Hacking Homebrew PSP - CSO vs ISO

[xboxinoz1]

Been a long time nintendo user but finally something got the better of me and I couldn't resist the opportunity of buying a PSP with 3.03OE-B firmware.

Anyway, don't actually get it until next week but have been doing a bit of research and I have a question that I think is hopefully simple but one for which I cannot easily seem to find an answer...

I understand you can play backups of games in either iso or cso format but what I don't understand is why you would prefer to play in iso rather than cso when, from what I have found so far, cso's seem to be about 60% the size of isos.

Why would I therefore want to use up more of my memory card space with an iso?

Or am I missing something? Do cso files actually have to have room on the memory card to uncompress so it isn't such a simple case of converting images to cso and seeing how many I can cram on my card? Are they directly readable in their cso format and no such extra space is required? Is it that some games will only work in iso format?

I'm a bit confused and hoping someone can give me a little bit of guidance on this issue?

Thanks

 

[ShadowXP]

I compress all of my ISOs at CSO level 9. I've only experienced slowdowns in 1 of 30+ games I've played, and that's Daxter. CSO is the way to go.

 

[cracker]

Ditto here. Haven't had any problems with compressed images. You can fill up your card all the way (leave some room for saves) because they decompress on the fly.

Oh and BTW 3.03 OE-B is sooooo last week.

 

[iori-kyo-k]

Errrr. I agree most of the isos are way smaller when converted in *.CSO format, but there is a balance.

In fact, you'll sometimes notice kinda greater loading times, some framerate decrease, etc..

Just play "Dragon Ball Z - Shin Budokai" in ISO and in CSO, it's really obvious.

 

[thegame07]

i always use isos they run better.

 

[Darkforce]

Most games in the cso format seem to run just as well as their iso counterpart but some games have a bit of slow down - Outrun 2006 is the only game in cso format I've had problems with so far. It's worth compressing them into cso format though and seeing what they run like cos you can save a lot of space. =)

 

[Azimuth]

iso is only faster on large games >1gb cso is practical, it saves space. The ultimate compression format is .dax but 3.03OE doesnt support it yet. Heres to hoping....

 

[Myke]

star wars lethal alliance doesn't work too well in CSO as well

 

[thegame07]

star wars lethal allience does not work for me using dark alex firmware

 

[Shinji]

star wars lethal alliance doesn't work too well in CSO as well

Star wars lethal alliance doesnt work too well as a game

j/k

I am all for running ISO over CSO for reasons previously mentioned

 

[thegame07]

yeah but i put the star wars iso on my psp and it does not even show up i have used two diffrent dumps :-p

 

[ajjav924]

I use ciso unless the iso is already small to begin with.

 

[mcsquared]

ive got loads of isos, anyone know how to convert them into cso? whats everyone using to convert dvds to psp these days for smallest size/not bad quality?

im running 3.40 OE btw

cheers

 

[cracker]

There's a bunch of de/compression tools here. If you want to try ripping unneeded stuff out of games get UMDGen which can compress the images as well. If you just want to compress images then I suggest PSP ISO Compressor.

 

[mcsquared]

thanks mate