• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Nvidia's ShadowPlay - Now Available

Sethos

Banned
So I was told ShadowPlay had leaked and noticed a new driver branch out in the wild. While ShadowPlay doesn't officially release before tomorrow you can have a go at it now if you'd like - I took the liberty of uploading it to Mega;

( 64 Bit version - Vista, 7 & 8 )

EDIT: Official version has been released and the leaked driver was not the final version, so it's recommended that you downloaded these instead.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/68799


Wn8Avoh.png


7AhmthZ.png



Having messed around with it for a bit it seems like a solid piece of kit. You can rebind keys and when it saves a recording to your capture folder, it creates a new folder for the specific game which is great. However you still need to render the footage if you plan on doing any mass YouTube uploads. A 3 minute and 21 second scene from Battlefield 3 on High quality in 1080p/60 is just shy of 1GB ( Seems like 62FPS is the maximum FPS )

You can choose how long you want it to go back ( 1 - 20 Minutes )

Bitrate is at almost 42k which is nice but the audio bitrate is 101kbps which is on the low side.

Here's a few raw shots from the footage captured;



So give it a go or wait till tomorrow, it looks extremely promising!
 

Dennis

Banned
Lower quality than FRAPS but less performance cost when running?

Does that about sum it up?

The quality of FRAPS footage is insane - and the file size gigantic.
 

Sethos

Banned
Lower quality than FRAPS but less performance cost when running?

Does that about sum it up?

The quality of FRAPS footage is insane - and the file size gigantic.

Because FRAPS footage is RAW, which is pointless beyond anything.
 

Dennis

Banned
Because FRAPS footage is RAW, which is pointless beyond anything.
It is so beautiful. Like screenshots being played back at 24 fps.

I usually encode for smaller size then pass it around to people. The problem is the shit youtube quality when uploaded there.
 

Durante

Member
Finally!

I'll do some testing.

Lower quality than FRAPS but less performance cost when running?
The main (and major) point of it for me would be having low enough performance impact to always have it running, in order to never miss anything I want to record, particularly in multiplayer.
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
Man I hope they add a higher quality option than that for manual recording.

Does the record feature on xbone or ps4 do 60 fps?
 
Finally!

I'll do some testing.

The main (and major) point of it for me would be having low enough performance impact to always have it running, in order to never miss anything I want to record, particularly in multiplayer.

That point is really large.

Can anyone tell me specifically how the "constant" recording works?

Can it constantly record and then delete anything since the last 15 minutes or so? If that were possible, it would be wonderful!

Also, any noticable performance anythings? Could we get some benches?
 

Qassim

Member
That point is really large.

Can anyone tell me specifically how the "constant" recording works?

Can it constantly record and then delete anything since the last 15 minutes or so? If that were possible, it would be wonderful!

Also, any noticable performance anythings? Could we get some benches?

Yeah, my understanding is that it essentially reserves a cache space on the HDD of your choice and depending on the size and quality you've set, and it'll just keep writing to that and then begin overwriting when that space is full.
 

Sethos

Banned
That point is really large.

Can anyone tell me specifically how the "constant" recording works?

Can it constantly record and then delete anything since the last 15 minutes or so? If that were possible, it would be wonderful!

Also, any noticable performance anythings? Could we get some benches?

The "Shadow" functions constantly records your game. When you press your Shadow key it saves the footage from the last <Specified amount of minutes> to a folder you chose. If you don't press it while playing it just throws away everything. So it only saves when you press the button - See it like the Console's DVR function.

However it also has a standard manual recording where you hit a key and it records until you hit it again.

As for benchmarks, I'm 100% sure we'll see plenty of those over the coming days.
 

Durante

Member
That point is really large.

Can anyone tell me specifically how the "constant" recording works?

Can it constantly record and then delete anything since the last 15 minutes or so? If that were possible, it would be wonderful!
That's the whole point of the "shadow" recording mode, yes.

It's like what the new consoles will do, but longer, at higher quality, before they are released, and for your existing games :p
 
For a moment I thought some Nvidia engineers had made a cover of the Joy Division song with the same title as a Halloween thing or something.

What a disappointment :(
 

Durante

Member
Hey Sethos, can you provide an alternative upload location? Mega normally works well for me, but not this time.
 

KKRT00

Member
The "Shadow" functions constantly records your game. When you press your Shadow key it saves the footage from the last <Specified amount of minutes> to a folder you chose. If you don't press it while playing it just throws away everything. So it only saves when you press the button - See it like the Console's DVR function.

However it also has a standard manual recording where you hit a key and it records until you hit it again.

As for benchmarks, I'm 100% sure we'll see plenty of those over the coming days.

Seems perfect, especially when they've upgraded it to 60fps.

Now freaking MP4 format is my only problem :p Avidemux unfortunately isnt alternative to VirtualDub ;\

Anyone knows other video editing app that is similar in functionality and speed to VirtualDub?
 
Yeah, my understanding is that it essentially reserves a cache space on the HDD of your choice and depending on the size and quality you've set, and it'll just keep writing to that and then begin overwriting when that space is full.

The "Shadow" functions constantly records your game. When you press your Shadow key it saves the footage from the last <Specified amount of minutes> to a folder you chose. If you don't press it while playing it just throws away everything. So it only saves when you press the button - See it like the Console's DVR function.

However it also has a standard manual recording where you hit a key and it records until you hit it again.

As for benchmarks, I'm 100% sure we'll see plenty of those over the coming days.

That's the whole point of the "shadow" recording mode, yes.

It's like what the new consoles will do, but longer, at higher quality, before they are released, and for your existing games :p

Sounds very useful. The quality looks pretty OK too. Thanks for the quick replies.
 

Durante

Member
Which graphics card series is this limited to? I am guessing my GTX 260 won't cut it.
It uses the hardware h246 encoder in Kepler GPUs, so 600 series and later.

Kepler line with the onboard H.264


As mentioned, I love how it sorts itself inside the capture folder instead of just dumping recordings;

rlEBNVq.png
Gamechanger! But seriously, I wish any of the screenshot tools did this.
 

vazel

Banned
About time nvidia. They've been promising Shadowplay for so long now.

Edit: The installer made me quit Steam in order for it to install.
 

Dr Dogg

Member
I didn't want to get a new card this side of christmas but all these new bells and whistles have got me anxious.

As mentioned, I love how it sorts itself inside the capture folder instead of just dumping recordings;

rlEBNVq.png

Hmmm were's it pulling folder names from? Seeing as it's very neat in a formatting sense.
 
Filesize is a lot bigger than expected. Bandicam gets me around 190MB for a 2 min video. How does the performance cost of Bandicam compare?
 

KKRT00

Member
I didn't want to get a new card this side of christmas but all these new bells and whistles have got me anxious.



Hmmm were's it pulling folder names from? Seeing as it's very neat in a formatting sense.

Probably Geforce Experience.
 

Addnan

Member
am I missing something. I turn on shadow recording. Start my game, I assumed it is recording. I can see the little logo in the bottom right corner. Hit F10 to keep the last few minutes. The folder is empty. It has created the game folder inside my videos, but there is nothing inside it.

edit: Its Alt+F10
 

n0n44m

Member
I didn't want to get a new card this side of christmas but all these new bells and whistles have got me anxious.



Hmmm were's it pulling folder names from? Seeing as it's very neat in a formatting sense.

GeForce Experience already recognizes game's .exe's for the game settings optimization part, so I assume they'll use the same names

unfortunately I've just started using the Lightboost hack on my monitor, which reportedly doesn't play nice with GeForce Experience ... still want to try this out though :)
 

Garteal

Member
Because FRAPS footage is RAW, which is pointless beyond anything.
It's not. The beauty of raw captures is that they're the absolute best quality you can get, and if you render it out using the right encoder and settings, you can get some good picture size ratio.

Shadowplay sounds nice though with it recording the last 20 minutes all the time, but it being already compressed will make the quality even worse if you're going to render it again.
 

Sethos

Banned
It's not. The beauty of raw captures is that they're the absolute best quality you can get, and if you render it out using the right encoder and settings, you can get some good picture size ratio.

Shadowplay sounds nice though with it recording the last 20 minutes all the time, but it being already compressed will make the quality even worse if you're going to render it again.

It is, mainly because FRAPS is pure and utter dogshit - Worst piece of recording software on the market. No options, super performance intensive, recording FPS tied to game FPS - Barely! If you just render the footage correctly, 41k bitrate is more than enough to get a good looking image. Yes a raw recording rendered down might have IQ benefits but what's the point when it's at the expense of everything else? I doubt anyone in the gaming world is going to pat anyone on the back for using FRAPS instead of something else.
 

Dennis

Banned
It is, mainly because FRAPS is pure and utter dogshit - Worst piece of recording software on the market. No options, super performance intensive, recording FPS tied to game FPS - Barely! If you just render the footage correctly, 41k bitrate is more than enough to get a good looking image.

wow, so rage, pitbull

Still the absolute best quality possible though.
 

ICPEE

Member
That's the whole point of the "shadow" recording mode, yes.

It's like what the new consoles will do, but longer, at higher quality, before they are released, and for your existing games :p
Good God. Let me download this STAT. Thanks for clearing up
 
Top Bottom