How to make ISOs smaller... [Tutorial]

[Nanashi]

~Ciaossu!

Well, since I haven't found any tutorial here saying how to shrink ISOs to small size without really inflicting game data that are used while playing, what not everyone knows, I've decided to make my own tutorial here, in DSF, to become a helpful member (or at least try).
If it isn't anything new or helpful, you can delete this topic, admins.

First things first, so: requirements.
* UMDGen (4.00 version can be downloaded from here - UMDGen [Tool], slightly described by Ostinato, the respectful member of DSF - show him some love and download his file rather than some found over the internet)
* ISO of the game you want to make smaller
* some space on HDD :)

Before we start, let's just say one thing: ISOs are different, there are EUR, US and JPN versions of games, so the effect and files can be different. Also, some ISOs won't work on PSP from unknown reason, they'll just show black screen or won't start at all, showing error code. Keeping that in mind, don't overwrite the original ISOs or delete them after you see the ripped ones work [1 - they will crash, and you'll get 64 kilobyte file (or similar), 2 - if something goes wrong, you won't have ISO to come back to].

So, let's start.
Once you get UMDGen to work, open your ISO with it. I'll use NFS: ProStreet ISO as an example.

All right, once you opened it, something like this should pop up:

While we want to rip our image (not rip exactly, as we won't downsample or rip out meaningful things, but let's call it rip), we'll look only at three things:
* red - Image size - it's our current ISO image size, as far as we go, we'll see it decreasing.
* yellow - Explorer - files that are currently inside the ISO.
* green - UMD Properties - base of our work, described later.

Cool, let's get down to work. Base of ripping files is getting rid of Update folder, which is pointless in ISOs as we don't need to upgrade out CFW before running games. That can be done two ways - by manually deleting the folder, or - what I prefer to do - by clicking Optimize button. 1st way doesn't need to be described, so I'll describe second way. Mentioned button is on UMD Properties tab.

Once clicked it doesn't only resize the Update folder to 0 (which is better than ripping it out, cause the game won't crash from not finding Update folder), but it gets rid of dummies as well (also pointless in ISOs, is needed only with UMDs to improve the speed of loading - I guess - anyway, it's needless).
After clicking it, it will show how much megabytes you got rid of by using it - usually it doesn't exceed 150 MB, but sometimes it gets rid of much more (like around 300 MB in Tekken 6, which also caused the game to show black screen).

Right. If you've done that, you can also try to lower the size by checking the languages, and getting rid of those you don't use. Move back to Explorer and go to USRDIR.

There's one folder, that just needs us to get into, called "video" (remember, I work on NFS:PS, on other games it can be called other or there can be no folder like this). If there's not, search for a folder containing *.pmf files. Now it's up to you what to do with it: you can let the game work properly on every language (with this difference, that videos will be shown only in one language, no matter which you chosen), or you can go with those files to hell and get the game without videos. I prefer first option.

Okay... To do any of those options, you need to relink videos to each other. It can be done either by clicking Ctrl+M on source and Ctrl+L on needless files or RMB - File Relinker.
* If you wish to get rid of every video in the game, select the smallest file and press Ctrl+M (or RMB - File Relinker - Use selected file as source), then select every other file and press Ctrl+L (or RMB - File Relinker - Relink to source).
* If you wish to leave only one language videos working at every language, press Ctrl+M on video of desired language and Ctrl+L on videos of other languages, but only with the same name (video00_en to video00_fr for example).
You can do the same with sounds.

I left all the videos in english and linked every other to it (so it shows english videos in every language chosen in-game), and from 1.4 GB file I got 393 MB file now.


^ That's the proof.

Thank you for reading all this, and I hope that was helpful!
~Nanashi

[Nanashi]

Bump.
A downsampling guide will come there as a part of tutorial. Give me a few days to finish it.

[sparx]

This tutorial is very helpful. I tried UMD GEN a couple of times experimenting on some of the games i have. Most of the time, I get good results in downsizing them and there are only a few instances when some games won't run. You really should keep hold of the original ISO you have for back up. Nevertheless, UMD GEN is a useful tool if you need to have more space in your psp.

[bokser98]

I prefer PSP compresser, but Your tutorial is awesome for UMD GEN users ^^

[Spamtacus]

I prefer PSP compresser, but Your tutorial is awesome for UMD GEN users ^^

You mean the one that converts from ISO to CSO and all that?

Yeah, that just converts...this one actually lowers the file size of the iso which in turn would lower the size of the CSO.