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[TheStick]

This tutorial is no longer updated. Click here for more details.

Today I'm going to explain how to install and use MoonShell, the DS' fabulous multimedia player

MoonShell can read music (mp3,ogg...), videos (dpg by using the bundled converter), pictures (jpg, gif, bmp...), and text (basic txt format only).

This tutorial in French


(MacLike skin)

Let's get started!

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First, you'll need a flashcart. Either a standard one with flash memory (EZFA, F2A...), or one with external memory cards such as CF/SD/miniSD... (SuperCard, M3, GBA MP, EZ4...).

You'll also need:

- A PassMe (also known as SuperPass 1&2, Passkey, EZpass, Max Media Launcher...), FlashMe, or WifiMe
- A DS

Table of Contents:
1- Downloads and pre-made packages
2- Customize and install MoonShell
3- You own an ordinary flashcart (EZFA, F2A...)
4- You own a GBA MP, an M3 CF/SD, a SuperCard CF/SD, an EZ4...
5- MoonShell usage
6- Converting videos with dpgenc
7- Converting videos with BatchDPG
8- Image Thumbnails

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1- Downloads and pre-made packages:

If you are in a hurry and want to get started quickly, just grab dpgtools (or BatchDPG), one of the pre-made packages below (see the pre-made packages section), and start reading from section 5 of this tutorial

- MoonShell 1.33, latest version, for all flashcarts:

zip

- dpgtools, a tool which converts videos to MoonShell's native format, dpg:

zip 7z

- BatchDPG, a great alternative to dpgenc:

Click here and download the Full version
AviSynth, needed by BatchDPG

Pre-made packages

These are for those who are impatient/newbies or just plain lazy (like me ), and just want to have a functional MoonShell and a nice skin without having to go through steps 2, 3 and 4 below. Please note that they are still customizable, and you can change the skin, settings, etc. anytime:

MoonShell for GBAMP/others
MoonShell for SuperCard CF/SD/miniSD (romman's Moonshell reset for SC.nds is included, launch it from within MoonShell to go back to the SC menu)
MoonShell for SuperCard Lite (patched with romman's MoonShell patcher)
MoonShell for M3 CF/SD
MoonShell for slim M3 SD
MoonShell for Max Media Player
MoonShell for EZ4
MoonShell for flashcarts (EZFA, F2A, etc): Special instructions: unzip, put media files in files_EXFS folder, run CreateNDSROM_for_EXFS.bat, then flash the newly created .ds.gba or .nds (depends on your flashcart).

The MacLike skin is included. All you need to do is download the correct zip file for your flashcart, unzip it to the root of your CF/SD, and that's it.
If you use one of these packages, you can ignore section 2, 3, and 4 of this tutorial and hop on to section 5: MoonShell usage.


MoonShell Official Mirror

Also visit The Official Website for news, older versions, a SDK, and more.


2- Customize and install MoonShell

Start by inserting your CF/SD in your card reader and hooking it up to your computer (you don't have to, but it does make things a bit easier). Then go where you extracted the MoonShell zip file, and launch Setup.exe:



Choose between Japanese and English here (and check the box to save the setting so it doesn't ask you again next time), and press OK




Then choose the letter corresponding to your CF/SD, and press OK. You can also choose one of your hard disks (C:, D: etc.), and once Setup is done, copy the newly appeared files (BOOT_MP*.nds and the "shell" folder) on your CF/SD.
Choose "EXFS for FlashCart" if you own an ordinary flashcart.

After pressing OK, you'll have this:



This is the main interface. Let's check it out part by part:




Start by checking these 4 boxes. It's useful, and if you change your mind later you can just delete the extra files from the "shell" folder).




Check the box if you want to activate the clock plugin. It's a clock that appears on the top screen when the DS in inactive (just like a screen saver). Use the drop-down list to choose the type and style of the clock.




This drop-down list determines the type of character encoding MoonShell uses. Especially useful if you listen to music with tags in other languages, such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese... Leave the default setting if you don't know what this is for.




Here, check the box corresponding to your linker in the "Rom image" section, and uncheck the others. This should be straightforward. When you're done, click the Setup button.

An nds file and a "shell" folder will appear on your CF/SD. Before closing itself, setup will ask you if you want to edit the global.ini file. See below for more details on this file.

- shell: This folder contains a file called global.ini. This file is used to pass configuration options to MoonShell, and you should have a look at it. The file is self-explanatory, just open it up in a text editor, and everything is explained inside.

In the directory where you extracted the MoonShell zip, there is a folder called misc, which contains another folder called "skins".

- skins: As you might have guessed, this folder contains skins for MoonShell. Each folder corresponds to a different skin. Look at the preview.png file (which is in each skin's folder) to see what the skin looks like. Once you chose one, copy everything that's in the folder and paste in in the "shell" folder of your CF/SD. If you did things correctly, you should get a message asking you if you want to overwrite some files. Say Yes.
If you downloaded a skin from the Internet, the procedure is the same.

Now, let's feed some media to MoonShell.


3- You own an ordinary flashcart (EZFA, F2A...)

With this kind of flashcart, you are limited to 30Mb of data (mp3/dpg/jpg...). Once MoonShell is extracted and customized ( see 2- ) put your media files in the files_EXFS folder (if you can't find it, it means you haven't run Setup.exe yet), then run CreateNDSROM_for_EXFS.bat. This batch file will create a _BOOT_MP_EXFS.ds.gba. Just flash it and use it.


4- You own a GBA MP, an M3 CF/SD, a SuperCard CF/SD, an EZ4...

Once MoonShell is extracted and customized ( see 2- ), just copy your mp3, dpg, jpg and other files to your CF/SD, and run MoonShell on your DS. As opposed to an ordinary flashcart, there is no limit to the total size of the media (except the size of your CF/SD).


5- MoonShell usage


(BlueMoon skin)

Once MoonShell is launched, on the bottom screen you'll see the date and time (or even more, depending on your skin and global.ini), and on the top screen, there will be a file navigator. Using MoonShell is pretty straightforward: choose the file you want to read with the D-pad, press A to read it, and B to stop/go upwards in the folder tree.

X raises the volume, Y lowers it, L pauses the video/song, and R is used to play the next song/video/picture. The D-Pad and stylus are used for the rest.


6- Converting videos with dpgenc

BatchDPG is a good alternative to dpgenc. See section 7 for more information.

Run the dpgenc.exe executable from where you extracted dpgenc. You'll have this:



Let's see this part by part:




The drop-down list is used to change the language of the dpgenc interface. Find your video using the Select button. Cancel closes dpgenc, and Start starts the conversion.

- Show Options: check this box to have all available options.




- Sampling rate: Sound quality. The higher the better, but only one setting is available: 32000.

- Bitrate: As above, sound quality. The higher the better. 128kbps or 96kbps seem to be a good setting.

- Volume: Lets you add some sound volume. Note:This setting is grayed out on recent versions of dpgenc. You can now adjust the volume within the DS (up to 400%), so this setting has become useless

- Drop-down menu: Method used to extract the sound track of the video. Many methods are available: mencoder, ffmpeg, extractwave or demuxed file. Use mencoder or ffmpeg.




- Re-encode video stream: Check this to totally re encode the video (very very very recommended, so don't uncheck this)

- Video width: Self-explanatory. The maximum setting is 256 (horizontal resolution of the DS screen). The lower the setting, the smaller the video, and the uglier the video when stretched out to fill the whole screen. Use 256!

- Video Aspect ratio: Self-explanatory: 16/9 (movie), 4/3 (TV), 1:2.35(CinemaScope) or auto detect.

- Video Bitrate: Self-explanatory. The higher the setting, the better the quality, and the larger the video. Avoid using high settings, or else the video won't be smooth (with a sort of black fuzz when a character is moving) and the video might even stop for a few seconds if there is too much action on the screen.

- Video Framerate: Same advice as above. 18fps seems to be a good setting for some anime or a TV show (4/3). You can use higher settings for a movie (16/9), with 24 or 25fps (keep in mind that it's useless to put a higher framerate than the original video). If you get some black blur when there is lots of action on the video, lower this setting.

- Video Brightness: Self-explanatory. The higher the brighter. Only use if your videos are too dark or bright on your DS.

- Blur: The more the cursor is on the left, the blurrier the video. 95% is a good setting, as it removes most visible image compression.

- Flip video: What's this for? I don't really know. Maybe it's useful if you have a matrox G400, or if you want to watch movies with the DS upside-down :oops:

- The last line: Lets you customize mencoder's commands and switches. You shouldn't modify this, unless you want to add some filters or switches. If you're interested in this, first read mencoder's manual.

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Once you're done selecting your video and adjusting your settings, press Start.

After running a test with the settings seen on the screenshot above, here are my results:

- Anime (4:3) ~23min, AVI (Xvid+MP3):
The conversion speed is about 23fps on my Pentium M 1.3GHz. I get a 55Mb dpg with good quality (sound and video), no black blur when there's motion. However, when there's lots of action on the screen, the video freezes for 1 or 2 seconds.

- Movie (16:9), live action, ~2h, AVI (Xvid+AC3):
The conversion speed is about 35fps on my Pentium M 1.3GHz. I get a 266Mb dpg with good quality (sound and video), no black blur when there's motion. No video freezing here.


7- Converting videos with BatchDPG

LS5's BatchDPG is a pretty good alternative to dpgenc. Among other enhancements, we have the possibility to create a list of videos to convert, better video quality, and the ability to add external subtitles to the video.



The defaults settings are good, and the optimal framerate is calculated automatically. You shouldn't have to modify those settings.

1- Pick your video (Media File) and a subtitle file if you have one
2- Choose the temporary and output directory (respectively Temp dir and Output dir).
3- Click on Add
4- Repeat steps 1 and 3 for each one of the videos you wish to convert
5- Click on Run to start converting.


8- Image Thumbnails

Version 1.3 introduced a thumbnails system:



To use this, first put the images you want to see on your DS (and that you want thumbnails for) in an empty folder. Then go to the folder where you extracted MoonShell, and you'll find an executable called CreateThumbnail.exe. Run it, choose an image from the folder you just created, and press OK. The program will create thumbnails for all the images in the folder in a _THUMBNL.MSL file. Just copy the folder on your CF/SD, and you're done.

You may also modify the options in CreateThumbnail.ini (which appears after the first time you run the CreateThumbnail program) and global.ini to tweak the color depth and miniature sizes.


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PS: I have trouble uploading the pictures to scdev, so we'll have to stick with imageshack until it's fixed.

There you go :mrgreen:

Any questions, mistakes, suggestions or requests? Drop me a line



This tutorial (text only) is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

[th2]

PLEASE HELP!! Every time i press a image it always say does not support jpg. Why? How do i make it support JPG?

[TheStick]

Reading the tutorial might be a good start...

[th2]

Reading the tutorial might be a good start...

I used a pre-made one Ronnman one. But it still says the same thing. Please help

[TheStick]

Reading the tutorial might be a good start...

I used a pre-made one Ronnman one. But it still says the same thing. Please help

Give me some specs: what linker are you using, and which MoonShell version are you using. Also, try using one of the pre-made packages in the tutorial.

[th2]

Reading the tutorial might be a good start...

I used a pre-made one Ronnman one. But it still says the same thing. Please help

Give me some specs: what linker are you using, and which MoonShell version are you using. Also, try using one of the pre-made packages in the tutorial.

Im using monshell v.131. I dont know what you mean by linker (sorry)

[Ashton]

Pretty nice tutorial. And I sorta needed that too.
By the way, would you mind if I translated (to portuguese-Brasil) and posted it in a forum (psxgen.net...not only about PS systems tough)? And use those images too, I could easilly upload them somewhere if you prefer.

[TheStick]

Im using monshell v.131. I dont know what you mean by linker (sorry)

Just use one of the pre-made packages in the tutorial, and you'll be fine.

[TheStick]

Pretty nice tutorial. And I sorta needed that too.
By the way, would you mind if I translated (to portuguese-Brasil) and posted it in a forum (psxgen.net...not only about PS systems tough)? And use those images too, I could easilly upload them somewhere if you prefer.

Thanks

I don't mind at all, as long as you give credit, link back here and respect the creative commons licence

[KenshinX88]

I used your setting for converting my movies and they frequently freeze. I'm trying to watch anime btw.

[bigboicee]

is there anyway to make moonshell boot directly without going to the menu?

[onekelly]

Well there is another tutorial on gbatemp called Videos on Moonshell with BatchDPG Guide http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=35547

There area a few recommendations I tried and seemed to help, under the FAQ section there is the following:

"Video skips slightly: Open your "global.ini" in the Shell folder of MoonShell with Notepad and edit the following - Dithering=1 / GOPSkip=1 / AdaptiveDelayControl=1 and replace the 1's with 0's"

This seemed to work with me. There are a few things in it about FPS that you may want to look into TheStick. Like the following:

(this is also below recommended settings)
"If you plan on watching shows with alot of action like Prison Break, and etc. I think setting the video bitrates higher and FPS to 20 would help ALOT, but I am not sure how much the audio will be ahead of the video if at all. During several tests, I have noticed settings FPS to 25 resulted in audio ahead of the video by alot, so I would not recommend setting it to that. Changing the bitrate of the audio will also have no impact on it being played ahead by more. The DS cannot handle a very high quality video ( 30FPS, 1024 video bitrate ) resulting in the video being rendered slower."

I do not know if this is true but it is interesting

(Above credit to yee at gbatemp for the above text in my post)

[deeplennon]

Great tutorial, I really appreciated it, thanks.

[ryocho]

The premade package for SC Lite doesn't support mp3?  I try to use the premade SC Lite package and when I try to play a mp3 file I would get the error "not support ext.mp3"

[richardv]

You set it up wrong.
You need to have the shell folder with plugins folder with plugins or it wont work