Something went wrong. Try again later
    Follow

    PC

    Platform »

    The PC (Personal Computer) is a highly configurable and upgradable gaming platform that, among home systems, sports the widest variety of control methods, largest library of games, and cutting edge graphics and sound capabilities.

    nVidia adds driver level game catpure for GTX 600+ owners

    Avatar image for sweetz
    sweetz

    1286

    Forum Posts

    32

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #1  Edited By sweetz

    So this is pretty cool. In drivers released today, nVidia added built in video capture for owners of 600 & 700 series cards. It uses a hardware encoder on these cards to capture video with a significantly reduced performance penalty versus traditional capture software.

    I just tested it out and I'm really damn impressed. Tested it out on everyone's favorite game starring Zobek and there was absolutely zero performance impact despite being captured at 1080p, 60fps. The thing is incredibly simple to use, you just turn it on, set your shortcut key and what folder you want to save to and you're good to go. It's already pretty much the best and easiest game capture software I've ever used.

    Only downside - right now you have to capture at 1080p, 60fps. I.e. you can't change the capture resolution or framerate to save on filesize. As such, 11 minutes at even the "Medium" quality preset was 1.95GB

    YouTube appears to be having problems at the moment and is still processing my upload, but provided it ever finishes chewing on it, my test video should be here:

    Avatar image for werupenstein
    Kidavenger

    4417

    Forum Posts

    1553

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 90

    User Lists: 33

    That's pretty cool, it's strange that the AMD vs Nvidia rivalry is turning out more interesting than the PS4 vs XB1 to me now.

    Avatar image for buemba
    buemba

    150

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #3  Edited By buemba

    Tried it with the Star Citizen hangar alpha and Saint's Row IV and I'm very impressed with the quality of the capture. In Star Citizen I noticed my framerate dropped a few digits while in Saint's Row IV the video capture had no perceptible impact on the game's performance.

    Avatar image for jjweatherman
    JJWeatherman

    15144

    Forum Posts

    5249

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 10

    User Lists: 18

    Hey, cool. I'll try this out for sure.

    Avatar image for funkydupe
    Funkydupe

    3614

    Forum Posts

    5978

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    Maybe I'll try recording stuff more now that its simple to get good quality/smaller sized files.

    Avatar image for gruebacca
    Gruebacca

    813

    Forum Posts

    2

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 4

    User Lists: 0

    Looks like I get to try this out. :D

    Avatar image for korwin
    korwin

    3919

    Forum Posts

    25

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    @buemba said:

    Tried it with the Star Citizen hangar alpha and Saint's Row IV and I'm very impressed with the quality of the capture. In Star Citizen I noticed my framerate dropped a few digits while in Saint's Row IV the video capture had no perceptible impact on the game's performance.

    It shouldn't have any provided you write the capture to a different hard drive. All this stuff uses the dedicated on board h.264 encoder/decoder to do the leg work so it's completely isolated, realistically it should have the same performance impact of downloading a BD quality movie in the background.

    Avatar image for jjweatherman
    JJWeatherman

    15144

    Forum Posts

    5249

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 10

    User Lists: 18

    Wow. Now I'm extra happy I went with Nvidia. I was able to generate a piece of footage with nearly zero effort (simply hitting alt+F10 will give you a clip of the last few minutes), and no perceptible hit to performance. This seems pretty great.

    Here's my pointless video!

    Loading Video...

    Avatar image for jsnyder82
    jsnyder82

    871

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #9  Edited By jsnyder82

    Yeah, I'm super impressed with this. I tried it out on a few games, it's super easy to use, and the quality is really impressive. Good stuff.

    Avatar image for sweetz
    sweetz

    1286

    Forum Posts

    32

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #10  Edited By sweetz

    @korwin said:

    @buemba said:

    Tried it with the Star Citizen hangar alpha and Saint's Row IV and I'm very impressed with the quality of the capture. In Star Citizen I noticed my framerate dropped a few digits while in Saint's Row IV the video capture had no perceptible impact on the game's performance.

    It shouldn't have any provided you write the capture to a different hard drive. All this stuff uses the dedicated on board h.264 encoder/decoder to do the leg work so it's completely isolated, realistically it should have the same performance impact of downloading a BD quality movie in the background.

    Constantly grabbing the contents of the framebuffer and whatever they do to capture audio will have some performance impact. However, it's safe to say it's an order of magnitude lower than any other video capture software out there.

    Avatar image for preaser
    preaser

    43

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    Cool stuff.

    Avatar image for krullban
    Krullban

    1470

    Forum Posts

    2

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    RIP video capture software.

    Avatar image for bacongames
    bacongames

    4157

    Forum Posts

    5806

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 2

    User Lists: 8

    While this seems great, for online video 720p is the sweet spot compromise between quality and performance both bandwidth-wise and size of the file capture-side. If they find a way to essentially do this but make the compression great (assuming non-native render at 720p), then it's double great. Assuming that's not an issue of course, then I love that they threw this in there.

    Avatar image for ikilledthedj
    ikilledthedj

    451

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    This is actually pretty cool. those moments when something dumb happens and you wish you had got it on camera but oiously not going to record every single time you play. i might actually use this

    Avatar image for ll_exile_ll
    ll_Exile_ll

    3382

    Forum Posts

    25

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    I'm kinda bummed it's limited to 1080p, because my PC is currently connected to a 720p TV ( I'm upgrading soon), so while it does record, the video quality looks worse than fraps. There wasn't any performance hit testing it out Bioshock Infinite at Ultra, but there isn't one with fraps either. The only real advantage is the file size. A 30fps fraps video is like 1gb per minute, this was far less at 60fps.

    Avatar image for pillclinton
    PillClinton

    3604

    Forum Posts

    210

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #16  Edited By PillClinton

    Gah, I just updated yesterday. Damn cool, though. I'm assuming this also does screenshots? Hopefully in .png? Now if only they built in a frame rate overlay... I could finally ditch Fraps for good.

    Edit: Nope, no screenshots. But there's a fat skeuomorphic switch to turn on ShadowPlay!

    Avatar image for deactivated-62f93c42ce57b
    deactivated-62f93c42ce57b

    919

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    i never record anything. now i might. well played nvidia!

    Avatar image for tycobb
    TyCobb

    2036

    Forum Posts

    90

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 1

    User Lists: 0

    That's pretty nice. I wouldn't say it is that great since they keep saying "up to 20 minutes", but still nice.

    There was probably more on that page I should have read, but I couldn't stop staring at this:

    No Caption Provided

    Avatar image for korwin
    korwin

    3919

    Forum Posts

    25

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    #19  Edited By korwin

    @tycobb said:

    That's pretty nice. I wouldn't say it is that great since they keep saying "up to 20 minutes", but still nice.

    There was probably more on that page I should have read, but I couldn't stop staring at this:

    No Caption Provided

    That's million bucks.

    Avatar image for roninenix
    roninenix

    215

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    Is this only recording? No live streaming capture?

    Avatar image for sixnahalf
    sixnahalf

    51

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    Yeah the best video card ever releases on the market. Most of my video card comes from nvidia they always produce best quality and hardware for pc. :D

    Avatar image for joey_ravn
    JoeyRavn

    5290

    Forum Posts

    792

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 2

    User Lists: 3

    @tycobb said:

    That's pretty nice. I wouldn't say it is that great since they keep saying "up to 20 minutes", but still nice.

    ShadowPlay automatically records the last 20 minutes of gameplay if it's turned on. You can capture unlimited footage if you activate it manually.

    Avatar image for korwin
    korwin

    3919

    Forum Posts

    25

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    Is this only recording? No live streaming capture?

    Still in beta, I believe direct twitch streaming has been mentioned.

    Avatar image for hunter5024
    Hunter5024

    6708

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 9

    So was your capitalization in the title a typo or is that some iPod style capitalization shenanigans? Because if its the latter I need to rethink which brand of video card I get.

    Avatar image for korwin
    korwin

    3919

    Forum Posts

    25

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    So was your capitalization in the title a typo or is that some iPod style capitalization shenanigans? Because if its the latter I need to rethink which brand of video card I get.

    Back in the day they used to spell with with a lower case 'n'. The current logo is just all caps.

    No Caption Provided

    Avatar image for captain_clayman
    captain_clayman

    3349

    Forum Posts

    10

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    That's awesome. I'm glad I bought a 670 last christmas :D so this will affect performance far less than, say, FRAPS?

    Avatar image for korwin
    korwin

    3919

    Forum Posts

    25

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    That's awesome. I'm glad I bought a 670 last christmas :D so this will affect performance far less than, say, FRAPS?

    You probably won't even notice

    Avatar image for samstrife
    SamStrife

    1332

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    I tried it last night and it's pretty cool as a starter. It's not going to pull me away from Dxtory for dedicated recording quite yet though.

    It needs some more features and whilst it sounds awesome to be able to save the last X mins of gameplay, I've found it inconsistent with games it records and there's currently no way of telling without the symbol always turned on. It would be nice if I could press a button to toggle the overlay on/off in game, for example.

    Avatar image for soap
    Soap

    3774

    Forum Posts

    1811

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 9

    User Lists: 29

    Expect an influx of terrible, but now high quality youtube gameplay videos coming soon!

    Avatar image for gruebacca
    Gruebacca

    813

    Forum Posts

    2

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 4

    User Lists: 0

    Loading Video...

    Tested it earlier this morning. It runs like a charm. Hopefully, this will entice people who've never thought of capturing game footage to do so. No professional is going to flock to this, but for the average consumer who just so happens to have the right equipment this is some good entry-level stuff.

    As for me, well, I now have a better tool for capturing stupid broken gameplay whenever it comes to me. :D

    Avatar image for extomar
    EXTomar

    5047

    Forum Posts

    4

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #31  Edited By EXTomar

    For the love of everything good and holy, thank you! I have had to rig a setup that involved using a "mirror" of the primary display to the secondary display, the secondary display through a HDMI output to BlackMagic Intensity and BMI to capture software and then to whatever to get this thing to work. If I can just skip all of that and go from primary display to capture, it would make things so much easier and better!

    Avatar image for sweetz
    sweetz

    1286

    Forum Posts

    32

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    #33  Edited By sweetz
    @soap said:

    Expect an influx of terrible, but now high quality youtube gameplay videos coming soon!

    There's already been a huge boom, my terrible video included. People are just playing with it now though. Eventually it will settle back to the nominal levels, but maybe it enables some good/entertaining people to produce stuff when previously they wouldn't not have had the knowledge or patience to mess with dxtory or similar.

    Avatar image for scrawnto
    Scrawnto

    2558

    Forum Posts

    83

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 2

    Huh, that sounds pretty cool! I'll have to check that out, if only to archive any weird bugs I come across.

    Avatar image for funkydupe
    Funkydupe

    3614

    Forum Posts

    5978

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    @krullban said:

    RIP video capture software.

    Finally.

    Avatar image for intro
    intro

    1280

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 0

    Been using this feature with my 660 and love it.

    Avatar image for alanm26v5
    alanm26v5

    557

    Forum Posts

    0

    Wiki Points

    0

    Followers

    Reviews: 0

    User Lists: 9

    I messed around with it for the first time tonight, and there are two issues I came across. First, I'm running Windows 7 64bit, and I'm limited to 10 minutes of shadow recording, and manual recording just shut itself off once the file size got to 3.99GB (about 11 minutes). Secondly, it was pretty picky about how it handled the games I tried with it. I couldn't use borderless fullscreen, and alt-tab would stop the recording. I think I'll stick to OBS for now until some of that stuff hopefully gets sorted out in beta.

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.