Steam Game Recording - Tutorial

[Yeke]

Preface

The below guide will assist you in setting up Steam Game Recording in order to assist you with recording any of your game clips ranging from funny moments to important clips of rule breaks
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Table of Contents

1. What is Steam Game Recording
2. What does Steam Game Recording offer and how do I activate this?
3. How do I use this for appeals / complaints​

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What is Steam Game Recording?

Steam Game Recording (SGR) is a new addition to Steam, this may be disabled by default however it was created in order to ensure a central system for players to record and share their moments on the Steam Community without the requirement of external and often unreliable software such as; Medal, Outplayed, etc.

What does Steam Game Recording offer and how do I activate this?

Steam Game Recording offers a significant advantage over other third party game recording software by containing everything in house as a start, reducing the amount of programs running on your computer offering you the ability to record your game without causing significant performance overhead.

To enable this, go to your Steam client and click "Steam" in the top left and then navigate to "Settings" and finally scroll down to "Game Recording"

With SGR there are 3 "modes" of recording, technically 2 as the third is "off"

1. Recording off - Steam will not record your gameplay
2. Record in Background - Steam will automatically record your gameplay so you don't miss those unexpected moments. - The last 120 minutes of video will be kept in a temporary format for you to replay or save as permanent clips
3. Record Manually - Steam will record video only after you press your set key bind

Furthermore SGR has functionality for setting your own shortcut keys for the following options;

1. Start/stop saving a clip - Ctrl + F11 (By default)
2. Add a timeline marker - Ctrl + F12 (By default)
3. Take a screenshot - F12 (By default)
4. Save the last <x> seconds of gameplay as a clip - Not set by default

Below this you then have "game specific settings" which allow you to set either globally for all games or specific settings for other games on the Length and Quality of your games recording in background and how much disk space these will take up (See below)

There are other settings that you can change depending on your requirements as seen below;

So how does this look in game? in order to access this, you need to press Shift+Tab (or whatever else you bound your steam overlay to you psycho!), and if you are running in the background you should see the recording bar at the top of your overlay (if you cannot see this, simply press the button marked in the image!)

How do I use this for appeals / complaints

There are multiple ways you can use this for appeals or complaints, for the purpose of this demonstration we will assume you are recording in background for 120 minutes (2 hours)

Method 1 (if you plan to make a report later):
1. Click the area on the "seeking" bar you wish to review or mark
2. Press the "pin" marker on the left and you will see a blue "marker" appear above the point you have marker for ease of review (Image below)

3. In order to now clip the section of video, press the "Clip" button on the bar above, this will create two yellow lines for you to mark the "start" and the "end" of your clip (Image below)

4. Once you have set the area you wish to clip, press Save/Share and use the relevant option for you; Save in Steam (allows you to link it to the forums) or Export as Video File (For upload to other areas (YouTube etc)

Method 2 (Evidence Gathering):
1. Ensure you have a bind set for "Save the last <X> seconds of gameplay as a clip"
2. When you see something of note; press the bind and you will hear a noise indicating your clip has completed
3. Navigate to your Steam Client and then your game library and select the game i.e. Garry's Mod
4. View your "Post-game summary" and you should find two recordings, one as "REC" for your background recording and a pair of scissors for your clip
5. Click on the recording with the clip, this will open it up in full and once you have set the area you wish to clip, press Save/Share and use the relevant option for you; Save in Steam (allows you to link it to the forums), Export as Video File (For upload to other areas (YouTube etc) or "Create a Share Link" (Preferred where possible)