4 ms·

Steam releases new built-in recording feature

100 points by S0y 2y ago

ChristianJacobs 2y ago
I'm not the target audience for this, given that I don't post gaming videos online or share them with friends, but I think it's very nice how Valve is continuously creating cool new stuff for the masses. It's going to be an interesting time for developers playing with the new "events" API to find the right balance between too few and too many "events" to notify Steam about. Hope it won't carry too big a penalty for those not recording.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ncr100 2y ago
  Sony's PS5 has had this cool feature from launch, Nov 2020. But doesn't offer game event metadata integreation to the timeline like Steam. A github project exists for another SDK for videogame recording editing, fwiw. https://github.com/lulzsun/RePlays https://github.com/lulzsun/RePlays
  - itishappy 2y ago
    IIRC, it's been there in some form since the PS3, which would save a screenshot along with every achievement. Loved that feature!
pensatoio 2y ago
With screenshot and video recording built in for so many years, this kind of rolling recording is a natural fit. I suspect most gamers will ditch Nivdia ShadowPlay.
- SlackingOff123 2y ago
  I did so because ShadowPlay was so unreliable. It would just randomly stop working and, when it did work, more often than not the footage it would save would have its audio desynced gradually towards the end for the last minutes. I've been using Steam's recording feature since beta and it works quite well. One disadvantage (or advantage depending on how you look at it) is that it doesn't save raw footage, but only already compressed video which makes editing more difficult. I'm hoping they introduce the option to choose how it's saved in the future.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  Rolling recordings are a massive boon for developers too. Any time something odd or buggy happens, the user already has it recorded, they just have to hit the button to save it. It'll be nice to have this on the average user's PC, just like every current console and some previous do.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Absolutely super fire experience: > Timeline and Event Markers. The Steam Timeline appears whenever you’re actively recording. Timeline-enhanced games generate event markers as relevant game events happen. Steam achievements and screenshots automatically create markers as well. It's wild that games have done so so so little to expose the game to the world, to offer APIs. It's been Steam and a couple other major top-down drivers of yore (achievements) pushing games to think beyond the scope of the game window. Remarkable to me how close-minded & slow games have been, that they have to be pushed, to making the game relevant and interesting & enageable broadly. And a bit sad there aren't open protocols for games play with. It's various intermedies (each tied to their own marketplaces) or bust. Still, love to see it. And there's already a strong community of folks re-inplenting Steam SDK (ex: nucleus coop) at least, which is great.
- pathartl 2y ago
  Game devs are notoriously bad at integrating outside of the game loop. There's also the issue that there's over 15 years of games that support achievements and most of them will never be updated to a new API. The Steamworks API has been reverse engineered for a long time by pirates. People really don't realize how vendor locked in games are on Steam. It's convenient, but don't think for a second that you own the games.
  - orwin 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure as long as they are on my HDD, i can play them with an unconnected steam account. That's how we shared games 15 years ago, instead of trying to find keys or cracks, the person owning the game installed it on an external HDD, and with a few weird manipulations that was enough to play it with a disconnected steam account. Maybe that changed?
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      Anything that uses the steamworks SDK is going to require an active account to initialize properly. That may or may not be a fatal error, it's up to the devs to decide.
jdoss 2y ago
The big question I have is how well does it work on Linux. I'd assume pretty well considering all of their work on making gaming on Linux a great experience, but if I stream on Discord my FPS tanks hard with an NVIDIA card and X11. I look forward to seeing how well does in comparison.
- ninjin 2y ago
  May very well be a Discord issue as I have never had problems with either OBS or ffmpeg(1) for RTMP even on modest hardware when streaming on X11 and Linux with both NVIDIA and AMD cards.
- sintax 2y ago
  Pretty poorly unfortunately. You're better off using OBS on linux to record your gaming sessions. Same as how you're better off using sunshine/moonlight to remote stream instead of their remote play feature.
- xnzakg 2y ago
  Considering they're mentioning sharing videos from the steam deck, sure does look like they support Linux.
- PixelForg 2y ago
  I'm on bazzite, in game mode I'm not able to record at 60fps for 4k,not sure if it's even using my gpu (7900XT)
  - sph 2y ago
    In my experience only NVENC is supported by most video recording tools, and if you are on AMD, it's using the CPU, thus slowing everything to a crawl. AMD should be using VA-API but it's not a very good system as it fails or breaks if you look at it the wrong way. I use a tool to stream my desktop to my TV (sunshine) which uses it, and every month VA-API fails with a new error so it has to resort to CPU encoding.
- thefz 2y ago
  What has Discord anything to do with a Steam feature?
markx2 2y ago
I've been using this on the Steam Deck for a while and it is excellent. I mainly use it to grab video of glitches or other gameplay / menu effects which I can then share with developers. Very handy.
thefz 2y ago
That's cool, considering ShadowPlay breaks every driver update or two. Can't count the times I had to manually restart it because it was disabled for some reason.

100 points by S0y 2y ago

I'm not the target audience for this, given that I don't post gaming videos online or share them with friends, but I think it's very nice how Valve is continuously creating cool new stuff for the masses. It's going to be an interesting time for developers playing with the new "events" API to find the right balance between too few and too many "events" to notify Steam about. Hope it won't carry too big a penalty for those not recording.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ncr100 2y ago
Sony's PS5 has had this cool feature from launch, Nov 2020. But doesn't offer game event metadata integreation to the timeline like Steam. A github project exists for another SDK for videogame recording editing, fwiw. https://github.com/lulzsun/RePlays https://github.com/lulzsun/RePlays
- itishappy 2y ago
  IIRC, it's been there in some form since the PS3, which would save a screenshot along with every achievement. Loved that feature!

pensatoio 2y ago

With screenshot and video recording built in for so many years, this kind of rolling recording is a natural fit. I suspect most gamers will ditch Nivdia ShadowPlay.

SlackingOff123 2y ago
I did so because ShadowPlay was so unreliable. It would just randomly stop working and, when it did work, more often than not the footage it would save would have its audio desynced gradually towards the end for the last minutes. I've been using Steam's recording feature since beta and it works quite well. One disadvantage (or advantage depending on how you look at it) is that it doesn't save raw footage, but only already compressed video which makes editing more difficult. I'm hoping they introduce the option to choose how it's saved in the future.
extraduder_ire 2y ago
Rolling recordings are a massive boon for developers too. Any time something odd or buggy happens, the user already has it recorded, they just have to hit the button to save it. It'll be nice to have this on the average user's PC, just like every current console and some previous do.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

Absolutely super fire experience: > Timeline and Event Markers. The Steam Timeline appears whenever you’re actively recording. Timeline-enhanced games generate event markers as relevant game events happen. Steam achievements and screenshots automatically create markers as well. It's wild that games have done so so so little to expose the game to the world, to offer APIs. It's been Steam and a couple other major top-down drivers of yore (achievements) pushing games to think beyond the scope of the game window. Remarkable to me how close-minded & slow games have been, that they have to be pushed, to making the game relevant and interesting & enageable broadly. And a bit sad there aren't open protocols for games play with. It's various intermedies (each tied to their own marketplaces) or bust. Still, love to see it. And there's already a strong community of folks re-inplenting Steam SDK (ex: nucleus coop) at least, which is great.

pathartl 2y ago
Game devs are notoriously bad at integrating outside of the game loop. There's also the issue that there's over 15 years of games that support achievements and most of them will never be updated to a new API. The Steamworks API has been reverse engineered for a long time by pirates. People really don't realize how vendor locked in games are on Steam. It's convenient, but don't think for a second that you own the games.
- orwin 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure as long as they are on my HDD, i can play them with an unconnected steam account. That's how we shared games 15 years ago, instead of trying to find keys or cracks, the person owning the game installed it on an external HDD, and with a few weird manipulations that was enough to play it with a disconnected steam account. Maybe that changed?
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Anything that uses the steamworks SDK is going to require an active account to initialize properly. That may or may not be a fatal error, it's up to the devs to decide.

jdoss 2y ago

The big question I have is how well does it work on Linux. I'd assume pretty well considering all of their work on making gaming on Linux a great experience, but if I stream on Discord my FPS tanks hard with an NVIDIA card and X11. I look forward to seeing how well does in comparison.

ninjin 2y ago
May very well be a Discord issue as I have never had problems with either OBS or ffmpeg(1) for RTMP even on modest hardware when streaming on X11 and Linux with both NVIDIA and AMD cards.
sintax 2y ago
Pretty poorly unfortunately. You're better off using OBS on linux to record your gaming sessions. Same as how you're better off using sunshine/moonlight to remote stream instead of their remote play feature.
xnzakg 2y ago
Considering they're mentioning sharing videos from the steam deck, sure does look like they support Linux.
PixelForg 2y ago
I'm on bazzite, in game mode I'm not able to record at 60fps for 4k,not sure if it's even using my gpu (7900XT)
- sph 2y ago
  In my experience only NVENC is supported by most video recording tools, and if you are on AMD, it's using the CPU, thus slowing everything to a crawl. AMD should be using VA-API but it's not a very good system as it fails or breaks if you look at it the wrong way. I use a tool to stream my desktop to my TV (sunshine) which uses it, and every month VA-API fails with a new error so it has to resort to CPU encoding.
thefz 2y ago
What has Discord anything to do with a Steam feature?

markx2 2y ago

I've been using this on the Steam Deck for a while and it is excellent. I mainly use it to grab video of glitches or other gameplay / menu effects which I can then share with developers. Very handy.

thefz 2y ago

That's cool, considering ShadowPlay breaks every driver update or two. Can't count the times I had to manually restart it because it was disabled for some reason.