Free psp media manager software downloads:Sony PSP Media Manager Review
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If you hadn’t already heard, yesterday Sony released PSP Media Manager (called PSPMM for the rest of this review) application. This sync tool will be in direct competition with the already established PSP Sync applications PSPWare and iPSP. Not happy with just reporting the news, I grabbed a copy of this software and gave it a thorough once over, testing all of its capabilities and features. I can say this now, I’m quite impressed.
PSPMM allows Windows-based PSP owners to sync their media files to their PSP with an intuitive 2-pane interface. You can now easily transfer Images, Audio, Movies and Game Saves to and from your PSP. PSPMM adds in the unique and useful feature of RSS parsing. Named “Feeds” in this application, this feature will allow you to easily stay up to date on all your favorite audio Podcasts and video Vidcasts, all through this one program. Prior to this app, I was doing this manually by downloading them through iTunes and doing the old drag and drop. This feature alone will save me a pile of time. I’ll get more into this feature later on in the review.
Let’s go through the tabs corresponding to the individual sync/conversion features one by one.
Photos
Looking at your favorite images on the PSP is neither new, nor unique. But PSPMM has a couple of features that are different from the norm. Firstly, this application supports images that are formatted as jpg, jpeg, jpe, jfif, png, gif, bmp, dib, tiff or tif. PSPMM can be setup to transfer these over as is, or do on the fly conversion to jpg. I tested the conversion method and it worked well, producing small sized jpg files on my memory stick.
The best feature of the Photos tab has to be its support for PSP Mags. Getting a PSP Mag on your PSP is now as easy as drag and drop. What I did was create a folder on my PC holding all my favorite mags. Once I let PSPMM know of that folder through the “Add a Folder” button, all my mags were listed. I was then able to easily drag the issues I wanted to see to my PSP, no unzipping and windows explorer for me. Very cool.
Music
Just like the Photo section, the music section supports a pile of audio formats. PSPMM has built in support for: mp3, wma, wav, pca, ogg, m1a, mpa, m2a, m4a, m4b, aac and mp4 audio. I know what you are saying, the PSP only supports mp4, mp3 and Atrac! Well just like the images, you can setup an auto convert profile to convert your songs to MP3s on transfer.
This is a nice feature allowing you to transfer any audio you might have on your hard drive or iTunes library. Just a word of warning, this application does not support any protected audio formats. So if you want to use songs that have been bought from iTunes or Napster, well… you are out of luck. This isn’t any different from any of the other sync apps, so I don’t fault PSPMM.
Video
Now this is where PSPMM really shines. Video conversion was always one of the more confusing areas of getting media on my PSP. I’ve used many conversion apps, from Nero to PSP Video 9, all with different levels of success. I’ll tell you now, PSPMM does this right. Included below is a quote from Sony’s website listing all the various supported file types and sizes.
Supported File FormatsVideo: mp4, avi, wmv, mov, qt, dv, mpg, mpeg, mpeg1, mpeg2, mmv, m1p, mp1, mp2, m2p, m2t, 3gp, m4v
Video File Size
One minute of video will take approximately 3.5 MB when using the Low AVC setting or 6.6 MB when using the High AVC setting. The following table illustrates how many hours and minutes of video you can fit on common sizes of Memory Stick Duo media:
|
FORMAT
|
32MB
|
64MB
|
128MB
|
256MB
|
512MB
|
1GB
|
2GB
|
|
Low AVC
(384 Kbps video; 480 Kbps total)
|
0:09
|
0:17
|
0:34
|
1:08
|
2:16
|
4:33
|
9:06
|
|
High AVC
(768 Kbps video; 896 Kbps total)
|
0:04
|
0:09
|
0:19
|
0:39
|
1:18
|
2:36
|
5:12
|
So you can see that this beast supports damn near everything. There are a couple things to note however. Firstly, this app will only create AVC formatted videos from your source files, meaning you require 2.0 on your PSP to play these. Secondly, two of my favorite file types aren’t supported. So if you are looking to convert DIVX or XVID encoded avi files, well you are out of luck for now. It has come to my attention that this is not 100% the case. I’ve posted an update at the end of this review
Limitations aside, this is a great video converter. All of the files I tried to convert went across perfectly, with no audio synch problems to be seen. To better show you all how good the avc conversion quality is, I created a small test case. I selected two small video files, the original PSP ad that aired and a user created ad. I ran two conversions, first to AVC High, and then again to AVC low. I’ll list them below for your viewing pleasure.
CD
Nothing super new or fancy here, this tab will allow you to convert songs that you have on CD to mp3. You can then either store them on your HD for later use, or transfer them to your PSP. PSPMM will query the gracenote CDDB when a CD is inserted to get the song and artist names.
Feeds
I touched on this earlier in the review, and this is the “Killer Feature” that this app offers. If you are like me, you listen to a number of Podcasts/Vidcasts in any given week. Prior to this app I would have to download these in iTunes (my podcatcher of choice) and move them over to my PSP manually. If the file was a Vidcast I would have to run it through PSP Video 9 first, and then transfer it to my PSP.
Now, the process couldn’t be any easier. I can subscribe to my favorite *casts* and PSPMM takes care of the rest. This application contains a built in Directory, but you can also add in your own favorite Podcast feeds manually (which I had to do for the PSP Podcast as it wasn’t listed yet :). This directory/RSS aggregator supports feeds containing audio, video, image and PSP Mags!
Like I said, this is the killer feature and makes this app worth the $19.99 alone. Great job Sony, you have some bright people on your development team.
Game/Backup
These two tabs will simply allow you to back up all your game saves from the PSP to your hard drive, and if you need to transfer already backed up games back to your PSP. I’ve accidentally deleted a memory stick before, so this is a great feature to have. In the options you can also turn on “Back up PSP when connected” to have this done automagically each time you connect your PSP. Simple, yet effective.
So there you have it. A full fledged sync/media management app. I can’t say enough nice things about this product. This product is available for download today from Sony’s site for $19.99. If you would like a boxed copy to be sent to you, you’ll have to wait till December.
More info and Purchase links can be found on Sony’s Media Software Website
Updated November 8th, 2005
Looks like my problems with getting Divx/xviD videos to convert was due to the videos I was using. Depending on the codec for both the audio and video used, PSPMM may convert these properly. Hopefully a future version will increase the compatibility of these types of conversions, but I decided to note this here by updating my review.
System Requirements
I had neglected to include these in the review, but due to a number of emails i’ll include them here. PSPMM requires Windows XP SP1 or greater, .NET Framework SP1 or greater and also that Quicktime 7 is installed if you want to encode AVC videos or playback mp4 audio.
