Nvidia's Game Changer...ShadowPlay

I was quite excited a few weeks ago when I heard Nvidia talk about using their onboard NVENC h264 hardware encoding system for game capture with next to no hit on performance. Normally I'm skeptical of such claims, but this is exactly what the PS4 is doing as well. And now, I can't believe this wasn't done sooner.

To use Nvidia's "ShadowPlay" feature you have to download the Nvidia GeForce Experience app which many people generally avoid as it may feel like bloatware to those are already adept at customizing 3d settings on a per-game basis. But this makes it all worthwhile.

ShadowPlay is currently in Beta so there are some limitations. Currently you can select recording quality between Low, Medium, and High settings. However, the capture resolution and frame rate are currently locked in at 1920x1080@60fps. There are also 2 recording modes. A Manual mode that allows you to start/stop video capture at will, and the Shadow mode which automatically records the last X minutes of gameplay, where X can be anywhere from 1 minute to 20 minutes long. A key combination can be pressed to save the last X minutes of gameplay at any time. So you can game as you normally do, and if you happen to see or do something epic, you can save it. Just like your PVR. Simple as that.

The software requires 7.5GB of data is required for 20 minutes of "Shadow" mode recording at high quality. Recording gameplay of Batman Arkham Origins for 60 seconds in manual mode took up only 180MB of space. This is a far better recording platform than any software solution or even hardware solution you may currently be using. Now let's hope there's some way to enable higher resolution recording, even if at a lower frame rate.

You can download GeForce Experience and access ShadowPlay through here: http://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience

This is only for GTX 600 series cards and above. Happy Recording!