For this article we’re going to give a rundown of the best software found online that can be used to record gaming videos for YouTube.
So you’ve finally decided to record your awesome plays on PC and share it with the world. Congratulations! You’re now only one step away from building a great channel on YouTube where millions of people watch gaming videos every single day.
All that remains now is for you to find and install screen recording software and start uploading your videos to YouTube!
Paid Vs Free Game Recording Software
Not having paid screen-recording software shouldn’t dampen your enthusiasm. Usually the difference between premium/paid and free is this: there are limits in free software (such as having a watermark if it’s trial software) or you wouldn’t have access to certain features that are offered only when you get the paid version.
With that out of the way, let’s proceed with our rundown of the best software for game recording.
1. OBS Studio
We know that not every enthusiastic gamer is ready to spend bucks on premium software. Hey, he we get that completely. Our first recommendation is 100% free and is considered legendary software in the open source community.
Open source usually means software is free to download and can be modified at will.
OBS Studio is one such open source software that you can download and use any time. Use it to record HD video of your games or stream videos directly to YouTube, Twitch or any other platform that it can connect to.
The only downside to OBS Studio is it doesn’t offer tutorials (probably because it’s open source and designed to be tweaked by super users/advanced users).
However, once you’re done with setup and OBS Studio has detected your hardware and Internet connection, you’re all set.
Our advice would be to take your time in tweaking the settings so you can get the exact output that you want.
The context menus are reminiscent of VLC that also doesn’t come with tutorials. You learn as you use it and that’s not a bad deal considering that OBS Studio is at par with paid, commercial software that performs the exact same tasks that it does.
Get it here.
2. Plays.tv
Plays.tv isn’t just screen recording software! The software connects to a website where players can upload videos and watch vids from fellow gamers. It’s like Snapchat for gamers as the videos are really short but there’s a community alongside so it’s fun to interact with the community while sharing new content.
Use the Plays.tv software if you’re only interested in shooting short video clips. Use the previous software we recommended if you want to record an entire game or if you’re interested in recording hours of gameplay for cutting/editing later on.
The Plays.tv software has three sections when you open the program. The “Explore” section will show you popular videos from the main Plays.tv website. When you click on any of the thumbnails, the selected video will load within the application and you just watch from within the screen-recorded app.
“Feed” is a list of your uploads, available interactions and the uploads of people that you have made friends with on the Plays.tv plaform. This would be the equivalent of the Facebook newsfeed. And finally, the “Dashboard” section features statistics about the videos you’ve already downloaded.
The main benefit of using this software is that it’s easy to use. The downside is the interface is focused on compression and video trimming because it encourages users to post only short videos to the Web.
3. Nvidia’s GeForce ShadowPlay
Are you presently using an Nvidia GeForce graphics card? If so, did you know that your graphic card’s bundled software includes screen-capture software called ShadowPlay? Neat!
If for some reason you don’t have the Experience software bundle yet, you can download it here.
However, bear in mind that this software will only be usable by folks who have Nvidia GeForce cards so if your computer has another brand of graphics card, you won’t be able to install and use ShadowPlay.
What’s neat about ShadowPlay is the interface is so simple – with a push of a button you can start recording and you can also tweak the recording quality easily from low to high, depending on the kind of video that you want to produce.
4. AMD Relive
AMD users need not despair as AMD provides its own screen-capture facility through the Radeon Software Crimson.
Now, you may not have noticed ReLive (the screen-recording software bundled with Radeon Software Crimson) immediately because it is disabled by default. Simply go to Settings and press ReLive to activate it. Once the interface is ready, you can start recording videos and creating screenshots while you are in-game.
Pres Ctrl + Shift + R to activate ReLive while in-game. No Alt + Tabs needed!
Recent updates to ReLive have increased the bitrate of videos and improved the audio quality of records, too. Sweet!
5. Flashback Express
If you are relatively new to recording your games on PC and are easily intimidated by high-end software then we recommend Flashback Express.
Flashback Express is really easy to use, has an intuitive interface and can be used by anyone who knows how to read onscreen prompts.
The downsides to this software is that you can’t use it to stream videos directly to YouTube (this should be alright if you’re just starting out as streaming is often done when you have a big channel already and you can announce to your viewers when you’ll be playing a game) and the second downside is it only exports videos in one format – WMV.
As you may know, WMV isn’t a very loss video format but it’s not the most streamlined either. Formats like AVI or MKV are out of the question. The upside here is that there is a built-in video editor for making minimal changes to your video before submitting it.
In case the WMV format creates files that are too huge to be uploaded easily, what we suggest is that you either trim the video or download a video converter software to convert the WMV file to a more portable format ike MPEG-4.