Recently, a customer dropped me a line, saying that he found some videos with the suffix of .smv when he cleaned his computer, but he had no idea how to play SMV files. After analyzing the sample file downloaded from the attachment, I found that the playback of this SMV video has a lot of limitations.
Actually, SMV, aka SigmaTel Motion Video, is a partially compressed video format developed by SigmaTel Inc and was also created and used primarily on portable Sigmatel chip-based MP4 players that have low power CPU and tiny LCD screens.
SMV is an obsolete file type and an SMV video file features low resolution and bit rate, making it unbearable to watch nowadays. At the same time, SMV is incompatible with most popular media players, for example, powerful as VLC can not support SMV video either, let alone other editors or portable devices. So, if your SMV videos are pretty important, it is a good idea to convert them to a more common format such as MP4, AVI, etc., for smooth playback.