PS3 - Music / Photo / Video Tips and Tricks (prepping, copying, playing)

Tagged: Games

this is just a quickie recipe on some tips on copying/playing your media (music, video, photos) to your PS3’s harddrive via SD/MS/CF cards or usb thumbdrives/hds. i’ll explain how to get the album art for music to show, organize folders, and a few playback tips.

Intro:
Sony has touted the Playstation3 as a all-in-one entertainment hub/system and has included the option to save media to the systems harddrive and in turn play it back through your home theater setup.

The PS3 is a very capable media system, it can playback the following media types ( http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/index.html ):

Audio
-Memory Stick Audio Format(ATRAC)
-MP3(MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3)
-MP4(MPEG-4 AAC)
-WAVE(Linear PCM)
-WMA

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)
AVI
- Motion JPEG (Linear PCM)
- Motion JPEG (μ-Law)
AVCHD (.m2ts)

Photos
JPEG (DCF 2.0/Exif 2.21 compliant)
TIFF
BMP
GIF
PNG

DVD/Blu-Ray
DVD Video / DVD-VR / DVD+VR / AVCHD
BD-ROM / BD-R / BD-RE

Prepping Your Media Tips (pre-copying):

I’ve found that these little tidbits to be very helpful to get the most out of my music on the PS3.

Adding Folder Album Art to Music

First things first, lets add some Album Art to our MP3s. The PS3 reads the album cover info from the files/songs themselves vs a folder.jpg like most music players will read from. So to get your album art to show you will actually need to embed the album art into the file.

this can be done a few ways using different software. i prefer to use the free way, Windows Media Player 11 since i use WMP as my main syncing application and have been for the last 4 years (had a WM5 phone, PPC device, use office). The easiest way to manually add album art in media player 11 is to have WMP11 in the Music library, and then sorted by Album and use the large thumbnails view. Then open up IE/ Firefox and use google images to find the album art. Once you find the art via google images, right click the photo, choose Copy and then in WMP11, right click where it says add “Paste Art Here” and choose “Paste Album Art”. It will embed the art to all of the songs under this album. Once you are done, it may take a few hours for Media Player to embed the new art into the actual mp3s.

however you can also use other applications such as:
-Album Cover Art Downloader ( http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/ )
this is a great alternative! i have used this for all of my music and it does make things much easier than manually copying the album art and its FREE!
-iTunes (see howto over at lifehacker.com (http://lifehacker.com/software/album-art/use-itunes-to-add-embedded-album-art-225361.php )

Also, the PS3 will read the the IDTag info and use that to organize the music. i have most of my music organized and tagged so organizing/sorting my music on the PS3 is a bit easier. It will read the following tags:
-Album
-Artist
-Title
-Genre

Converting Videos to PS3 format:

This is pretty easy, all you really need is a conversion program. you can use PS3Video9 by the red katana group to do this. Get it over here:
http://ps3video9.com

I’ve had a few probs w/WMV files converting but those were ones i authored myself and prob used a weird bitrate for. however most mpg and avi’s convert nicely. see the ps3video9 forum boards for tips on converting.

Using Picasa2 to create a photo folder of starred photos
I use picasa (http://google.com/picasa) as my sole photo organizing application. it does a great job of it and now lets you upload directly to your free we album. however, i use picas more for starring my fav pics and in turn this lets me easily shift/export the images to a single folder.

just star your photos and then go to your starred photos area and select them all. then go to File > Exported to Folder and choose a folder to export to. voila, your fave photos in a single folder.

Copying Tips/Notes:

The PS3 reads memory stick or usb drive and looks for this type of structure:

[Memory Stick/USB Drive]
-PS3
—-Export
—-Otheros
-VIDEO (does not support subfolders)
-PHOTO (does not support subfolders)
-MUSIC (does not support subfolders)
-GAME
-DCIM (most digital cameras use this for photos)

So if you just want to be able to use a SD card to say show your photos when you want, you would want to put all of the photos in the PHOTO folder, do the same for music and videos. However, you can use subfolders if you want but you will need to view it by using the Display All option on the PS3.

On the PS3, go into your photo or music area and highlight the ms/usb drive and hit your Triangle button and choose Display All, you can now browse all of the folders on the drive/memory card.

Playback Tips

Playing all your music/photos in shuffle mode

This one took me a few tries to figure out since its not too straight forward (this applies to photos too). To get ALL of your music to play back in shuffle or normal (not just a group), you need to first change the view to Group by All. Then go back to the list of songs and hit the Start button. This will playback all songs not just the selected (vs hitting X on the song/group).

While the music is playing, hit the Triangle button to bring up the music options screen. here you can set the shuffle/repeat options and also the visualization on/off. this will apply to slideshows for photos too, be sure to Group by All to be able to play them all instead of just a Group/Single photo.

Watch Slideshow of Photos w/Music in background

I love having a nice slideshow w/some relaxing music playing when i have people over. here’s how you can do that on your PS3.

Start your music, then hit the PS button on the remote/controller. This will bring you back to the XMB w/o exiting the player.

Go to Photo and hit Start to start the slideshow.

Also, when in Photo/Music/Video, Square changes Group by options. Triangle will bring up the submenu screen.

Changing the Visual Player scenes

see my recipe on this here:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2259/ps3_change_visual_player_screens_playing_audio_files

Make Video Thumbnails of downloaded Trailers

see my other recipe on this here:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2256/ps3_create_video_thumbnails

DTS/Dolby audio output note

Set DTS/Digital Dolby manually if you have a capable receiver but are not getting games in dolby/dts. i had a prob when using Optical Digital in not getting DTS/Dolby signals to my receiver (which supports both). i went into the audio settings on my PS3 and checked DTS/Dolby and finally got them both formats in appropriate movies/games.

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hopefully those little tidbits helped you PS3 newbs get your media on your PS3!

find me on the PSnetwork, gamerid: seamonkey420