[Tutorial] Scorpus' Sony UMD/ISO/CSO Guide

[Scorpus]

Note: This guide was written by an old friend. I've made some modifications though

Introduction
This guide is intended to help both new and experienced users in dumping/backing up their own UMD discs. I intend to cover several methods of Dumping and Optimizing and if desired Compressing said dumps/backups. As I learn of alternate or better methods to do such a task I will update this guide to cover such information. I do not intend to cover very old methods for older tools and firmware, however I will do my best to accommodate users as I see fit or am informed of older methods.

Items/Applications/Home-brew Used in This Guide.
1 - Items - PSP with Custom Firmware, UMD Disc, USB Cable and PC (Not necessary for some tasks.)
2 - Dumper - 3.52 M33 or Newer CFW or PSPFiler 5.x or other app's such as UMDumper, UMDripper.
3 - Compressor - UMD Gen 4.00 or PSP ISO Compressor or YACC.
NOTE: I will cover basic *nix/Mac OSX compressors at a later date. (For those who are looking ciso maybe what your looking for.)
4 - Decrypter (For PSN Games) - NP Decrypter(View Post 2)

Dumping/Backing Up The UMD
Method 1 - Built in method (Requires a Computer)

Insert the UMD Disc into your PSP, Press Select (Or Home) to bring up the VSH Menu. Change your USB DEVICE to UMD DISC. Enable the USB Connection and use your computer to copy "UMD9660.ISO" to your hard drive. (Look and Method will vary by OS.)


Don't forget when you are finished to set your USB Device back to Memory Stick. Copy the ISO to your PSP's ISO Folder and it will show up under Game > Memory Stick. You will need to set your UMD ISO MODE to either M33 Driver or Sony NP9660 to play. Skip down for further instructions on how to do this or how to compress your iso.

Method 2 - PSPFiler (Good For on the Go) or other app's such as UMDumper, UMDripper.
You will need to download and "install" PSPFiler from this link. There are two versions, one for the 1.5 Kernel and one for the 3.XX Kernel. The 3.XX version is not for messing with flash0/1 and it will warn you of this. Don't worry just drop the eboot into the PSP/GAME/PSPFiler folder and run. The first time you run PSPFiler it will ask you what language you would like, select this language and press square to save. PSPFiler takes some getting used to and is a little awkward. I will warn you that the button to go back differs from menu to menu so just don't press anything I don't tell you to.

After booting PSPFiler and selecting language, Press TRIANGLE, then press R1. It will ask you to name it. To keep this simple just leave the name at default. Press the D-PAD to the right to select ENTER and then press CIRCLE. From here it will copy the UMD to your Memory Stick, you must have enough space on your Memory Stick for this part. Remember UMD's can range upwards of 900 MB to 1.8 GB. The file by default will be in your ISO folder and ready to play. You will need to set your UMD ISO MODE to either M33 Driver or Sony NP9660 to play. Skip down for further instructions on how to do this or how to compress your iso.

There are an increasing amount of tools avaliable todo this such as UMDumper and UMDriper, keep an eye out for these as well.

Playing the Game
I will cover Optimizing and optionally Compressing the ISO for people who have small memory sticks or alot of games in the next section. For now lets just play this thing!

Copy the ISO file to ms0:/ISO/ . Its not a bad idea to give each game its own name if you have more than one. However this is not required. Before you can play the game you need to use a NO-UMD Driver. There are two to chose from and the Sony NP9660 driver has a 98% compatibility rating. The other choice would be the M33 Driver, use which ever gets the game working for you. This is enabled by pressing Select (Or Home) to bring up the VSH mode and changing UMD ISO MODE. The game will be located where other Memory Stick games are located.



Optimizing & Optionally Compressing the ISO
UMD Discs contain Firmware Updates that are no longer useful inside the ISO, removing this will save upwards of 30 MB of space. Additionally UMD discs contain Padding and Dummy data to maintain file placement within the UMD structure, this can be removed to save anywhere up to 500MB. I removed 400 something odd MB from GTA:VCS to change the iso from 1.5 GB to 1.1 GB without any compression.

Why not just compress it? - Not all games do well compressed, especially racing games that have little read ahead and alot to read.... ahead. Many games can be cut 10 to 30% just by optimizing though most of the padding is nullified with compression. I will cover compression in a moment but lets just get to the quick fix for space. I will also cover addition methods and software in my second post. Audio and Video can be ripped out of a UMD by advanced users to save even more space. PSN Decrypter users also need to use optimization to get their newly decrypted ISO's down a reasonable size. Most PSN games worked well with compression.

Optimizing Using UMDGEN
Download and extract UMDGEN 4.00 or Newer. Run the program, Select Open and find your ISO. Click on the UMD Properties Tab and find the Optimize Button. Click Optimize and save your ISO by going save and choosing Uncompressed ISO. You can if you wish chose a CSO and compress it now, however not the point of this exercise. NOTE: These Images are cuts and will not appear exactly as they do on your pc.


Compressing the ISO
There are many tools for compressing iso's most of them based off ciso. For us Windows users I will be covering UMDGEN and PSP ISO Compressor to start. CISO/CISO Plus is available for unix/linux users and for mac osx users who are familiar with the darwin unix command line.

UMDGEN is easy, download, install and run if you have not already from the previous step. You mind as well goto UMD Properties and Optimize to save 40 extra MB on your compressed ISO. Save this time using Compressed CSO.


PSP ISO Compressor is very basic but it works, its not going to allow you to optimize but the padding/dummy files compress very well so no worries. I do still recommend using UMDGEN. Select Compress ISO > CSO, Select your file and hit convert. A console window will appear and compression will start. Place the CSO in your ISO folder. YACC is more advanced but not quite like UMDGEN is though it provides some minor extras from ciso plus. Follow the screen shot for a fairly simple CSO or check out the advanced tutorial for more information. Once again Place the CSO in your ISO folder.

[Mask3d_Ninja]

Im bit of a n00b, don't quite get the Using UMDGEN to remove unneeded components to make the ISO/CSO Smaller. so anyone can help?

[Oyabun]

Originally Posted by Mask3d_Ninja

Im bit of a n00b, don't quite get the Using UMDGEN to remove unneeded components to make the ISO/CSO Smaller. so anyone can help?

Open the ISO in UMDGen, Move to the UMD Properties Tab,and click on "optimize" to remove excess padding, resize dummy data and dummy 'update' folder contents.




Delete BOOT.BIN in SYSDIR. It's not needed unless you're a developer and sometimes it can reduce the size of the ISO significantly.




You can also "relink" pmf files to make the iso/cso smaller.

I'll use this Kingdom Of Paradise ISO an an example:






OP_00.pmf is more than likely the opening cinematic. Right click on it and highlight File Relinker and click on "Use Selected File as Source":





Then right click and highlight the rest of the pmf files in the window, click on
File Relinker and click on

Relink To '\PSP_GAME\USDIR\mdata\usa\OP_00.pmf'




After relinking, optimizing, etc. Save as ISO/CSO.


When the game plays one of the .pmf cut scenes, it will be re-directed to the opening movie. (OP_00.pmf)


You don't have to relink all of them.

With certain games, relinking all pmf files would take away from the story line of the game.

Some ISO have foreign language folders or files, which can be removed as well.

Some ISO have one big file, so you won't be able to reduce the size of the ISO just using UMDGen.

Other games have LBA protecton, which will require following a different procedure to rip the ISO.

[Ironride]

Thanks for the glorious tutorial. Managed to shrink my files by 50%

[u_r0k]

Failed attempts using UMDgen 4.00:


- UMDGen errors when saving:
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yakosoku
Mana Khemia Student Alliance

- Can't be compressed and/or optimized:
Bleach Heat The Soul 6

Any help? Also, there are other games which I can't optimize @__@

[Demonchild]

What UMDGEN does is simply dummy the update folder, delete 'boot.bin' and delete any dummy padding files in the ISO image.

Even though it doesn't look like a lot of space, you will see the difference in space when you compress it. I managed to rip a copy of Madden 09 and shave off around 400 MB from the original file size by just doing this in UMDGEN.

[Mask3d_Ninja]

thx guys to all, I just did the optimize and lower Star Wars to almost 700MB..WoW, I ll play a bit more with th tips you gave me Oyabun aka Robs...

thx guys again

thx guys to all, I just did the optimize and lower Star Wars to almost 700MB..WoW, I ll play a bit more with th tips you gave me Oyabun aka Robs...

thx guys again

sorry for double post...

I manage to compress Star Wars up to 621MB thx guys

[ONEDEADLYVENOM]

Good job bro !!!!

ODV out!

[cheewongken]

Hey just saw this... Nice tut! Learned much more from this. Any idea about the LBA protection mentioned by Oyabun?

[Rated R Razgriz]

yo. thanks for the MMS maker. you made a friends of mine very happy.