Playing M2TS(Blu-Ray/AVCHD) HD movie files > 4GB from JailBroken PS3's Internal HDD

[Rogero]

Hello,
for the last 2 days I was researching and trying how to copy a large M2TS file
which is about 8GB to the PS3's internal HDD to play it from there knowing that the PS3 can play M2TS files with no problem.

Using a 16GB USB memory formatted with FAT32 (the only File system that the PS3 currently support for USB external storage ) won't do it because of the 4GB max file length limitation, Mac HSF+ and NTFS are not supported.

FTP is the only way possible to transfer large files directly into the PS3 internal HDD which seems to handle > 4GB files with no problem.

First I tried to copy the Movie file to the folder dev_hdd0/video but it won't be recognized by the PS3 and after some testing comes the trick.
here's the steps:

1- download a small sample MTS file (same as M2TS uses the same codec) from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nmx5jytzwyd

2- Put the sample file on a USB stick / Fat32 format, insert into PS3,go to Video tab,select the USB memory,press Triangle and select show all,select the 00157.MTS file,press Triangle again then Copy, the PS3 will copy the file to a specific folder on the HDD, something like dev_hdd0/Video/gk/MTS00157.MTS and it will create 2 more files, first one 000157.MTH for Thumbnail preview of the movie from XMB and the other file 000157.STH holds the movie specific info like ,name,size,format,codec used to play it.

3- FTP to your PS3, go into the dev_hdd0/video folder,look for the new folder created by PS3,must be named with 2 characters only, in my case it's 'GK' and inside it you find the 3 files mentioned above (00157.MTS, 00157.MTH, 00157.STH) then transfer your M2TS movie (>4GB) into this same folder. ( for some reason, I transferred a 6GB file but FlashFXP shows me the size of the transferred file as 1.80GB, but the file is all there 6GB, I can transfer it back to PC and it's 6GB again, seems not a problem though )

4- now you have to delete the original sample file 00157.MTS and rename your transferred movie to 00157.MTS (even if it had the M2TS extension you must rename it to 00157.MTS) and you should keep the other 2 files 00157.MTH and 00157.STH or the movie won't play.

5- exit back to the PS3's XMB, go to videos, you will see the thumbnail of the 00157.MTS movie playing, just press it and your movie will start

6 - Enjoy watching your Full HD complete movie from the PS3's HDD.

N.B: watching the movie using this method won't have any subtitles working and you can't skip chapters either, the Ps3 will play it as one chapter, you can pause it, you can exit the movie anytime and when you play it again later it will continue from the last point where you stopped it.

I hope this will be useful to some people who likes to have some Full movies on their PS3's HDD instead of using Blu-Ray or AVCHD discs through the PS3 Lens ( preserving Laser life, bad Laser, etc... )

[Anony]

Thanks, I will try this out.

[S.Kay]

This will be of great help to me THANK YOU.

However may I also add, transferring M2TS files can also be done through PS3 Media Server, which doesn't require a jailbreak and also works similiar to FTP (except it is limited to videos).

However I plan to use this tutorial alongside Comgenie File Manager, which is faster than FTP for me

[kate59588]

You can convert an M2TS file to MPEG4 format which is well supported by PS3. In the following guide I will show you how to transfer M2TS files to MPEG for PS3 with Pavtube MTS/M2TS Converter.

pavtube.com/guide/m2ts-to-mpeg.html

[hammerhead]

This Works great is there any update on this method where it can get correct thumbs and time right for video

[greenca190]

has anyone noticed any quality difference in playing a m2ts file on the internal drive versus playing one on an external hard drive?

[Tokageroh]

I always use ps3 media server to copy it to my internal hdd wich in my opinion is a bit better . This is the only way to get a proper thumbnail and also proper vid length I think.

[BigTinz]

I literally just registered to say THANK YOU! This works perfectly. After following your steps you can easily change the streaming icon to whatever you want by selecting "edit icon" during playback as well as renaming the file on the PS3.

I was able to copy over my Alien Quadrilogy this way.

[jumper]

Another thing I have noticed is the ps3 will download compatible format videos straight to the internal drive using the web browser. You can run something as simple as apache on the host computer, then create a symbolic link in your www folder that points to wherever your movies are stored.

It's not as simple as using a media server, just something interesting I noticed. Like using a media server this also works just the same on OFW.

[randomusername]

As above really, why do this when you can just copy it over using a media server, seems to be a more convoluted method... but interesting...