new method for Converting PMF to AVI video for PSP

[farshidhss]

well, lately i was struggling a lot to find out a working solution for converting or at least being able to watch the pmf video file format from psp on my laptop. but it turn out to be a big hassle and after searching for many hours i just found one solution that didn't work for my file.

Okay now what's the deal with pmf!
pmf is a psp video file format that being used in many games for psp. so many games cut scene and movies are actually store on the UMD with pmf format and all that the game is doing is calling the psp AVC(H264) module to play it. so in case you copy one of those pmf file from your psp UMD to pc then you need a method to convert it to a proper format to be able to watch it.

here is what you need to convert pmf to avi:
--MPlayer 1.0rc2 get it directly from http://www.mplayerhq.hu or this link (http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32/MPlayer-mingw32-1.0rc2.zip)
--MeGUI get it from here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96032)
to play the avi output you need(i assume you know how to get em^^):
--ffdshow
--Media player classic

okay ready, here are the steps:
1. put the pmf file in the same folder as MPlayer and dump the video out of pmf, by running this command:
->MPlayer yourfile.pmf -dumpvideo

replace "yourfile.pmf" with the name of the file you got. when finished you'll get a file called "yourfile.dump"

okay so what we did in this step is to extract the video stream out that we know in most cases the subtitle is also exists together with video stream in the same pmf file so we need to extract that video stream first.

2. rename "yourfile.dump" to "yourfile.264"

this is assuming that the video stream is a RAW h264 coded so in this step you just rename it. you still not able to play it since it is a raw file so you need to put it in a MP4/AVI container.

3. open MeGUI and make sure it is fully updated. go to this menu: Tools->Muxer->AVC2AVI
this will open a new window and now you can click on video browse button and choose "yourfile.264" as the video stream, if you have the audio or subtitle as well you can add them at this step. click queue.

4. now go to Queue Tab in MeGUI original window, you should see the new job created here so press Start to complete the mux and get your AVI file, this process does not include any re-encoding therefore it is lossless and won't reduce quality in any way.

5. when finished you can watch your AVI file with any player but just make sure you let ffdshow handle the h264 codec otherwise you may not see the right result.

here is the proof of this method: FFVII-CC (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3FN81S85)
this is one of the cut scene from Final Fantasy 7- Crisis Core game on psp. i managed to unpack the package file and get to the pmf files from the US version of the game. but this was as far as i go, as for the audio i still couldn't come up with any solution to convert atrac3 audio (.at3) to another stream.
so please if anyone know a method to convert .at3 audio files to any playable format on pc let me know here.

thanks for reading ^_^

[SilentTweak]

I've done this before with all the videos on my site. Not sure if you recognize my name, but anyway, to decode the audio, what I did was use a nifty program on the PSP to decode the at3 tracks to WAV. Then, imported back to the PC and encoded it to whatever format I needed. I got the program from one of those PSP Hack websites, forgot what it was. It's called AT3Decode, if you can't find it, I'll upload it. This homebrew requires FW1.5.

If you google Sony AT3 Codec, you'll find a codec for AT3 but it most likely not play the demuxed files from the PMF, that's why the PSP method is a bit more reliable. There are however several sound files on the UMD that can be played by the Sony Codec, but still some of the few last had to be decoded via PSP.

[farshidhss]

well i already found and tried that homebrew but unfortunately as you mentioned it is for 1.5 and mine is slim 3.x
also there was another method using GoldWave and sony atrac3 decoder. i tried that one as well but it only worked for at3 files under 100kb size and anything above that didn't work for me T__T

[SilentTweak]

well i already found and tried that homebrew but unfortunately as you mentioned it is for 1.5 and mine is slim 3.x

I found that on PS2 games, there was a way to HEX EDIT the headers of the at3 files to make them play on a PC. But I'm not very knowledgeable in that area.

[farshidhss]

I found that on PS2 games, there was a way to HEX EDIT the headers of the at3 files to make them play on a PC. But I'm not very knowledgeable in that area.

oh thanks that's interesting, i'll see if i can find it.

[Comatose]

How did you extract the AT3 files?

[farshidhss]

How did you extract the AT3 files?

all at3 and pmf files were in a file called discimg.pkg and i went into hell of troubles to extract that file. it can be another guide. but in short i used Xpert v2.0 together with a psp plugin to extract LBA and then extract all the files out of that package.

[SilentTweak]

farshidhss, what he meant was how do you extract the audio from the PMF. Chances are you can't do it with that version of mplayer. You have to use an older copy of mplayer.

mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile filename.at3 filename.pmf

So type in the file name of the pmf and the filename.at3 is the output. Cannot be software decoded, must be hardware decoded, unless someone knows of another way. Most other at3's found on the UMD can be decoded using Sony's AT3 Codec. Just open them in WavePad or any other audio software and save as a WAV file.

[farshidhss]

oh i see thanks. yea i could open all those at3 under 100kb but the rest with bigger size never worked.

[SilentTweak]

oh i see thanks. yea i could open all those at3 under 100kb but the rest with bigger size never worked.

DRM most likely. That's why the PSP hardware is required.

[Ranguvar]

DRM most likely. That's why the PSP hardware is required.

IIRC, the AT3 used in PSP PMF movies is either ATRAC3plus or a special form of it... I don't think it's actual DRM, per se, maybe just a quick'n'dirty attempt by Sony to make it harder to rip UMD movies (which isn't a bad way to go, considering video is stored on a UMD at full 720x480).

[Comatose]

Well, the <100KB ones are actually WAVs, and the larger ones don't have a clear header, so that's why we think it's encrypted.

[Ranguvar]

Well, the <100KB ones are actually WAVs, and the larger ones don't have a clear header, so that's why we think it's encrypted.
It's compressed :D

http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=79349
http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=79380

The mentioned at3decode.zip is attached. Sorry, it's the only method of decompressing that I've found so far. If anyone has the time, I don't believe the source code is under any protections, so please do make a PC port.

There appears to be lots of problems with it right now, not the least of which that it appears necessary to be running 1.50 or 1.50 CFW to use it. Time Machine (http://exophase.com/files/psp/timemachine_0.1.rar) could help with that.

Have fun!

EDIT: Just realized SilentTweak posted most of this info already. Ouch. Oh well!

[farshidhss]

thanks for the info Ranguvar.

also any idea on how to extract the subtitle from pmf files?

[deank]

Did anyone find a way to extract audio from MPS files from STREAM folder on a UMB video disc?

I've searched a lot, but...