# PS3/PS4 best video format



## fviola (Oct 1, 2012)

I recently decided to purchase a 2tb external HDD to store movies on so that I can pay them on my PS3 and eventually my PS4. I have done some research on the format video files should be in, but there seems to be a disagreement. Some say to use mp4, others say mkv, and a few say to keep it as a vob.

I formatted my external HDD to fat32 to allow for native playback on my system, but now I am not sure if I should just steam to my system instead, which would make me want an NTFS HDD instead.

I have plenty of vob files uncompressed which look fantastic when played on my ps3. There are two problems though. 1 is that the time stamps are all wrong in a vob file that is ripped from a DVD and 2. Some vob files are too large for the fat32 HDD.

I was thinking of compressing my vob files to something smaller so that they fit the 4gb limit. This would also fix the problem with the time stamps. The issue here is that the compression would decrease the video quality.

I also thought that maybe I should just reformat my HDD to NTFS and stream the content and keep the large file size.

What is the best way to do this? I am more interested in the best quality picture than anything else, but I would like to play natively from the HDD if possible.

Thanks


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## Ares (Nov 23, 2009)

If you plan is to run video from the external, MP4 will be a safe bet since the ps3 has no issues running the format. if you plan on streaming it from your pc to the ps3 you will need the PS3 Media Server.

This little program is written in Java so make sure you have the latest java update, it's free and requires little to no configuration.


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## fviola (Oct 1, 2012)

I know that mp4 works well, but I have had success with vob and mpeg as well.

My concern is preserving the best quality for both sound and audio. 

File size is not an issue if I do end up streaming from my PC using PS3 Media Server, but it is a problem for using an external HDD directly with the PS3 since the file size needs to be less than 4gb.

So I wanted to know what the best way is for me to run the video off of an external HDD as well as the best way to keep them for streaming so I would know how to approach converting my videos for both options.


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