so some here have mentioned.

Strange that it seperates them. Have you tried copying both files over to the PS3 and just playing the .m2v to see if it plays with the audio? You might be able to render it back out in pinnacle as a single file if that doesn't work.

I don't want to drop the bitrate as that would require reencoding. It is nice to have the original video intact for once.

Once I get my SDI HD capture card I'm going to try capturing the HD at 4:2:2 uncompressed and see if there is much of a difference.

I haven't testing Linux on it yet (that's for this weekend..maybe). SUPER by eRightSoftware is free and has a PS3 profile which worked for me (on some files). PS3 Video Converter by MP4Converter is more limited in application but it worked for me when SUPER would fail. It does encode much faster, so I assume it is only using a one pass encode or a lower quality encoding method than SUPER. SUPER does encoding for iPods, PSP, and video phones with a plethora of options. PS3 Video Converter does PS3 and PSP (maybe iPod).

SUPER is Free while PS3 Video Converter costs $40 (trial is limited to 5minute clips).


links:
SUPER: http://www.erightsoft.net/Superdc.html
PS3 Video Converter: http://www.mp4converter.net/ps3-video-converter-win.html

Has anyone had any luck encoding PS3 video files in Linux? I have tried but with no luck. I tried with MEnocoder, x264, and MP4Box, no luck.

I haven't messed with it much, I literally used the camera on xmas and used studio to import them and it seperated the file into m2v (video) and a seperate wav file. Now, this reminds me of the more common format of using tools to seperate video from audio prior to shrinking or re-encoding video (TMPGENC or other similar tools).

Anyhow, I'll play with it more. I hope to play more with it in the upcoming weeks.

Linux is also a no go, unless all you want to play are SD material. HD material won't play fullscreen without hitching and pausing and dropping frames. The PS3 without some assist from the RSX or dedicated Cell versions of media players will not be able to play HD material under Linux.

Do you think Sony will ever unlock the GPU and the rest of the memory so Linux can access all the resources?

Doubt it, too much risk for homebrew software and PS3 hacking.

In that case, what are the odds of a mod chip which will allow homebrews. I'd LOVE to see a XBMC equivalent on the PS3.

Try VisualHub for OSX works great for me with converting my .avi files

I have an LaCie 80Gb external USB 2.0 drive formatted as FAT32. It's full of .m2t files that I downloaded from my Sony HDV via Sony Vegas. The maximum size of these files is just under 4Gb. (Not sure why some are saying 2Gb limit for FAT32. FAT32 supports 4GB -1 byte filesize).

Anyway, the PS3 (v1.51) does not recognize any files in the root directory, but once I created a VIDEO directory and placed the .m2t files in there, the PS3 saw them. It also does not recognize .jpg or .mp3 files in the root directory of this USB HDD. I did a google and found out the the PS3 is looking for sub-directories on external USB devices. Namely VIDEO, MUSIC, or PHOTO. It also recognizes the MP_ROOT and DCIM folders common to external devices. I just wanted to pass along this info in case someone was struggling with getting the PS3 to see the files on an external HDD. I didn't see this in the PS3 User's Guide, but could have missed it too.

Doubt it, too much risk for homebrew software and PS3 hacking.

Hypervisor has been hacked. Apparantly, this program which successfully loads ISO images of PS3 games is based on re-compiled linux kernel. It's called Ferrox.

There's another hack that will be released in March time frame from Paradox (team of hackers) that uses similar exploit to that of PSP, and confirmed working for all version of firmware sofar.

Personally, I really don't give a $%$, but I do hope someone will further explore this hack so that we can install linux without the hypervisor blocking access to the RSX 2D / 3D / VRAM. If Linux isn't possible, at least port of the XBMC or something similar (VLC?) to the PS3 using official PS3 SDK. I'd give it a month or two....

Anyone able to play an mpg2 file greater than 4GB straight from an external hard drive?

Wait, how does it play back the M2T files? I've got a Canon HV10 and would love to be able to play them on the PS3. usually the M2T files have seperate WAV files for sound, some apps wont play the sound file...the PS3 natively knows how to play the m2t file along with the sound??

Question 2: With the 2gb limit, how are you moving files around....when the average 1 hour M2t file is about 13gigs in size.....Hmmmm, i wonder if there is a setting in my capture software to break up the files...

I bought the PS3..set it up..played the motorstorm and genji demos....and its been collecting dust in my AV rack ever since :P (haven't opened up Resistance yet, its slated for this weekend on the projector!).

I have been playing resistance...and this game is awesome. I played it a bit when i first set up my PS3 on Christmas eve...but just now am deep into the game. I like it better than Gears Of war...which was my favorite game. Resistance starts slow but gets REAL good deeper in the game. The background story in resistance is better that Gears of War in my opinion....Both are awesome games though..The best on each console.

Why come you are not watching bluray movies?

I agree, the story in Resistance is quite good. It really draws you into the game. At the end I kept wishing there was more. Resistance 2 should be even more kick ass.

I have an LaCie 80Gb external USB 2.0 drive formatted as FAT32. It's full of .m2t files that I downloaded from my Sony HDV via Sony Vegas. The maximum size of these files is just under 4Gb. (Not sure why some are saying 2Gb limit for FAT32. FAT32 supports 4GB -1 byte filesize).

Anyway, the PS3 (v1.51) does not recognize any files in the root directory, but once I created a VIDEO directory and placed the .m2t files in there, the PS3 saw them. It also does not recognize .jpg or .mp3 files in the root directory of this USB HDD. I did a google and found out the the PS3 is looking for sub-directories on external USB devices. Namely VIDEO, MUSIC, or PHOTO. It also recognizes the MP_ROOT and DCIM folders common to external devices. I just wanted to pass along this info in case someone was struggling with getting the PS3 to see the files on an external HDD. I didn't see this in the PS3 User's Guide, but could have missed it too.
if you press triangle button, it will allow you to play all the files, not only those in specific folders...

Actually it does support H264. Just about any MPEG file actually.

It even plays .PS and .TS files but there's bugs with them currently.

It doesn't support AVIs though.

The file types it supports are listed here: (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/video/filetypes.html)

For converting try Red Kawa's PS3Video9 (http://www.redkawa.com/videoconverters/ps3video9/).

As for external drives, yes you can connect them to the USB port and play files directly off there (or copy them to the internal HD) but the catch is the drive has to be formatted with FAT32 (not NTFS), and that means 2GB file size limit.

As of now, I know the current firmware supports DiVX, AVI, MP4, M4P, but not H.264 in the .mov format. A few files from the internet archive (archive.org) (http://www.archive.org/details/movies) and dl.tv (http://dl.tv/) will not play back on my PS3.

I am still looking to find more on this topic.