In game video capture has been around in Xbox for a while, allowing gamers to share their exploits, and with Windows 10 and the Xbox App, that ability has come to the PC as well. You can capture, save, and share video or still screenshots from your PC, all just by using the Xbox App, or clicking the Win+G keys on your keyboard to start recording.
In a recent blog post, Microsoft described the Xbox App’s game capture features:
With Game DVR, you can capture your best moves for any game that you’re playing (hear that Solitaire fans?!) quickly, easily and without leaving your game, simply by pressing the Windows and G keys. You can then use the Xbox app – where all your gaming activities come together – to edit and share your recorded clips with your friends. Your Game DVR clips can be saved to a folder on your PC, from which you can share your recorded clips to your social channels like Facebook and YouTube.
But the video capture is capable of quite a bit more than that, according to Engadget. They recently noticed that you can use the video and screen capture features for all kinds of apps, not just games. Once you open the Game DVR feature, and check off the “yes this is a game” box, you can record just about anything:
Hit record (or Win+Alt+R), and it will automatically start capturing video from the program you’ve got open, rather than the entire screen. It’s a feature aimed at gamers (duh) who want to share in-game clips, but it works equally well for sending your grandma a how-to video on using Google.
Now there’s one big caveat, and that’s that Game DVR has some fairly hefty video card hardware requirements:
What hardware do I need to record Xbox game clips on my PC?
Your PC needs to have one of these video cards:
AMD: AMD Radeon HD 7000 series, HD 7000M series, HD 8000 series, HD 8000M series, R9 series, and R7 series.
NVIDIA: GeForce 600 series or later, GeForce 800M series or later, Quadro Kxxx series or later.
Intel: Intel HD graphics 4000 or later, Intel Iris Graphics 5100 or later.
To check which kind of video card you have, go to the search box on the taskbar and search for “Device Manager.” In Device Manager, expand Display adapters.
You always have the option to take a screenshot of your game, even if you don’t have one of these video cards.
Unfortunately, as this is not much of a gaming machine, we weren’t able to give video recording a try, but screen capture works great, and saves locally into Users>{user}>Videos>Captures.
If you’re set up for it, Game DVR looks to be a great feature that just may turn out to be quite a bit more useful than originally intended. Give it a try and let us know how it works in the comments.
