.FLYINGHEAD HACKING THE PSP
.TITLE Taking screenshots on the PSP
.AUTHOR James Booth
.SUMMARY Wouldn’t you love to be able to prove that high score or awesome move on the PSP by taking screen or video captures? SVCapture for the PSP was designed to do precisely this. Read on to find out how it worked for Editor-at-Large James Booth
.OTHER
Wouldn’t you love to be able to take a screenshot or capture video on your PSP? What better way to prove that high score to your friends and family? Or wouldn’t you want to illustrate that awesome combat move? Perhaps you’d like to take screenshots for demonstration purposes, such as in this article. That’s precisely what SVCapture for the PSP was designed to do.
The trouble with Sony’s PSP, shown in Figure A, is that Sony has severely crippled its usefulness and capability beyond basic gameplay.
.FIGPAIR A Sony’s Playstation Portable
In order to use SVCapture you’ll have to have a custom firmware installed on your PSP. A [[http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200910/00002431001.html|previous article]] in Computing Unplugged provides instructions on how to install custom firmware, but because of the dubious legality involved in hacking your PSP, you’re on your own in locating the necessary files as well as in locating SVCapture. A quick search on Google or Yahoo! Will head you in the right direction.
Due to the underground nature of custom firmware and the applications that go with it, be sure to use caution when searching for the files. There are some nefarious characters out there who will disguise viruses and malware as useful utilities. And yes, we’re providing this material for informational purposes only. We would never advocate that you actually go and hack your PSP.
.TEASER Learn more about using SVCapture on the PSP by clicking here.
.H1 Installing SVCapture
SVCapture’s developer was kind enough to create an installation utility, but if that doesn’t work for you, as it didn’t for me, there are also instructions for a manual installation. For the capture utility, you simply copy the "capture.prx" and "capture.ini" files to the SEPlugins directory of your PSP’s Memory Stick as in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B Copy the capture files to your SEPlugins directory.
Next, you’ll need to either add, or edit the "game.txt" and "vsh.txt" files of the SEPlugins directory by adding the line "ms0:/seplugins/capture.prx" (without the quotes) and then saving the files like the example in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C Add this line to the game and vsh files.
This line merely needs to be added to any existing files without altering any other lines in the files.
The SVCapture plugin must be activated in the Recovery menu in order to be used. Enter the Recovery menu by holding down the Right Trigger during the boot process; remember, this only works on a PSP with custom firmware installed. Use the arrows to navigate down to Plugins and select it with the X button.
Then, navigate to the Capture plugin and enable it by selecting it with the X button. You’ll need to enable it in both Games and VSH, as shown in Figure D.
.FIGPAIR D Enable the Capture plugin in the Recovery menu.
Exit the Recovery menu and the PSP will boot normally.
.H1 Taking screenshots
Taking a screenshot is quite easy, merely press the Musical Note button on the PSP shown in Figure E, and the app takes a BMP capture of the screen.
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.FIGPAIR E Press the Note button to take a screenshot.
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Screenshots, like the one in Figure F, are stored it in the Games/photo directory of the Memory Stick.
.FIGPAIR F SVCapture takes great screenshots.
Captures can be taken from the XMB (GUI interface) of the PSP, during gameplay, or video playback. There’s no indication that it has worked while taking a capture from the XMB, but during gameplay or otherwise a transparent-green screen will sweep the display from bottom to top indicating a capture is taking place.
.H1 Capturing playback
SVCapture is supposed to be able to capture video playback during gameplay at either half size or full size, but I had some trouble with that particular aspect. It captures them in the form of animated GIFs, but in my experience it stuttered and halted gameplay to the point that it was impossible to play.
The SVC Player portion of the package is supposed to be able to play back the animated GIFs, but it wouldn’t work for me at all. I’ll confess it’s possible I missed or neglected to edit some file or setting, but the SVC Player simply crashed while trying to load.
.H1 Conclusion
In conclusion, SVCapture for custom firmware PSPs does a great job of taking simple screenshots in BMP format. It’s easy to install, enable, and use; it does precisely what it’s intended without any fuss or complications.
The video capture aspect however didn’t work for me at all and was a bit of a pain in its application. There are other video capture utilities out there that do a much better job without any of the heartache I experienced with SVCapture, and I’d recommend those for video capture on the PSP.
Overall, I give SVCapture a three out of five for taking screenshots, but I don’t recommend relying on it for video capture.
.RATING 3
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.H1 Product availability and resources
Read [[http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200910/00002431001.html|The hows and whys of hacking the PSP]].
Learn more about [[http://www.us.playstation.com/PSP|the Sony Playstation Portable]].
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.BIO
