While taking a screenshot is a fairly simple endeavor in Windows, recording a clip of your screen can sometimes be a little tricky. Today, we’ll take you through a couple of good methods for screen capture in Windows.
With Windows 11, Microsoft updated its built-in snipping tool, providing users with the capability to clip parts of their screen and record a video of a particular area as well. To access the Snipping Tool in video mode, press Windows+Shift+R.
Then, click and drag your mouse to draw a rectangle around the area you’d like to capture, and press the “Start” button to begin recording. A small toolbar will pop up at the top of your screen, and you can end the recording from here. When you are done, a small window will show a preview of your recording, and the video will be saved to C:/Users/yourUser/Videos/Screen Recordings.
Microsoft’s support article for the Snipping Tool is explains more.
If you’d like to record an entire screen (especially for gameplay footage), Microsoft has another tool you can use: Windows Game Bar. Press Windows+G to bring up the dashboard. From there, find the capture window:
Press the record button to begin a screen capture. The Game Bar will show an overlay similar to the recording toolbar of the Snipping Tool, where you can end the clip. Once you’ve stopped recording, Game Bar will notify you that it has saved the clip, and you can find it by clicking on “See my captures” in the Capture tab in Game Bar.
Microsoft’s support article for Game Bar will tell you more.
Both Nvidia and AMD have first-party capture systems embedded into their gaming-oriented graphics drivers, called GeForce Experience and AMD Adrenalin Software, respectively.
Nvidia Geforce Experience
If you choose to install GeForce Experience during driver installation, you just need to sign in to GeForce Experience with your Nvidia account to activate the overlay. Press Alt+Z anytime to show the dashboard. Before you start recording, you may want to navigate to “Settings” and then “Privacy Control” to enable Desktop Capture if you’d like to record more than just games. Once you’re ready to capture, click the “Record” button, then “Start” to begin the recording. Press Alt+Z again to bring up the dashboard to stop your clip when the time comes. Videos will save to C:/Users/yourUser/Videos by default, but this behavior can be changed in the Recordings tab of settings.
You can find more information about ShadowPlay and GeForce Experience Overlay from Nvidia’s website
AMD ReLive
Enabling driver-level recording on AMD graphics cards is a little more complicated - on supported GPUs, a prompt will appear at the end of the AMD Adrenalin Software installation asking if you’d like to install ReLive as well. Click “Install Radeon ReLive” on this prompt.
Once installed, you’ll need to enable ReLive before recording. Start by right-clicking your desktop and clicking on AMD Radeon Settings. Then, select the ReLive tab and enable ReLive. As with Nvidia, you’ll need to enable “Record Desktop” on this page if you’d like to record your entire screen. You can also select your default save location here.
As with Nvidia’s overlay, press Alt+Z to bring up the Radeon overlay. From here, you can click “Record” to begin capture. Alternatively, Radeon ReLive also allows you to record a specific window on your desktop. To end a recording, bring up the overlay again with Alt+Z and press “Stop.”
AMD’s guide on Radeon ReLive has some additional details for you
