Recording Q3A videos with NVIDIA ShadowPlay

[fau]

I get asked a lot how I record my videos and short clips.

Most effortless method, if you have NVIDIA or AMD graphics card, is to use video capture features in their video drivers. They capture whatever you are doing in real time and save it as mp4 file (or stream to twitch/youtube/discord/other live streaming service). I have NVIDIA card currently so I will describe how to use NVIDIA ShadowPlay, but I know others had success with AMD ReLive too.

To open shadowplay menu, press alt+z (you can change shortcuts in NVIDIA Experience application):

shadowplay1.JPG

First go to options -> video capture:

shadowplay2.jpg

For uploading to youtube or creating smaller/compressed video clips to share on discord I like the "medium" setting - about 22mbps. 10 minute 1080p video takes about 1.5GB of space with it. If your internet has fast upload speed, you may want to go higher. If you plan to edit it in a video editing software before uploading, I'd recommend using at least "high" setting. Also make sure to record at 60fps.
This is an example video capture with these settings and uploaded to youtube. Quality is not great, but good enough to enjoy the action.


Now that you are set up, when you want to record a demo - press record -> start record in main shadowplay menu, and play the demo. You will need to wait until the demo is over and then stop recording. Default shortcut to start/stop recording is alt+f9. Video will be saved in your Videos directory.

When you want to record live as you play - you can do the same, or use "Instant Replay" option. Instant Replay will save only last X minutes when you save it (alt+f10), so you can save only good moments and clip them into a shorter video later. Another nice feature is that it can record your voice chat mixed with game sounds - we've used it with our team to later upload the match to youtube as private video and analyze our game.

After recording a demo or whole game - it's ready to be uploaded to youtube or other streaming service.

If you want to make a short clip to share it on discord or elsewhere - you will need to further clip and compress the video to match discord limit (8MB). I use commandline tools and bash scripts I wrote so they are not very user friendly, but there are GUI applications to help with it.
I remember handbrake (https://handbrake.fr/) on windows being quite good, although I couldn't get it to do what I wanted last time and resorted to writing my own scripts instead. This is a topic for another tutorial, if someone wants to share his solution.

Another option is to upload whole video to youtube or stream it on twitch - these services allow you to create and share shorter clips of the video easily.


If you are looking for to get higher quality videos, either try higher quality settings or wait for my second tutorial with alternative method of capturing quake 3 demos.

[Lunya]

That's sweet from you to do this tutorial!
I would add that there is XMedia Recode (windows only, but it has a visual interface) for edit or reduce weight (mp4 and webm export supported, which are cool for Discord or imgur).

[oKo*CTHULHU]

Nice. I think this is a very good way to record your activities. First of all, I mean the server settings. When recording a regular demo on Q3, information about the game is saved there. Not only the picture itself.

If the server is unlagged, there are some delays when rendering the demo to video format. Mostly unnoticeable in-game when pinging from player data is normal. I will check this way. It seems to be less problematic and more effective at the same time.

Thanks fau.

[fau]

I've updated my simple clipping/encoding recommendation from avidemux to handbrake - that was the program I had in mind. Presets it gives are not so great, but you can get what you want with a little tuning. XMedia Recode looks good too. But I'd like to have something really simple to create a short clip with limited file size that you can upload directly to discord or somewhere else where there are limits. I've got a script that does just that but it's not something I want to explain how to do.

[oKo*CTHULHU]

I just put the rendered demo in .mp4 format into Adobe Premiere Pro, zoom in on the clip's timeline, use the razor tool to cut a fragment of the clip and export the fragment to a folder. As I wrote earlier, I will have to look at another way to create clips. The current one is very time-consuming, the mere readiness of the clip without the need for Q3plus rendering to save me, changing the names of the demos so as not to get confused by the amount that I record (and I have almost a thousand) is a torment. And take another use of Wolfcam or q3mme to achieve other effects + processing it in some DAV heh. The very time that you have to devote a lot to all these steps is overwhelming.

[cBs KRA7OS]

nie lepiej nagrywac geforce experience? a pozniej wycinac movavi?

not better to record geforce experience? and then cut movavi?