Optical Media (CD and DVD) Tutorial
CD's and DVD's can be prepared specially so that they can be read by SMS without needing a modchip in your PS2. (Note, you can't boot the PS2 with one of these discs, they just hold the video.)
Here's how to prepare them:
DVD-Video Disc File System
Warning: Modchip users should try regular data discs first. Also, some modchips will actually prevent this trick from working.
DVD Video Discs are playable in your PS2, and because of this, they can be read without a modchip. The PS2 is able to access any other files that happen to be on the disc alongside the video. In order for SMS to read the DVD, we are going to make a dummy DVD Video disc, which we can then fill up with our DivX files. We've already done the hard work of creating a suitable DVD Video, so all you have to do is burn it with Nero, along with your video files.
1. Grab the dummy DVD movie here (427k), and unzip it onto the Desktop. or create your own DVD-Video files.
2. Open Nero. Select DVD, and choose to create a DVD-Video. Press New.
3. Drag the dummy DVD-Video files into the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD.
4. Fill up the rest of the DVD with your favourite DivX and MP3 files.
5. Burn the DVD. You can now play it using SMS in any unmodified console.
CDDAFS (Data on Audio CDs)
These instructions have been copied from the SMS User Manual. Please check there for updates...
The unmodified PS2 cannot load data from a normal CDR. This is due to built in copy protection. To get around this, the developer of SMS designed a clever trick that fools the PS2 into thinking that the CD-R is an audio CD. The PS2 is allowed to load a CDR if it's an audio CD. The basic principle relies on creating a disc in the so called CDDAFS format, which is essentially a disc that looks enough like an audio CD for the PS2 to accept it. The disc contains your .avi file data hidden inside audio tracks, and SMS converts these as it reads them. Clever huh?
The developer has written a utility (CDXplorer.exe) to create the .cue/.bin files from your .avi files, ready to burn to CDR. Then, provided your CD burning software knows how to read .cue/.bin files, you can burn them to CD.
Important
You must not simply write the .cue and .bin files to an ISO (data) CD format. This will not work. You must use a CD burning application which understands .cue and .bin files. The only two known at present are Nero 5 and, cdrdao.
Download CDXplorer.exe from http://ps2dev.org/ps2/Projects/Softwares (CDXplorer.exe can be found in SMS.zip file on the page).
Run the application by double clicking on it (no installation is necessary).
Figure 3.7. Screenshot of CDXplorer.
Once CDXplorer is running, drag and drop 1 or more AVI files into the right hand window.
Figure 3.8. Screenshot of CDXplorer showing avi file testvid.avi
after dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer.
Click file->SaveAs, then type in a name (e.g. 'test') then press <enter>. This will automatically save two files test.cue and test.bin in the current folder.
Now you can close down CDXplorer.
Next open up your CD burning application. This must be a CD burning application that allows you to load .cue files. Open the cue file, and burn it using Disc-At-Once (DAO) mode.
You should now be able to load the CD you have created in SMS.