Smooth Video Playback with SVP

SVP is a program that allows you to watch a video on your computer and use frame interpolation to create smoother playback at whatever framerate you desire. I found that greatly improved movies by playing them back at 30fps on my 60hz monitor so that it felt "cinematic" whilst keeping linear motion, such as when the camera pans to the side, smooth rather than jagged. It is also great for playing back all other content, such as music videos, at 60fps.

Below are the steps that Ubuntu 18.04 users can take in order to install the software and start playing content.

To perform this interpolation on the fly, SVP needs a powerful CPU. If you want to watch the content on a mobile device, such as a tablet, then you may wish to consider re-encoding the file using Butterflow instead.

Installation Steps

The first thing we need to do is install the necessary dependencies which includes the MPV video player which SVP will use to play videos.

sudo apt update 
sudo apt install mpv libmediainfo0v5 libqt5concurrent5 -y
sudo apt dist-upgrade -y

Now we need to download the program itself (downloads page). To do this run the command below:

wget -O svp4-linux.4.3.180.tar.bz2 https://www.svp-team.com/files/svp4-latest.php?linux

If that doesn't work for whatever reason, just manually download it by clicking on the download link under SVP 4 Linux here.

Once the file has downloaded, extract it and execute the .run file in order to run the setup.

You now have Smooth video project installed. During the first run on your computer it will perform a performance test during which you should make sure all your other applications are closed.

Now when you want to play a video at a smoother framerate, just start the program, and click open file via mpv before finding your video file and playing it back. It worked for me on all videos, including 1080p BluRAY HEVC movies, although those had a sound synchronization issue.

References

• SmoothVideo Project (SVP) Wiki