SVP3:Manager

From SmoothVideo Project
(Redirected from SVP:Manager)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Svp-menu-en.png

This is a legacy SmoothVideo Project (SVP) ver.3 user manual.

Used abbreviations:

  • SVP - SmoothVideo Project ver.3.1 package
  • FRC - frame rate conversion - a process converting frame rate frequency, frame interpolation

See also:

The icon

The SVP Manager is being controlled via a context menu of the SVP icon in the notification area:

  • a right-click opens the main SVP menu
  • a double click opens the settings of the currently active profile
  • the current status of the SVP Manager is shown by popup as well as by color and animation of the icon itself
    • yellow - waiting for video playback
    • green - video is bein played using frame interpolation
    • red - SVP is stopped

Main menu entries

SVP Manager allows to access the settings in different range depending on the chosen interface type - "basic", "advanced" or "expert".


Initially the interface is set to basic view, which allows the beginners to change the frequently used parameters and not bother about fine tuning. Advanced users may use the advanced interface and finally experienced users should use the expert interface which opens the access to insecure and experimental SVP parameters.

Basic options

These menu entries are shown in Basic interface.

Video profiles Shows the configures profile list. The last used profile is indicated by a half bold font. Selection of a profile name to edit the profile parameters.

For details see section Managing profiles.

Add...
Create new profile. It is useful when a smooth playback is required with special settings, which differ from standard profiles.

To create a new profile it is necessary to provide the frame size and frame rate of the source video.

Remove...
Remove one or many configured profiles.
Reset to defaults
Calls a window with the system performance test and profile reset to one of the defaults delivered with SVP.
Interface type
  • Basic
  • Advanced
  • Expert
GPU-acceleration (OpenCL) Allows to enable or disable the GPU acceleration to enhance calculations.

If the GPU entry is not active, it means that no compatible GPU has been found on the system. Having a powerful CPU and a weak GPU it makes sense to disable GPU acceleration in order to use the CPU on full performance not getting slowed down by the GPU.

To check the system performance with and without GPU acceleration the test package SVPmark may be used.

Stereo mode (3D) Allows to set manually that the video currently played is in stereo pair format. This is necessary because for stereo pairs a specially adopted mode is required. Possible values:
  • Plain 2D
  • Side-by-side
  • Over-under
  • Half side-by-side
  • Half over-under

In the most cases the mode is set automatically on aspect ration and file analysis for special tags, such as "HOU" or "SBS", but in some cases it is necessary to switch the 3D mode on or force 2D mode for an incorrectly identified video as 3D.

A clear indication of 3D mode faulty enabled on a 2D video is a clear vertical or horizontal line in the exact center of the frame.

Stereo frames order
For systems with active shutter 3D glasses it is necessary to choose the view sequence:
  • Left first, then right
  • Right first, then left
  • Both frames simultaneously
Frame crop Sets the frame cropping mode.

Automated frame analysis for black borders and cropping them allowing all other modes to be combined with enabled "auto cropping":

  • Auto crop black bars

Show the full frame:

  • Disabled

Crop frame to aspect ratio:

  • To 2.40/1.85/1.77/1.33:1

Crop the frame by 4 pixel from each side. This may be useful for video with black lines or artifacts on frame edges (usually on DVD or camcorder capture).

  • By four pixels on each side

Crop to fit frame resolution:

  • To screen AR by 25/50/75%
  • To screen aspect ratio

Set the cropping manually. This will open a dialog to set the fields to crop and on top of the video a corresponding frame will be shown::

  • Custom...
Outer lighting Turns on black border lighting, meaning the spaces between the video frame and screen borders. Prior to use it is necessary to crop all the black borders and artifacts along the video frame edges. Possible values:
  • Disabled
  • Fill black bars only
  • Glow effect
  • Full lighting - turns on the simultaneous black border filling and circular lighting.

The best explanation is a picture:
Svp-lighting-types-en.png

Glow amount
The width of the lighting line in percent of the frame size. In "point-to-point" mode the lighting is "glued" in the way that the resulting frame size (width and height) don't differ from the original size in order to exclude additional scaling of the frame.
  • 5/10/15 %
  • Point-to-point
Lighting type
Allows to choose one of the four preset lighting parameters or set one manually. The lighting is defined by 4 numbers which physical meaning is described on the technical insights page.
  • Type 1/2/3/4
  • Custom - opens a window to set the lighting parameters. The changes will be applied "on-the-fly".
Use SVPlight This will appear only if a separately downloaded extension SVPlight is installed which allows to switch on hardware LED lighting.
SVPlight settings... Opens configuration window of SVPlight.
Language (Язык)
  • English
  • Russian
Information
Additional information
Shows details about resolution and screen refresh frequency, original video and FRC parameters. This information is always required in help requests in our forum.
Performance graphs
Opens a performance graphs window.

Svp-perf-graphs-en.png
It shows:

  • CPU utilization overall and per core
  • SVP-index, should be always between 0.98 and 1.02
  • RAM usage by the video player
  • frame size and rate, selected smoothness factor and resulting frequency

On hover the cursor over the graph the average values will be displayed..

Settings
Check for updates
If turned on, then a periodical check for SVP updates will be performed via the Internet
Load automatically with Windows
Allows to add Manager to the list of programs loaded on Windows start.
Help
Make a donation
Opens the project donation page. Collected funds are spend for web hosting and project development.
About SVP...
Opens the About SVP... windows, showing the SVP version date and number
Exit

Advanced options

These menu items are shown in addition to "Basic options" if the Advanced interface type is chosen.

Video delay This is used on permanent delay between video and audio. It is necessary to figure out a value which fixes the delay. If audio comes after the video, positive values should be used and negative otherwise.

Important: this parameter will not help if the delay is growing.

Demonstration mode This is used to demonstrate the possibilities of SVP and also to compare the original video and video after FRC.

When activated the picture will be divided in two halves vertically. The left half shows the half frames of the original video and the right half shows half frames of SVP processed video.

Since the speed of SVP algorithms depends directly on the frame size for which additional frames are generated, enabling this option will almost double the processing speed (because only the half of the frames will be processed).

Tearing test This is intended to validate the motion stability.

Turning on the tearing test a colored vertical line will be added to the video, which steadily moves side to side. The test becomes successful if the colored line had moved steadily without jumps or stops. This means that the system is configured correctly for a comfortable watching of smooth video.

If the line is jumping, stopping or jiggling, then it means that not all frames are displayed on the monitor or the frames are displayed not steadily.

Probable causes for frame loss or unsteady rendering:

  • insufficient CPU performance: the profile has to be reconfigured
  • not suitable renderer: the renderer has to be changed
  • incomplete support of smoothness enhancement of the ffdshow filter: the ffdshow filter has to be installed from the SVP package
  • slow reading speed of the video file
Video player process priority Watching a video with motion smoothness effect it is recommended to close all other applications, to make the most CPU time available for the resource hungry algorithms of additional frame calculation. If additional applications are run in parallel the smoothed video may slow down or even stop.

The default player priority is already set above average, which can be increased to high, which may exclude slow-downs and stops but may slow down the activity of all other programs running.

Possible values:

  • Don't change
  • Normal / Above normal / High
Video repair
Variable frame rate repair
Forces the frame rate to be doubled independently of the current profile parameters in case when a video with variable bit rate is being processed.
Drop every other frame
In this mode every second frame will be dropped before FRC. For example it can be useful for videos captured from a video card.
Screen selection Per default SVP increases the frame rate to the vertical refresh rate of the monitor (usually 60 Hz). To be able to do this the refresh rate has to be determined for the monitor the video will be displayed on.
  • Select by player window

In this mode the SVP will attempt to find the monitor the video is displayed in and determine the vertical refresh rate of this monitor. In most cases this will be enough, but on some systems it is not possible to determine the rate correctly or some players can't find their windows. In these seldom cases it is possible to set the refresh rate manually.

  • Force...

Shows a window with a list of connected monitors, their determined vertical refresh rate and the possibility to set the rate manually.

Attention: if an incorrect rate is entered, the video on the smoothed video screen won't work correctly, ripping, loosing frames and with other problems.

Information
Last used AVS script
Opens the last automatically generated Avisynth script, which performs the smoothing algorithm with selected settings.
Last launch log
Opens the list of all activities executed by the Manager since program start. If SVP works incorrectly, this file helps finding the cause of the problem and fixing it.
Settings
Show OSD messages
Enables messages over the video frame about the Manager status, cropping parameters and warning about low performance.

Output of multi-line OSD messages has additional demand on the CPU time and can lead to over-all performance drop, smoothness loss and a possible loop of them: high CPU load -> low performance -> Display of OSD message -> high CPU load ....

In such cases it is recommended to lower the profile settings and in cases of high CPU load to turn off OSD messages.

Change default hotkeys
Opens the hot keys modification window , allowing to change or even disable the hot keys.
Disable SVP
This temporarily stops the execution of FRC algorithms. It can be required to speed up the navigation throughout the video file in order to find a specific scene or make a preview.

Expert options

This menu entries are shown additionally to the entries in "Basic options" and "Advanced options" when the Expert interface is chosen.

Processing threads Sets the number of threads for intermediate frame calculation.

In the most cases the automatically set value is optimal but for strong multi-core systems (over 12 cores/threads) the thread number needs to be set manually, because it directly influences the RAM usage. See also technical details.

Possible values:

  • Auto
  • Thread number
Turn off on seek Sets the behavior during the video seek. Fast forward (actually a mouse click on the players timeline) does often lead to different problems such as player hang ups or frame blinking during a long time. This setting helps avoiding those problems:
  • Don't turn off - smoothness remains, but frame blinking during a long time is possible
  • Turn off and on quickly - high possibility of a player hang up
  • Turn off by 1 sec - optimal choice (set by default)
  • Turn off by 2 sec - if the player hang us even on "turn off by 1 sec" setting, then this setting may be tried
Video repair
ffdshow deinterlacing
Enables the corresponding setting in the ffdshow filter. It is sufficient to set up the deinterlacing parameters in ffdshow once and then switch them on or off from Manager. When deinterlacing is used with frame duplication it is handy to use "To screen refresh rate / 2" profile settings "Target frame rate".
Profile selection method The profile is selected automatically based on played video parameters - frame size and frame rate. But it is possible to change the profile selection here.

For details refer to Managing profiles.

Exclude profiles with different frame rates
Forces the algorithm to search for suitable profile along profiles with same frame rate as in the played video and only if that fails the search will be performed along all profiles.
Choose one with nearest pixel rate
"Pixel rate" (product of the area of the frame by the number per second) of the profile should not be greater than or equal to the stream size of played video in order to ensure that for the improvement of the video smoothness is guaranteed enough system resources.
Generate AVS scripts
For video encoder
Generates a ready to use script for saving the video with increased smoothness, whilst the current settings FRC are applied. Selecting this menu item the user will be prompted to save the AVS script to disk. To open and run this script it is required that 'SVP Manager' has been turned off, or his work suspended. This script is perfect for opening it in programs like MeGUI, MediaCoder, VirtualDub, etc.
For XviD4PSP5
Generates a ready to use script to save the video with increased smoothness, while the current FRC aare applied. This filter is designed to open it in the 'XviD4PSP' program.
Показать
Hidden settings
Opens the general SVP configuration file containing all settings. Some of them are not available from the menu. Generally, editing of these settings is not required. 'Do not edit this file if you are not exactly sure why and what you are doing.'

Managing profiles

Profile - a set of settings that are used when videos are played with certain parameters : frame size , frame rate .


In the SVP included ten sets of FRC setting profiles in the FRC, depending on the performance of the system, wherein each set has four profiles set :

  • Video is less than or equal to the standard definition DVD -720x576
  • More than the DVD, but less than the standard 720p-1280x720
  • More than 720p, but less than cropped 1080p( i.e. video format 21:9) -1920x800
  • Everything over 21:9 1080p, including standard 1080p-1920x1080

On video playback the appropriate profile is selected automatically. If the parameters of a specific video differ from those specified in the profile, the profile is selected with the closest values ​​of these parameters . Selection is simply the value of video in Mpixel / s (the product of the frame , in pixels, the number of frames per second) or in frame rate , and then on the stream value.

To control the algorithm selection profile , there are two settings for automated profile selection ( only available in the interface type "expert"):

  • 'Exclude profiles with different frame rates' - causes the algorithm to search for suitable profiles in the first place among the profiles with the same frame rate as that of the playing video, and only in case of failure - of all profiles. The search stops at the first suitable profile is found.
  • 'Choose one with nearest pixel rate' - when the setting is disabled the search is performed by calculating the stream of the current video and search for a profile with the closest stream parameters. Enabling the setting the algorithm imposes one more condition: the flux profile must be greater than or equal to the playback video stream to make sure the that for the improved video smoothness is guaranteed enough CPU performance.

Last selected profile is highlighted with bold font in the list.

Selecting a menu item with profile name opens Profile Settings modification window.

You can add your own profile, which is necessary if you want smooth playback with special settings that are different from the settings of the standard profiles. To add a profile, you must select the menu item Video profiles -> Add ..., and to remove an unnecessary profile select Remove .... To create a new profile, you must specify the frame size and frequency. Adding a profile during video playback these values will be preset automatically.


It is possible at any time to return to one of the ten standard profile sets by menu item 'Reset to defaults', followed by an performance test and choice of the best set of profiles .

Svp-profiles-en.png

Hot Keys

The hot keys are set by default that way, so they don't interfere with hot keys of popular video players. All key combos can be modified or disabled.

The hot key modification window is called via menu Settings -> Change default hotkeys.

Action Default hotkey
Opening SVP windows
Edit active profile
Ctrl+Win+A
Show performance graphs
Ctrl+Win+G
Turn SVP setting on/off
Enable / disable SVP
Alt+Ctrl+Win+P
Toggle outer lighting on/off
Ctrl+Win+B
Toggle SVPlight on/off
Ctrl+Shift+Win+B
Toggle stereo mode (3D)
Ctrl+Win+M
Toggle auto crop on/off
Ctrl+Shift+C
Toggle GPU-acceleration on/off
Ctrl+Shift+Win+G
Toggle OSD messages on/off
Ctrl+Win+O
Toggle deinterlacing on/off
Ctrl+Win+D
Smoothness validation
Toggle tearing test on/off
Ctrl+Win+T
Other
Show file name and timestamp in OSD
Ctrl+Win+I
Toggle subtitles on/off
Ctrl+Win+Q