Sony PSP ISO file converter. Allow to compress / decompress CSO or ISO game files. Just drag & drop ISO or CSO file to start process. Required PSP custom firmware with.CSO file support (ex. Dark-AleX.m33, TN-A, PRO). ISO Compressor ISO Compressor is a free game ISO file compression software, it can compress and convert normal ISO image files to compressed image format CSO (CISO) files, or decompress CSO files to normal ISO files. This software can support both Sony.
One of my hobbies right now is retrogaming.I try to catch up with some old PSP games that I never had a chance to play when I was a kid.
Thanks to the advanced emulation technology today, I can play those games on my phone today.
One problem with PSP game is that the game file (we usually call it ROM) is relatively big.A single PSP game can take around 0.7 GB to 1.5 GB of disk space.The internal storage of my phone can only store around 10 games.I also purchase a 256 GB microSD card, the Samsung EVO Select brand one, to store more PSP ROMs.I quickly running out of space the more my collection grows, since I also have ROMs for other game systems.
Since I can’t upgrade my phone disk capacity, the only real solution is to compress the ROMs.
Iso To Cso Converter Pro Apk
Compressing the ROMs to archive type like zip, rar, or 7z is not good enough because every time I want to play a game, I need to wait the emulator to extract the archive first.This will cause slower loading.
What I want is a compressed format that is streamable, meaning that the emulator will decompress the content on the fly.This won’t impact loading time significantly.
That’s where the CSO file is being used.
In this tutorial I’ll show on you how to compress a single or batch of PSP ISO ROMs to CSO directly on Raspberry Pi.
Why Raspberry Pi?
Because that’s where I keep backup of my ROMs.Not to mention I can also play other emulators by using RetroPie.It’s also more energy efficient than using your PC.The compression process could take a long of time to run depend on how many ROMs you have.So, it’s the ideal device to do the tasks.
Installation
To compress PSP ISO files to CSO, we’re going to need a command line tool called ciso.
First, let’s update the package manager.
If you’re on Ubuntu or its derivative, you can directly install it by using apt.
If you’re on Debian or its derivate (Raspbian / RetroPie), you need to download the installer fist.
After the download process finished, we can install it using apt.
To check if the tool installed correctly, you can type ciso on terminal.Here is an example output.
Next step is how to do the compression process.
How to compress a single PSP ISO ROM to CSO
The ciso tool can compress with multiple levels.There are only 9 level of compressions from 1 - 9.Level 1 meaning it’ll fast process, but may only reduce the file size a little bit.Level 9 meaning it’ll be slow process, but it’ll to compress as small as possible.
In my experiments, the compression result between level 1 and 9 is not significant.So to save time, but gain more than enough compression ratio, we’ll use level 1 compression.
Here is the syntax to compress a PSP ISO ROM to CSO with level 1 compression.As you can see, the original_rom.iso is the input file and compressed_rom.cso is the output file.
Here is an example when I test it using an Undub patched version of Crisis Core.
As you can see, the file size is compressed from 1.7GB to 1.2GB!
How to compress a batch of PSP ISO ROMs to CSO
I’m pretty sure you probably have dozen of PSP ISO ROMs.It isn’t wise to compress the file one by one manually.To compress a batch of files, you can use following command.
Free Psp Iso To Cso Converter Download
Alternatively, if you want to remove the original ISO file and keep the CSO file after it’s finished compressed successfully, you can use following command instead.
Be aware that the deleted file can’t be recovered.But if the tool failed to compress the ISO file, it won’t be deleted.
How to decompress CSO to ISO
Just like any other compression method, CSO also can be decompressed.You may need this in case you want to play the game on real PSP device.
Similar to compression command, but change the compression level to 0 and use the CSO file as the input.
The previous command will produce original_rom.iso from compressed_rom.cso.
Conclusion
Psp Iso To Cso Converter Download
And that’s it my 2 cent on how to compress your PSP ISO collection.Thanks for reading!
References
Cover Photo by Andrew Mantarro on Unsplash
What is an ISO image file? The ISO image file is a duplicate copy of a complete CD-ROM disk saved in ISO-9660 format. ISO image files are widely used for storing CD content and quickly transferring it through the Internet. ISO is a common CD image format for DOS, Windows (Joliet ISO extension), Linux (RockRidge ISO extension), and other operating systems. An 'iso' file is just a disk image.
The ISO image is an archive file (also known as a disk image) of an optical disc in a format defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This format is supported by many software vendors. ISO image files typically have a file extension of .iso. The name ISO is taken from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media, but an ISO image can also contain UDF file system because UDF is backward-compatible with ISO 9660.
What is cso? A file with the CSO file extension is a CISO Compressed ISO Image file. These files are mainly used by the PSP2 system for games. .cso is short for Compressed ISO Image, which is a compression method for the ISO image format. It is used to compress dumped PlayStation Portable UMD games, and is an alternative to the .DAX compression method. It is also sometimes called 'CISO'.
CSO provides nine levels of compression. While the highest levels of compression can introduce slowdown and lengthy load-times in software which relies heavily on disc streaming, even the lower levels are capable of substantial compression. This is partially due to the data layout of a UMD, though more frequently due to the use of Dummy Files as both an anti-piracy tool and a means to more optimally lay the data out physically on the disc.
ISO files are a common disk image distribution format. We'll look at the best ways to converter iso files to cso.