Playing Videos on a Nintendo DS with Moonshell

Flash Carts

In order to play any video content on the Nintendo DS hardware you'll need a flash cartridge so that you can run the video application called Moonshell, you'll also need to store the video content on the flash cartridge itself as the Nintendo DS has no accessible internal memory of it's own.

There are a few Slot 1 and Slot 2 flash cartridges available, the most popular are the Supercard (Slot 2), R4 (slot 1) and DSone (slot1).

Software

You'll first need to download Moonshell, this package includes both the software for the Nintendo DS as well as the conversion software (DPG Tools) you'll need to convert your video files to the correct format for Moonshell to be able to play them.

Installation of Moonshell

Once you've downloaded Moonshell you'll need to extract the contents, the files you'll need to copy to your flash memory card are will depend on the type of flash cart you use:

• _BOOT_MP.nds (R4 DSone)
  
• _BOOT_MP_SC.nds (supercard)
  
• _BOOT_MP_SmallM3SD.nds (M3)

Copy the relevant file to your flash memory card. At this point you may want to put the flash memory card into the flash cartridge and boot up your Nintendo DS, you can then try to run the application by selecting the file you copied.

Converting Videos to the DPG Format

The other software within files the you extracted make up the DPG tools, the main one you'll need is the encoder it should be called dpgenc.exe.

Run this application and choose the relevant language, now simply select the video you want to encode to the DPG format and click start then choose the output location for the newly encoded DPG file.

Once conversion has finished copy the dpg file to your flash memory card and insert into your  flash cartridge. Next boot you DS and run Moonshell and then sleect the DPG file you copied across. All being well you should be be watching the video.