Video Playback

SMS turns a bone-stock PlayStation 2 into a video player. Point it at a movie file on any storage device — a burned disc, a USB stick, an MX4SIO microSD card, the internal HDD, SMB or UDPFS — press one button, and it plays. This page covers every video format SMS understands, how to open a file, the on-screen player controls, how the decoding works under the hood, and how to get the smoothest playback out of the console.

Supported video formats

SMS recognises a video by its container and codec, not merely its extension. The heavy lifting is done by a set of FFmpeg-derived decoders that have been hand-optimised for the PS2's Emotion Engine. The table below lists what plays and the file extensions SMS looks for.

Audio inside a video (the soundtrack) is decoded by the same engine that plays standalone music files, so a movie can carry an MP3, AAC, AC3, or other supported audio track. For the full audio picture — including playlists and standalone music — see Audio & Playlists.

Exact implementation limits

These source constraints and portable targets do not establish playback speed:

Previously reported console profiles

Earlier project documentation records these fixtures as having played on a real PS2, including transport checks. This audit did not rerun that hardware matrix or qualify the October changes on the affected consoles. The generation script defines the inputs; CI generation alone is not a playback result.

This table is the real-time confirmed baseline, not the full accepted range. Higher dimensions up to the 1024-pixel-per-axis source limit remain valid inputs but have not been qualified as universally smooth.

Playing a video

Opening a movie is a three-key affair: pick the device, walk into the folder, press play.

Optional poster grid in the file browser

This feature is included in current master for #26; console acceptance is pending.

While browsing files, press R2 to switch between the normal list and a three-column, two-row poster grid. The list is the default at startup; the grid choice is not saved. Press R2 again to return to the list with the same file selected. This shortcut applies to the browser; R2 keeps its existing function during playback.

Place a baseline, three-component JPEG next to a media file using the same basename: Movie.avi with Movie.jpg or Movie.jpeg. The lookup is case-insensitive against the directory listing and opens the actual filename, so MOVIE.JPG also works on a case-sensitive share. If both extensions are present, .jpg takes precedence. Folder tiles retain their folder icons. Artwork in a separate ART directory and PNG images are not supported.

Use JPEGs no larger than 256 KiB, with width and height each no greater than 512 pixels. Each visible cover is fitted into a 64×64 thumbnail with its aspect ratio preserved and black padding. Missing, unsupported, malformed, oversized or unreadable artwork falls back to the file's normal icon. Only the six visible tiles are cached; changing pages, folders or devices releases the old images. Artwork is read synchronously when a page first appears, so slow or disconnected storage can delay that page.

The grid still needs console acceptance for display modes, selection, slow storage and returning from playback. It depends on the JPEG parser hardening in the companion player fixes.

Player controls

While a video is playing, the pad drives the player directly:

If the movie has an external subtitle file alongside it, SMS displays it over the picture — see Subtitles for how subtitle files are matched and styled.

Play a video folder in order or shuffled

Highlight a folder and press ○ Circle to open Play all, then choose Video to play its videos back to back. For shuffled playback, first enable Randomize playlist under Player settings → MP3 settings. This setting also controls video folders, despite living in the MP3 sub-menu. Turn it off to keep the folder's normal play order.

How SMS decodes video

SMS earns its "good video on a stock PS2" reputation by splitting the work between the Emotion Engine and a dedicated piece of PS2 hardware — the IPU (Image Processing Unit).

• Decoders derived from FFmpeg. SMS's video and audio decoders started life as parts of the FFmpeg project and were then heavily reworked for the PS2 — moving to a packed image format so the decoder produces macroblocks in the IPU's native layout, and making aggressive use of the scratchpad and DMA. The original author measured roughly a 300% speed-up in video decoding versus stock FFmpeg from these changes.
• The IPU does the colour conversion. Turning decoded frames into a displayable picture (the colour-space conversion, YUV → RGB) is handed to the IPU, which runs it as an interrupt-driven process in parallel with the main CPU still decoding the next frames. Because that step is offloaded, the Emotion Engine is free to spend its cycles decoding — which is exactly why a plain, unmodified PS2 can play good-resolution movies at a good frame rate with no HDD and no extra hardware.

Encoding tips

If you are making files for SMS rather than playing existing ones, a few choices make the difference between flawless playback and a slideshow.

• Start from a tested profile. 640×480 at 30 fps with 1.5 Mbit/s MPEG-4 Part 2 video is confirmed in both AVI/Xvid + MP3 and MP4/mp4v + AAC. Lower dimensions or bitrate provide more headroom.
• Use a supported codec, not just a familiar extension. For MP4, select MPEG-4 Part 2 (mp4v), not the much more common H.264 or H.265 encoders.
• Avoid expensive tools when compatibility matters most. B-frames, QPel and GMC are implemented but add work. The hardware-confirmed fixtures use no B-frames.
• Defragment on slower devices. On a device with limited read throughput, a heavily fragmented file forces the console to seek constantly, which can starve the decoder. Copying the file back onto a freshly-formatted card or drive so it lands contiguously gives the smoothest reads, which helps most on the slowest media.
• Add subtitles as a separate file. Use external text subtitles when you want to switch or restyle them; put a matching .srt / .sub next to the movie. Converter burn-in is available when permanent text is preferred — details on the Subtitles page.

The exact command used for the confirmed 640×480 MP4 profile is:

ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -c:v mpeg4 -vtag mp4v -b:v 1500k -bf 0 -g 30 \
  -s 640x480 -c:a aac -b:a 128k -ar 48000 -ac 2 \
  -movflags +faststart OUTPUT.mp4

Community 960×544 MPEG-2 profile

tktagmedia reported a successful 44-minute MX4SIO playback using the higher-resolution MPEG-2/MP2 approach. The preserved Windows drag-and-drop script scales to 960×540, pads to 960×544, forces a 16:9 display aspect, uses two passes at 3 Mbps (3.4 Mbps maxrate), GOP 15, two B-frames and 224 kbps/48 kHz stereo MP2.

This is a reported profile, not a universal default or a confirmed fix for the open USB/color reports. The script does not cap the source frame rate at 30 fps, and its forced aspect is unsuitable for every source. Start with a short sample and compare the same file/settings on your console. A 60 ms V/A -00:060 workaround is not a universal six-frame NTSC correction; use the sync controls only as needed.

Limitations

SMS is a stock-console player, and a few historic limits come with that. Knowing them up front saves a lot of "why won't this play" head-scratching.

• Codec support is deliberately narrow. There are no H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1 or WMV video decoders.
• Interlaced is supported, but not part of the current fixture baseline. The MPEG-4 decoder contains interlaced field/DCT paths, and MPEG-2 supports frame- and field-encoded interlaced video. The published test profiles above are progressive.
• The source ceiling and the real-time ceiling are different. SMS accepts each dimension through 1024, but no single bitrate or resolution below that is guaranteed for every codec-tool and storage combination.
• Keep files below 2 GiB for portable playback. exFAT permits larger files, but SMS uses signed 32-bit seek offsets on common fio/fileXio paths. A driver-specific sequential read of a larger file does not establish normal indexed playback or seeking.

Where to next

Code/fixture references: decoder registration, stream table, fixture definitions. See current acceptance gaps.