The version of CHDman that I had used actually had a batch option where you could literally throw all the files into a folder, double-click the .bat file, and it would convert everything in that folder for you. But I love that someone made a better user interface for those who don't really feel safe using command line tools.
@@Dracossaint In all honesty I don't remember where I downloaded it from, and due to the shadiness of just searching up software and encouraging people to download it I'd rather not do that. Perhaps check the link here, since it has to be downloaded for Russ's solution anyway, and see if it has that functionality?
This is the version I use in combination with a version of PSX Renamer that has PS1 and PS2 Redump databases, which renames my PS1 games in 'Game Name (Region)' and PS2 games in 'Game Name [Disc Serial]'. Been years since I've had them and I forgot where I got them from, but they still work great today.
Great idea for a video! I think a lot of this kind of content gets swept under the rug because it doesn't seem as exciting but for the retro community it's gold!
I tell people that are interested in emulation that there's actually 3 parts to the hobby. 1. Finding/Getting Roms and managing file structures/storage. 2. Tweaking and configuring emulators. 3. Actually playing the games. Sometimes I find I spend more time doing 1 and 2.
This video is essential. I wish this had come out when I first learning the hobby. I only came across CHDMan recently when trying to figure out why Swanstation wasn't loading my roms. But thanks Russ for making it, I now have something to share when I help other people.
h=Honestly CHD files are still technically kind of new. CHDman was only release 2019 and disk based emulators have been slowly introducing support. They are defintally the best way to store all ISOs nowwith the exception of gamecube and wii where RVZ is standard.
@@chronossage I found out about CHDman this year, after getting my Steam Deck. I was looking for a way to both save space and get roms to work with retroachivements.
adding the disc control explanation was a good idea. two things i would've added, first that pbp and m3u have the advantage of make in-game saves work across multple discs without hassle. second, i would've recommended a side note that the "load disc" isn't something anyone would typically want to select as it doesn't do what one would think it does. retroarch's disc swapping is far from intuitive, but you nailed the steps one should use, even with m3u files: eject, change index, insert. simple, but people typically get derailed by the load disc option.
This feels really relevant for me since the SD card on my steam deck is almost at capacity. I’d also be interested in a video just on bootlogos for various systems as well as videos on PS3 and Vita emulation for steam deck if that’s something you’re already interested in making. Thanks for all your work Russ!
This is amazing! Thank for this guide, Russ! I only knew about the CHD format. However, I didn't know about PBP and RVZ formats. Before this guide, multi-disc games were a bit of a thorn in my side and I just outright didn't bother with them at all. I'm glad there is a simple way to compress and load multi-disc games without any trouble! I also now don't have to worry as much about game file sizes and can fit more of the games I want onto my SD card with some space left over!
Literally was going crazy yesterday trying to get my PS1 Roms to work lol. Some do and sone don't. Def going to try file type conversion next. Thanks for the info
I just wanted to find this video and thank you. I googled chd compression and your guide came up and it was extremely informative and helpful. Really appreciate your dedication to the channel and to the scene as a whole.
Fantastic Russ, I was always a bit confused on the CHD files and when to use them. Also the multi-disc solution is critical for me, very much appreciate the video and ALWAYS the written guides you do! Thanks much!
This is my favorite type of video on your channel RetroGameCorps, thanks so much for the upload. I’ve been trying to keep a clean directory of games and this directly helps at that goal!
@@RetroGameCorps I know the video is a bit old, but PPSSPP now support .chd files. But it seems the image quality after is not good...(I use CreateDVD btw)
After binge watching a bunch of your vids, I grabbed an Anbernic RG353M the other week, and just put in an order for a Steam Deck yesterday! Perfect timing on this.
Thank you again Russ!! You keep killing it with the videos and presentation is phenomenal!!! Been looking to get this done and didn't know the avenues to do it!
To remove the process of renaming the file after compiling into a PBP, just click on options > folders > choose "Create maingame title folder". This will create a main game folder titled whatever the game is, with no need to rename the eboot.
Can’t say this enough, I truly enjoy your content. Your tutorials and guides should be gold standard when it comes to emulation. I come on RUclips daily to see if you, ETA Prime, or Taki Udon post a video because you guys actually worth watching. Keep pushing out content bro, want to see you at 1 million subs soon
Great video! I didn’t really understand much about the different file formats but I luckily have my entire PS1 library on my Odin as CHD files. This helps me so I clean up my other game systems. Could not have gotten started playing retro games without your RUclips channel. You are a retro rockstar!
Russ, you are a godsend for putting this out this video when you did. I've been having trouble finding ways to convert my game files ever since I got a Miyoo Mini. I would see multiple bin files and so many other additional files and didn't know what to do or where to look for help. My PC even had issues running CHDman as it would instantly close the application when it showed up for a fraction of a second. I got all the advice I wanted out of this simplified video and now I'm going to try again. Thank you!
Wow this video was perfect. I like how you explained everything. I've already done all of this with my collection but I was still interested enough to watch the entire video. This is good stuff!
I will definitely be trying this. I have far too many bin files and it is a royal pain navigating them. Hopefully this method is till available, I'm a bit late to this 😅
I just went through this whole process for my collection a month or so ago. It's really nice having everything more efficient! Great job making this video, really concise reference point!
Great video as usual. Funny I've the file types before but never realized they were compressed versions. Have to do this once I get my steam deck, Thanks!!!
Your channel really is a godsent. Half the reason I got a steamdeck tbh, so good to know whats possible with that machine in a comprehensive video format. This vid in particular saves so much space its not even funny, I have a 1tb sd card and I was getting scared my library might be too much for it but now I'm not anymore.
Thank you for doing this video because I have been collecting a number of roms and decided to see if there's an alternate version of compressing files into smaller ones. And now come to think of it I might be do this method and save some space and time because I was also thinking about getting another HDD or SSD external to keep these game files in the future. But thanks again and keep up with the great emulation community of work.
PSA for Dreamcast fans trying to do this. There's that one lair where roms exist, but when you download instead of gdi files you get a bin cue situation. Find the GDI version at a different site (something like ROMance...) And make sure you're converting to CHD from GDI not bin cue. The converter will work, but the resulting CHD file will have problems, for example Redream will not detect it. It's a shame, because aforementioned lair place is a great archive.
The only drawback about that lair is it's limited to one download at a time and takes about an hour or two for each PS3 game. Still was worth getting all I wanted from there and is one of my favorite places to visit.
Please don't use PBP! It's lossy compression, unlike the lossless CHD. That means you're compressing it by taking a hit to the quality, and PS1 games do NOT need any reduction in quality, haha. You're also unable to restore the original clean file, which means you won't be able to apply any patches.
@@Kevin-vh6nn sorry bro but y you chattin? He gave the best options in the vid? Can you tell me what he said a better option is for multi disk games (ps1) that’s not PBP?
@bruyeretv CHD is the best but I just went through my ps1 games and I used PBP for final fantasy 7. This was a month ago when I spent all day doing my roms so and there had to been a reason why I kept the PBP version for that. Download both but I can tell you CHD is what you use for most ps1 games
A super helpful guide, I went through and compressed my game collection a few months back. I debated using the .chd format but found that just compressing the files using the .rar format would yield smaller file sizes, only downside is that I have to uncompress any games I want to play before I'm able to play them. Definitely will go back and compress all my multi-disc ps1 games using the format you showed
This is exactly what I've been looking for! Heads-up: I searched the words "organize" and "multi-disc" a lot, might help to add that to the tags or title or something for future reference
My hard drive thanks you very much! I have reduced the size of my collection by about 50GBs. It also just feels great to finally have every ROM in the same file format AND get rid of those stupid CUE files. Thank you for being awesome and putting in the hard hours researching these solutions. Note: Some of my Wii games were in WBFS format. I had to convert them to ISO with an app called "WBFS to ISO" first, then turn them into RVZ with Dolphin. Well worth the effort.
In terms of space saving, it's probably more worth it to convert multi-disc games into CHDs and make a simple M3U8 file instead of converting them to PBP. In my experience, separate CHDs are smaller than their PBP counterparts.
If you run chdman in a terminal, you should also add "-np $(nproc)" option so it could use all CPU threads instead of just one. Or type the number manually, e.g. "-np 16" for an 8c16t CPU.
Thanks man this was one of the most essential videos, your last video about disks was about creating playlists for multi these. just compare this to that one. any way really good to have all of them here at once and I hope you have uploaded the psx2psp your self and it come with the BASE file =))))
The namDHC gui is a godsend right now! I'm on Linux so compiling tools for such a niche use can be a pain, but with Wine and namDHC, I can finally clean up all the track bins I have!
As a reminder, if you plan on using ODE's on original hardware, they most likely do not have the ability to decompress on the fly so you have to use uncompressed images for those.
Umm, I think I love you! XD But genuinely while I've had zip files for game boy and N64 in the past, I never thought that compressing bigger games was possible. Rn I'm looking at upgrading my phone though I'd be loosing my SD card slot, so now knowing about compressing games, you've helped me loads!
I recently got back into emulating disc-based games and it's amazing how far the compression technology has come. I remember having to mount .iso files that were almost the same size as the console's disc format, and now I just *ahem* acquired Tactics Ogre on PS1 at a whopping 29.4mb. I'm interested in what your preferred platform for emulating PS2 and newer consoles is though because it looks like PS2 games are still pretty large.
Love this channel. I’ve referenced it a lot for my deck. Anyone else constantly have trouble with ps3 iso files? Pkg always works but I can’t never get iso to work no matter what I do
Great guide! I use CHD's for my PSX but didn't know other systems used it too so I've learned something intresting. Might do this over the weekend. Also, I'd like to know how to get the Cube logo at startup!
Also: PSP isos can be compressed to .cso files, which have the benefit of also working on modded psp and even ps vita! I’m using a program called yacc (yet another cso converter)
![Tee Grizzley - Detroit (Feat. 42 Dugg) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aeKfTtt0x14/mqdefault.jpg)
The version of CHDman that I had used actually had a batch option where you could literally throw all the files into a folder, double-click the .bat file, and it would convert everything in that folder for you. But I love that someone made a better user interface for those who don't really feel safe using command line tools.
this is the version i use its super easy
👍 that's what I use also and I've never had any issues
What's that versions name?
@@Dracossaint In all honesty I don't remember where I downloaded it from, and due to the shadiness of just searching up software and encouraging people to download it I'd rather not do that. Perhaps check the link here, since it has to be downloaded for Russ's solution anyway, and see if it has that functionality?
This is the version I use in combination with a version of PSX Renamer that has PS1 and PS2 Redump databases, which renames my PS1 games in 'Game Name (Region)' and PS2 games in 'Game Name [Disc Serial]'.
Been years since I've had them and I forgot where I got them from, but they still work great today.
Great idea for a video! I think a lot of this kind of content gets swept under the rug because it doesn't seem as exciting but for the retro community it's gold!
I tell people that are interested in emulation that there's actually 3 parts to the hobby. 1. Finding/Getting Roms and managing file structures/storage. 2. Tweaking and configuring emulators. 3. Actually playing the games. Sometimes I find I spend more time doing 1 and 2.
@@Chummy8 So true. My wife says she thinks I enjoy the tinkering more than the playing haha
@@ninjason57 I watch a few nostalgia bait RUclips channels and am constantly finding new old games. So it's back to step 1.
This video is essential. I wish this had come out when I first learning the hobby. I only came across CHDMan recently when trying to figure out why Swanstation wasn't loading my roms. But thanks Russ for making it, I now have something to share when I help other people.
h=Honestly CHD files are still technically kind of new. CHDman was only release 2019 and disk based emulators have been slowly introducing support. They are defintally the best way to store all ISOs nowwith the exception of gamecube and wii where RVZ is standard.
@@chronossage I found out about CHDman this year, after getting my Steam Deck. I was looking for a way to both save space and get roms to work with retroachivements.
adding the disc control explanation was a good idea. two things i would've added, first that pbp and m3u have the advantage of make in-game saves work across multple discs without hassle. second, i would've recommended a side note that the "load disc" isn't something anyone would typically want to select as it doesn't do what one would think it does. retroarch's disc swapping is far from intuitive, but you nailed the steps one should use, even with m3u files: eject, change index, insert. simple, but people typically get derailed by the load disc option.
This feels really relevant for me since the SD card on my steam deck is almost at capacity. I’d also be interested in a video just on bootlogos for various systems as well as videos on PS3 and Vita emulation for steam deck if that’s something you’re already interested in making. Thanks for all your work Russ!
This is amazing! Thank for this guide, Russ! I only knew about the CHD format. However, I didn't know about PBP and RVZ formats. Before this guide, multi-disc games were a bit of a thorn in my side and I just outright didn't bother with them at all. I'm glad there is a simple way to compress and load multi-disc games without any trouble!
I also now don't have to worry as much about game file sizes and can fit more of the games I want onto my SD card with some space left over!
Awesome guide as always!
Crazy, I literally just figured out compressing CHD and RVZ over the weekend to try and fit more games in my RP3+.
Literally was going crazy yesterday trying to get my PS1 Roms to work lol. Some do and sone don't. Def going to try file type conversion next.
Thanks for the info
I just wanted to find this video and thank you. I googled chd compression and your guide came up and it was extremely informative and helpful.
Really appreciate your dedication to the channel and to the scene as a whole.
For those with a steam deck, Emudeck compression tool will take care of a lot of this for you
That's true! And it looks like it's just a version of CHDman.
@@Chummy8 I have looked into it, it is "just" chdman.
is it as simple as just using the compression tool, new to steamdeck
Fantastic Russ, I was always a bit confused on the CHD files and when to use them. Also the multi-disc solution is critical for me, very much appreciate the video and ALWAYS the written guides you do! Thanks much!
This is my favorite type of video on your channel RetroGameCorps, thanks so much for the upload. I’ve been trying to keep a clean directory of games and this directly helps at that goal!
Glad I could help!
@@RetroGameCorps I know the video is a bit old, but PPSSPP now support .chd files. But it seems the image quality after is not good...(I use CreateDVD btw)
After binge watching a bunch of your vids, I grabbed an Anbernic RG353M the other week, and just put in an order for a Steam Deck yesterday! Perfect timing on this.
Thank you again Russ!! You keep killing it with the videos and presentation is phenomenal!!! Been looking to get this done and didn't know the avenues to do it!
To remove the process of renaming the file after compiling into a PBP, just click on options > folders > choose "Create maingame title folder". This will create a main game folder titled whatever the game is, with no need to rename the eboot.
Can’t say this enough, I truly enjoy your content. Your tutorials and guides should be gold standard when it comes to emulation. I come on RUclips daily to see if you, ETA Prime, or Taki Udon post a video because you guys actually worth watching. Keep pushing out content bro, want to see you at 1 million subs soon
This guide was incredibly easy to follow and listen to, great job. helped me convert all my .7z library
Dude the most helpful video you ever made
Essential knowledge from a essential channel 😁
So odd, I was trying to figure out ps1 file format to use on garlic is for rg35xx!!! Thanks so much!!!
I was literally just thinking of looking for a video like this when I got home from work tonight. Thank you!
Great video! I didn’t really understand much about the different file formats but I luckily have my entire PS1 library on my Odin as CHD files. This helps me so I clean up my other game systems. Could not have gotten started playing retro games without your RUclips channel. You are a retro rockstar!
Holy shit someone that actually knows how to make a tutorial video. A rare sight indeed. Thank you.
Thank you very much !!. Make my day, I just began the retroclassics and your videos are very ilustrative and crystal clear for a nob like me.
Thats exactly what I was looking for!
Russ, you are a godsend for putting this out this video when you did. I've been having trouble finding ways to convert my game files ever since I got a Miyoo Mini. I would see multiple bin files and so many other additional files and didn't know what to do or where to look for help. My PC even had issues running CHDman as it would instantly close the application when it showed up for a fraction of a second.
I got all the advice I wanted out of this simplified video and now I'm going to try again. Thank you!
That's exactly what I needed lol, been struggling to juggle between different programs lol ty!
Wow this video was perfect. I like how you explained everything. I've already done all of this with my collection but I was still interested enough to watch the entire video. This is good stuff!
Thanks man you helped out so much, It took me all day but I finally organized all of my ps1 folder.
I will definitely be trying this. I have far too many bin files and it is a royal pain navigating them. Hopefully this method is till available, I'm a bit late to this 😅
I just went through this whole process for my collection a month or so ago. It's really nice having everything more efficient!
Great job making this video, really concise reference point!
Great video as usual. Funny I've the file types before but never realized they were compressed versions. Have to do this once I get my steam deck, Thanks!!!
This was so helpful. Used it for my PS1, PS2, and Gamecube roms!
Fantastic guide and walkthrough. Thank you very much for this extremally useful video. I had no clue how to do this until now. Great video as usual!
blessed dude. didn't know about this
thanks just got CHDman and I am excited to get into my ps1 gaming on my miyoo mini! Thanks for the video.
Your channel really is a godsent.
Half the reason I got a steamdeck tbh, so good to know whats possible with that machine in a comprehensive video format.
This vid in particular saves so much space its not even funny, I have a 1tb sd card and I was getting scared my library might be too much for it but now I'm not anymore.
These kinds of videos are SO helpful and why I love this channel. Thanks so much Russ!
Thank you for doing this video because I have been collecting a number of roms and decided to see if there's an alternate version of compressing files into smaller ones. And now come to think of it I might be do this method and save some space and time because I was also thinking about getting another HDD or SSD external to keep these game files in the future. But thanks again and keep up with the great emulation community of work.
PSA for Dreamcast fans trying to do this. There's that one lair where roms exist, but when you download instead of gdi files you get a bin cue situation. Find the GDI version at a different site (something like ROMance...) And make sure you're converting to CHD from GDI not bin cue. The converter will work, but the resulting CHD file will have problems, for example Redream will not detect it. It's a shame, because aforementioned lair place is a great archive.
The only drawback about that lair is it's limited to one download at a time and takes about an hour or two for each PS3 game. Still was worth getting all I wanted from there and is one of my favorite places to visit.
@@AmpliFreQuency Yes. It's very slow. For smaller roms it's pretty excellent tho - PS1 and below.
Thank you for someone just starting out this is very informative keep these rolling please
I needed this video so much!!! My psx, psp and Dreamcast folders on Retroarch or basically any frontend always looks like a confusing mess.
I just started looking into bin > CHD conversion. I will def check this video out!
I honestly completely forgot about the .PBP format. That's a great tip. Thanks homie!
dude this channel is so useful and such an important knowledge centre for the retro game community. ty russ.
Please don't use PBP! It's lossy compression, unlike the lossless CHD. That means you're compressing it by taking a hit to the quality, and PS1 games do NOT need any reduction in quality, haha. You're also unable to restore the original clean file, which means you won't be able to apply any patches.
Your the best man. My phone is at 126/128 gb so I need to do something 😄
So what do you do for multi disk games
@@bruyeretv
He gave you the best options in the video.
What system and multiple games are you trying to compress in 1?
@@Kevin-vh6nn sorry bro but y you chattin? He gave the best options in the vid? Can you tell me what he said a better option is for multi disk games (ps1) that’s not PBP?
@bruyeretv
CHD is the best but I just went through my ps1 games and I used PBP for final fantasy 7.
This was a month ago when I spent all day doing my roms so and there had to been a reason why I kept the PBP version for that.
Download both but I can tell you CHD is what you use for most ps1 games
Thanks! I was using that cli commands to convert, but this GUI is really helpful!
Thx Russ, I've been wondering for a little while what format to use with multiple device and emulators 👍🏻
Really good guide, and came at the perfect time, I wanted this exact thing for my RG35XX. Thank you.
Excellent video, my retro gaming experience would be so much poorer without your excellent videos and guides. Thank you so much.
A super helpful guide, I went through and compressed my game collection a few months back. I debated using the .chd format but found that just compressing the files using the .rar format would yield smaller file sizes, only downside is that I have to uncompress any games I want to play before I'm able to play them. Definitely will go back and compress all my multi-disc ps1 games using the format you showed
Thank you. This has been a great help and the best explanation I've seen.
GREAT VIDEO RUSS!!... Really came in handy for my PSX Collection.
This is exactly what I've been looking for! Heads-up: I searched the words "organize" and "multi-disc" a lot, might help to add that to the tags or title or something for future reference
all I have to say to you my dude is that this is the most perfect video about this stuff big love from Amsterdam in Europa
This is absolutely SUPER helpful! Thanks so much!
My hard drive thanks you very much! I have reduced the size of my collection by about 50GBs. It also just feels great to finally have every ROM in the same file format AND get rid of those stupid CUE files. Thank you for being awesome and putting in the hard hours researching these solutions.
Note: Some of my Wii games were in WBFS format. I had to convert them to ISO with an app called "WBFS to ISO" first, then turn them into RVZ with Dolphin. Well worth the effort.
Thank you very much for this video and those chapters
In terms of space saving, it's probably more worth it to convert multi-disc games into CHDs and make a simple M3U8 file instead of converting them to PBP. In my experience, separate CHDs are smaller than their PBP counterparts.
Im using a retroid Pocket 3+ and i can get retro achievements in duckstation with the PBP format! Love the videos Russ!!!
Legend as always!
Thanks a lot, now an emulator setup guide will be nice!
Thanks for this, i was just wandering last night if a video about compressing existed !
This is fantastic. I know what I'll be doing tonight.
Your a god send thank you for saving me tones of space on my HDD
If you run chdman in a terminal, you should also add "-np $(nproc)" option so it could use all CPU threads instead of just one. Or type the number manually, e.g. "-np 16" for an 8c16t CPU.
Thanks! very clear and useful info
Never knew of this methods
Very informative content ❤️❤️❤️
nice vid sir thankyou ^_^
The cave painting comment got me! I am so damn old...
Fantastic content as usual, thanks a lot Russ
Thanks man this was one of the most essential videos, your last video about disks was about creating playlists for multi these. just compare this to that one. any way really good to have all of them here at once and I hope you have uploaded the psx2psp your self and it come with the BASE file =))))
The namDHC gui is a godsend right now! I'm on Linux so compiling tools for such a niche use can be a pain, but with Wine and namDHC, I can finally clean up all the track bins I have!
"Open up a bottle of wine."
All Russ' 11 year old fans: uh ok
Thank you for this man, great video
Thanks for the guide Russ!
As a reminder, if you plan on using ODE's on original hardware, they most likely do not have the ability to decompress on the fly so you have to use uncompressed images for those.
This is awesome! What a game changer. Thanks!
Love this guide, thanks !!!
Umm, I think I love you! XD But genuinely while I've had zip files for game boy and N64 in the past, I never thought that compressing bigger games was possible. Rn I'm looking at upgrading my phone though I'd be loosing my SD card slot, so now knowing about compressing games, you've helped me loads!
Thanks! Huge help to everyone :D
This was brilliant. Thanks mate.
This is an amazing guide thank you
I recently got back into emulating disc-based games and it's amazing how far the compression technology has come. I remember having to mount .iso files that were almost the same size as the console's disc format, and now I just *ahem* acquired Tactics Ogre on PS1 at a whopping 29.4mb. I'm interested in what your preferred platform for emulating PS2 and newer consoles is though because it looks like PS2 games are still pretty large.
Great video !! Thanks Russ.
Thank you for this video.
Love this channel. I’ve referenced it a lot for my deck. Anyone else constantly have trouble with ps3 iso files? Pkg always works but I can’t never get iso to work no matter what I do
that is one great video here !
Great guide, thanks!
nostalgia :3 i still remember when psp era i'm struggling with psxtopsp software lol 😂
Thank you Russ !!! ✌✌
Thank you, this helped a lot
Awesome, thank you!
Great guide! I use CHD's for my PSX but didn't know other systems used it too so I've learned something intresting. Might do this over the weekend. Also, I'd like to know how to get the Cube logo at startup!
So very well explained
Also: PSP isos can be compressed to .cso files, which have the benefit of also working on modded psp and even ps vita! I’m using a program called yacc (yet another cso converter)
Congrats! great video :)
lmao this video would’ve been perfect for me just TWO days ago when I was tearing my hair out with PS1 files. Much appreciated!
Great info!