Steam Game Recording

[Remij 5,023]

Steam recently released their Game Recording feature into the beta channel, and I love it!  Obviously yes, recording software is nothing new, Microsoft has the Gamebar, and there's no shortage of video recording software out there...but I already love this more than all of those combined.

 

It's in beta, so obviously it's not feature complete, but what's there is already cool.  

 

Pros:

-Fully supported on Steam Deck and PC

-Quaity is pretty good on the highest setting

-Captures gameplay smoothly

-Built into Steam, has cool integration features like clips, screenshot marking, and tagging

-Captures on a per game basis

-Can choose to always record your gameplay seamlessly in the background or hotkey to toggle

-You can manually tag and label moments in your gameplay so that friends can easily discern what you want them to know about it

-Clips under 1min can be easily sent to friends, or between devices like Deck and Desktop

-Game integration (Games will be able to integrate with Steam Game Recording and automatically capture and clip when you get achievements or complete other objectives)

-Essentially no limit on how large captures can be (you could have an entire 1TB harddrive dedicated to constant continual capture.

-Easily export videos to mp4 and upload to Youtube (though it lacks Youtube integration)

 

Cons:

-There needs to be higher quality settings (1440p and 4K captures)

-Need the ability to send larger clips than 1min (Ideally 5min clip limit for sending to friends, and no limit on sending between devices on the same network)

-Require game to support the Steam Overlay to work, which means that some older titles might not be supported

-Some bugs here and there as its still beta

 

 

It's pretty fucking awesome I must say.  I have a 500GB SATA SSD specifically dedicated to game recording and screenshots.  I set it to automatically record in the background, and allowed it 1440 minutes of continual recording (24 hours) which uses 260GB at the highest quality setting.  So 24 hours of my past gameplay will be recorded and I can easily export any of it to media files and then continue on.  That's so badass.  It works beautifully on the Steam Deck too.  Sony basically has similar features with the PS5, but it's not nearly as robust and easy to work with as far as I can tell.  I think on PS5 you can capture the last 1h of gameplay, but can't really tag, edit, and export mp4s.

 

You can see how all of my Super Meat Boy Forever gameplay over multiple days has been captured and how in the timeline it's tagged when I got specific achievements and allows me to easily clip them by clicking the scissors.  

 

 

This is good stuff from Steam.  I love that it's just always recording all my gameplay because there's been so many times I've been playing a game and I wish I'd had been recording.  Now I basically never have to worry about that.  

[lynux3 2,447]

Typically I just stream to YouTube to record gameplay, and that’s mostly because I don’t want to invest any time or space in fucking with local recordings. YouTube’s video/audio is good enough, but nothing wrong with more options locally.

[sugarhigh 601]

Its one of the last features the consoles have that Steam was lacking so that's awesome.

 

 

[JonDnD 3,004]

Hermits recording their porno games LOL

[Remij 5,023]

11 minutes ago, sugarhigh said:

Its one of the last features the consoles have that Steam was lacking so that's awesome.

 

 

Yeah.  After making this thread I checked out a video on PS5's share factory editing software, and it's actually pretty rich with features for editing on console without a PC.  Still wouldn't want to be doing that sort of stuff on a console anyway.. but it's better than I expected it to be, that's for sure.

 

I'm not even sure what the Xbox solution looks like.  All I really knew about the console stuff is that you sort of have to jump through hoops like sharing to twitter or youtube and then if you want it on your PC you have to get it from there, or something like that.  Quality probably takes a hit when you have to do that too?

 

I dunno.. but this here is pretty awesome and easily allows you to make clips and recordings of all your games, and it works beautifully on the Steam Deck.  Like I say, one of the only main issues I have with it currently, is that you can only send clips up to 1 min long between devices and to other players.  If you're connected over your home network, between PCs or between Deck and PC.. you should be able to send the entire recording.  I obviously understand Steam wanting to limit clips sent over their servers, but 1 min is too short and it at least needs to be 5 min.

 

I'm sure those changes will come at some point.