Most of Returnal's cutscenes are 4K .MP4 files. If you don't have a 2160p monitor, or otherwise aren't playing in 4K, the game scales these during playback. On my system, this caused some dropped frames.

To fix this, I transcoded the game's cutscenes to my monitor's native resolution, so the game wouldn't need to resize them. This seems to have cleared up the issue for me, so I figured I'd do it again in other common resolutions, to share.

You can grab the files from NexusMods.[www.nexusmods.com]

Returnal's video files are all stored in this folder:Download the archive which matches your monitor's resolution, and extract it there.

If you'd rather transcode the files yourself, grab FFmpeg[ffmpeg.org] or HandBrake[handbrake.fr] and go to town.