Why isn't Shadowplay making a bigger splash?

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StoleMyOwnCar

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Now:
This is about me being ticked with how they never fixed the SLI problem that started debuting shortly after this topic was originally discussed...

Original post:
I'm just kind of confused about this, because after actually trying it out more and more in the various games I play... I've found it to be absolutely amazing.

My FPS hardly goes down at all, and I end up with a very reasonably sized, already encoded file on my HDD... that's in pretty good quality to boot. 3.8GB for 10 mins of 1080p higher-framerate action? That's pretty darn good for not having to mess with an encoder. Plus, they're going to integrate it to work with Twitch, so the LoL crowd has something to jump up and down about. I mean I told some guy on PCP to pick a 770 over a 280X because he wants to stream LoL and I thought that for him the 770 would actually make sense because of Shadowplay eventually doing that (aside from them performing about the same). After testing it out myself, I think that was good advice (granted it's not working with Twitch yet but we'll see that hopefully happen).

I don't want any kind of fanboy this or that stuff flaming crap (though I know it'll attract some), I'm just kind of confused about why I see Shadowplay curiously absent during any kind of "should you get this or that" evaluation at this or that price range in these forums. I'm just like starting to use it more and more to capture these funny/amazing/etc moments in my gaming.
 
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I'm not sure why people aren't talking about it more. I love it. Especially the part where you can save the last 10 minutes of gameplay. I run it for those "OMG DID YOU JUST SEE THAT?" moments.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I don't want any kind of fanboy this or that stuff flaming crap (though I know it'll attract some), I'm just kind of confused about why I see Shadowplay curiously absent during any kind of "should you get this or that" evaluation at this or that price range in these forums.
Click to expand...

But 290... and... Mantle!

(Just figured I'd get it out of the way for you... :D )


But seriously, you're right. It's a great feature that doesn't get mentioned enough.
 
Probably because a lot of people that play PC games don't record their gameplay for others to watch? I can see how it is amazing for those that do this, but not everyone is streaming to Twitch or Youtube every second they play a game. I have been PC gaming for 15 years now and I have never made a video or other shit of my PC gameplay. I have had to use recording software playing CS in CEVO but besides that I have never used it personally.
 
naticus said:
Probably because a lot of people that play PC games don't record their gameplay for others to watch? I can see how it is amazing for those that do this, but not everyone is streaming to Twitch or Youtube every second they play a game. I have been PC gaming for 15 years now and I have never made a video or other shit of my PC gameplay. I have had to use recording software playing CS in CEVO but besides that I have never used it personally.
Click to expand...

It's not just for others to watch though, and it's not just for streaming every second of your gameplay or something like that. You can record stuff that you found amusing to show friends or save for yourself later. And honestly? I usually didn't record that much either, except a very few vids here and there on Xfire, and the performance hit with that was super annoying.

The difference here is that Shadowplay does it utterly painlessly, at the click of a button. As in, it's not a compromise situation, it's like "oh, hey I feel like saving that". No penalty, you just get the footage, already compressed. I just tried it out once and I was like... "dang, this is nice." You don't realize how awesome it is until you try it.
 
I was really excited for it and now that I have it couldn't be more satisfied with it. BF4 with Shadowplay for those outrageous shots with my sniper is the best. Or weird funny moments :D
 
Sounds like a gimmick that has absolutely no interest for me.

If I am playing BF4 it's with my buddies, and if I do something badass, they either see me do it, or I am telling them about it in vent. I would imagine 90 percent of gamers don't care about being able to record/stream themselves playing.

I could be completely wrong, but I thought AMD just implemented something similar in the last couple months too.
 
Same, really couldn't care less about recording gameplay. It's a nice feature for some people no doubt, but for me it would have zero effect on my buying decision.
 
I don't really see how it's a gimmick when it does exactly what it says it was going to do... and very well. I've already found it fun to use and painless. It's not a flagship reason to choose a card, no, but it's pretty darn nice. There's also a difference between telling people something and recording it... especially in SP games.
 
Because they use a Microsoft built-in codec, so on Windows 7 you are stuck with 32 bit 4GB limitations even on 64 bit Windows.. So under Windows 7 they are behind the curve compared to Fraps and other apps that aren't limited to 4GB files.
 
Streaming on twitch / recording youtube gameplay is now bigger than ever, most of the older guys aren't into it but the younger folks are. And with that being the case, shadow play is pretty damn awesome. It's amazing, in fact - The problem with recording with other software is that it will bring nearly any CPU to it's knees - this is not the case with shadowplay; it uses the GPU almost entirely with minimal CPU utilization. Conversely, other recording or streaming software will bring even modern quad cores to their knees.

It really is game changer, and as twitch streaming skyrockets in popularity, I see shadow play becoming that much more of a value add. It's nice to have. Is it the primary reason to buy a GPU? Probably not. But it's pretty awesome IMO.
 
I'd love to try it but the latest nvidia drivers don't work for my setup. Also, Shadowplay doesn't work in Surround. Also, I'm not at 1080p.

I'm guessing it'll be a while before it works (if ever) in my strange setup.
 
UrielDagda said:
Because they use a Microsoft built-in codec, so on Windows 7 you are stuck with 32 bit 4GB limitations even on 64 bit Windows.. So under Windows 7 they are behind the curve compared to Fraps and other apps that aren't limited to 4GB files.
Click to expand...

FRAPS is a joke for recording compared to shadow play in terms of resource utilization. The 10 minute limit applies (in Win7), but resource utilization is far different between the two....
 
rdqlus said:
I'd love to try it but the latest nvidia drivers don't work for my setup. Also, Shadowplay doesn't work in Surround. Also, I'm not at 1080p.

I'm guessing it'll be a while before it works (if ever) in my strange setup.
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Actually I use Shadowplay at 1440p. It just automatically records at 1080p. For your case, I'm not sure how it would work.

UrielDagda said:
Because they use a Microsoft built-in codec, so on Windows 7 you are stuck with 32 bit 4GB limitations even on 64 bit Windows.. So under Windows 7 they are behind the curve compared to Fraps and other apps that aren't limited to 4GB files.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the 10 minute limit is kind of annoying, but that's only on Windows 7. I think more people are going to moving on to 8 as time goes on (granted I'm not in that club yet, so I just deal with 10 minutes at a time).
 
xoleras said:
This is a joke right? FRAPS is a joke for recording compared to shadow play in terms of resource utilization.
Click to expand...

Yeah but with Fraps you can record a 500GB hours long video in Windows 7.. With Shadowplay you're limited to whatever will fit in 4GB on Windows 7 64bit... Or switch to Windows 8 to get the unlimited file size.
 
UrielDagda said:
Yeah but with Fraps you can record a 500GB hours long video in Windows 7.. With Shadowplay you're limited to whatever will fit in 4GB on Windows 7 64bit... Or switch to Windows 8 to get the unlimited file size.
Click to expand...

Like I said above, it'll get you 10 minutes. That's actually not bad at all.


Edit: What I'm thinking you can do though, and pretty easily... any macro keyboard, just make a Macro that presses the record key combos every 10 mins, in repeat...
 
GeForce Experience 1.8 Release Highlights:
This release adds user adjustable optimal settings and numerous improvements for ShadowPlay.
Optimal Settings
• New optimal settings slider adds fine grained control over performance and quality tradeoff
• Ability to select and optimize for different resolutions
• Ability to select Windowed, Full-screen, or Windowed Borderless modes.
ShadowPlay
• Removes 3.8GB file limitation in Win7.
• Record up to 20 minutes in Shadow Mode
• Unlimited recording in Manual Mode
• ShadowPlay creates new files once 3.8GB is reached
• Captures video without re-scaling at up to 1080p. At higher resolutions, aspect ratio is preserved.
• Adds microphone recording
• Captures video at 60 fps instead of 62 fps
• Reduces stuttering in captured video
 
I flipping love it. I used it to record footage of Rome 2's crappy AI and shared it with developers, and shared footage of Assassin's Creed with my dad to help him make purchasing decisions.

At medium quality, you get relatively sharp video at about half the size of the high quality recording, all with minimal, if any, performance reduction.
 
Klapcos said:
GeForce Experience 1.8 Release Highlights:
This release adds user adjustable optimal settings and numerous improvements for ShadowPlay.
Optimal Settings
• New optimal settings slider adds fine grained control over performance and quality tradeoff
• Ability to select and optimize for different resolutions
• Ability to select Windowed, Full-screen, or Windowed Borderless modes.
ShadowPlay
• Removes 3.8GB file limitation in Win7.
• Record up to 20 minutes in Shadow Mode
• Unlimited recording in Manual Mode
• ShadowPlay creates new files once 3.8GB is reached
• Captures video without re-scaling at up to 1080p. At higher resolutions, aspect ratio is preserved.
• Adds microphone recording
• Captures video at 60 fps instead of 62 fps
• Reduces stuttering in captured video
Click to expand...



Daaaang, I can't wait to try that out when I get home from work.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Yeah, the 10 minute limit is kind of annoying, but that's only on Windows 7. I think more people are going to moving on to 8 as time goes on (granted I'm not in that club yet, so I just deal with 10 minutes at a time).
Click to expand...

I'm making a new rig this week, and sticking with Windows 7 64bit. I've done Let's Plays for the last few months, dealing with short videos is pure Hell if you're playing a game with tons of quests and such.. And compressing/uploading is a mess if you want to do more than just have "video 001, 002, 003" etc. because viewers want information on their videos so they can find the part their looking for... Usually because they're having a hard time with a section and want to see how it's done.

And with RPG-style games it's really a pain in the ass to play in 10 minute chunks. Hell when I tried to limit myself to 20 minutes it felt like I was walking to a quest location, breaking, and restarting, doing part of a quest, breaking, restarting...
 
I believe you guys are not clear on something. There are two modes.

'Shadow Mode' constantly records keeps the last X minutes of video. On Win7 this is limited to 4GB on Win8 not. While in 'Shadow Mode' if something awesome happens you hit a button and that last X minutes is then saved for later. IMO for most you don't want the last 1 hour of video, you want the last like 5 minutes... only recording that awesome thing that happened. The nice thing about this is you don't have 500GB of video to search though to find that awesome thing, you hit button and save last 5 minutes and bam you have 5 min of video catching just that awesome thing.

The other mode is 'Manual mode' which works exactly like fraps. You hit a key and start recording, and you can record forever.. or until HDD fills up, and then you hit key again and it stops recording.

(Ugh like 5 posts showed up while I was typing this)
 
Klapcos said:
GeForce Experience 1.8 Release Highlights:
This release adds user adjustable optimal settings and numerous improvements for ShadowPlay.
Optimal Settings
• New optimal settings slider adds fine grained control over performance and quality tradeoff
• Ability to select and optimize for different resolutions
• Ability to select Windowed, Full-screen, or Windowed Borderless modes.
ShadowPlay
• Removes 3.8GB file limitation in Win7.
• Record up to 20 minutes in Shadow Mode
• Unlimited recording in Manual Mode
• ShadowPlay creates new files once 3.8GB is reached
• Captures video without re-scaling at up to 1080p. At higher resolutions, aspect ratio is preserved.
• Adds microphone recording
• Captures video at 60 fps instead of 62 fps
• Reduces stuttering in captured video
Click to expand...

Wait.. Does it remove the limitation, or just give you more files? Or does it give you a choice on which you want? That'd be damn great if it just gets rid of it! The way they talked when I asked them, they said it was a Windows 7 limitation and made it sound like there was no way for them to fix it.

Now if they just fixed it by making it open new files, I guess thats good for some people, but I'd still stick with Fraps/Handbrake.
 
bexamous said:
I believe you guys are not clear on something. There are two modes.

'Shadow Mode' constantly records keeps the last X minutes of video. On Win7 this is limited to 4GB on Win8 not. While in 'Shadow Mode' if something awesome happens you hit a button and that last X minutes is then saved for later. IMO for most you don't want the last 1 hour of video, you want the last like 5 minutes... only recording that awesome thing that happened. The nice thing about this is you don't have 500GB of video to search though to find that awesome thing, you hit button and save last 5 minutes and bam you have 5 min of video catching just that awesome thing.

The other mode is 'Manual mode' which works exactly like fraps. You hit a key and start recording, and you can record forever.. or until HDD fills up, and then you hit key again and it stops recording.
Click to expand...

Nah, until the latest update that guy posted a few posts back, even manual mode on Win 7 was limiting me to one 4GB file during a recording session. It would just stop recording at some point. He's right. The new drivers apparently fix that though, and on Win 8 it isn't a problem.

UrielDagda said:
I'm making a new rig this week, and sticking with Windows 7 64bit. I've done Let's Plays for the last few months, dealing with short videos is pure Hell if you're playing a game with tons of quests and such.. And compressing/uploading is a mess if you want to do more than just have "video 001, 002, 003" etc. because viewers want information on their videos so they can find the part their looking for... Usually because they're having a hard time with a section and want to see how it's done.

And with RPG-style games it's really a pain in the ass to play in 10 minute chunks. Hell when I tried to limit myself to 20 minutes it felt like I was walking to a quest location, breaking, and restarting, doing part of a quest, breaking, restarting...
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http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20010127-285/how-to-use-youtubes-video-editor/

Um... looks pretty easy to me. Keep in mind these are all going to be encoded the same way, so I think even if you weren't using youtube, there's probably a tool out there that just splices video together like you want to, with no hassles. All you need to do is like... shove em together mate.
 
So far, i am immensely enjoying shadowplay. I planned on uploading some warframe videos, and setting it to 20 minutes allows me to pretty much save every match i have. Plus there is nothing stopping someone from manual recording.
 
stealthy123 said:
Sounds like a gimmick that has absolutely no interest for me.

If I am playing BF4 it's with my buddies, and if I do something badass, they either see me do it, or I am telling them about it in vent. I would imagine 90 percent of gamers don't care about being able to record/stream themselves playing.

I could be completely wrong, but I thought AMD just implemented something similar in the last couple months too.
Click to expand...

I would assume the percentage of people who actually uses this feature to be way less than 5%. The only person I know who actually interested in recording stuff to YouTube is my nephew, and he cannot afford a nice videocard.
 
trungracingdev said:
I would assume the percentage of people who actually uses this feature to be way less than 5%. The only person I know who actually interested in recording stuff to YouTube is my nephew, and he cannot afford a nice videocard.
Click to expand...

I would assume that pulling numbers out of your butt makes you look like you're part of the crowd your signature is addressing. If you just go across this topic, I'm not "assuming"... but I'm going to estimate that the percentage of people that like this over the ones that are like "meh" is actually greater than 5% (ie > 1 in 20 people).

http://www.overclock.net/t/1403553/...ion-thread-microphone-recording-feature-added

Also an official thread about it on OCN for bug reporting that has an Nvidia rep personally reporting in.

Like I said, also, it's really one of those things that you have to taste once and to understand. I was originally one of those people that never recorded anything, what with the hassle that is opening up Fraps, staring at a greater-than-two-digits uncompressed video file, and then conversion. Then for fun I recorded an Assassin's Creed Brotherhood replay of me screwing around. Painlessly done, fully encoded video file immediately ready. Not only did it make me go "wow, that was easy" but it made me go "hey, maybe I should do a few more video recordings so that I can save all of this cool stuff for the future if I ever want to rewatch it".

Looks like Nvidia has every intent to keep supporting and improving this. Considering how good it already is, I'm pretty excited to see where it goes. It's pretty impressive how they managed to pull this capability off, imo.
 
So is this easily integrated with twitch yet?

According to the article available, it should have been about 2 months ago =/
 
That's something I've been wondering myself. Then again they never really said when the Twitch capability would be ready. Considering they've got it recording the mic now, hopefully soon.
 
I take HUGE max framerate hit when I have Shadowplay on in Shadow and Manual, Shadow only, or Manual while actually recording. It's bad enough that I consider it completely unusable for recording while actually playing a game, rather than just making a documentary capture.

We're talking 40FPS drop in something like Uningine Valley benchmark (with a loss of well over 1000 points in the final benchmark score) at my system resolution.

For real gaming, where it really matters, I still see around a 30FPS drop in max framerates in BF4. That's not trivial, and you can feel it as well as see it. And I have a lot of FPS to spare with my rig compared to somebody with more sensible components. I'd hate to see what the performance penalty is on a mid-range 600 series part that liked to run with Vsync disabled.

Doesn't seem to hit the min frame rates much if at all, so there's that.

All my results are from a rig with a 60Hz 1440p monitor, GTX 780 Ti's in SLI @1200/7500, 3570K @ 4.6GHz, writing to a Samsung 840 Evo SSD, Valley run in Ultra (no AA), and BF4 1440p/No Vsync/Ultra/HBAO/2x MSAA, with Vaseline AA disabled.
 
Croak said:
I take HUGE max framerate hit when I have Shadowplay
...
GTX 780 Ti's in SLI
Click to expand...

Maybe because the hw video encoder doesn't work right when alternating frames are on different GPUs? But it gets sent over ...
 
SLI is the issue:
Q: What’s the performance impact of ShadowPlay?
A: In most games, you shouldn’t see a noticeable performance difference with ShadowPlay. 5% is typical, 10% in the most demanding cases.
In NVIDIA SLI® mode at higher frame rates, the performance impact can be higher.
Click to expand...
 
Croak said:
I take HUGE max framerate hit when I have Shadowplay on in Shadow and Manual, Shadow only, or Manual while actually recording. It's bad enough that I consider it completely unusable for recording while actually playing a game, rather than just making a documentary capture.

We're talking 40FPS drop in something like Uningine Valley benchmark (with a loss of well over 1000 points in the final benchmark score) at my system resolution.

For real gaming, where it really matters, I still see around a 30FPS drop in max framerates in BF4. That's not trivial, and you can feel it as well as see it. And I have a lot of FPS to spare with my rig compared to somebody with more sensible components. I'd hate to see what the performance penalty is on a mid-range 600 series part that liked to run with Vsync disabled.

Doesn't seem to hit the min frame rates much if at all, so there's that.

All my results are from a rig with a 60Hz 1440p monitor, GTX 780 Ti's in SLI @1200/7500, 3570K @ 4.6GHz, writing to a Samsung 840 Evo SSD, Valley run in Ultra (no AA), and BF4 1440p/No Vsync/Ultra/HBAO/2x MSAA, with Vaseline AA disabled.
Click to expand...

What version of the drivers are you using? In the OCN topic they're talking about some issues in SLI, and I've experienced some myself after the latest update in AC Brotherhood... lots of frame stuttering. It looks like they've acknowledged the SLI issue in general and they're working on it. I didn't experience anything of the sort till I upgraded, so I'm fairly certain that this is something they're gonna iron out. For the record I run on 1440p myself (780gtx SC sli), and it didn't used to be an issue... not sure what they did.

I don't think it's supposed to be that much of a performance hit even because it's SLI, I think they've just got some SLI issues to iron out. Either way, imagine what the performance hit would be if you used fraps lol... well heck I don't know, try it. 1080p, 60fps, audio recording too... gogogo.
 
331.93 beta drivers and GFE 1.8.0.0.

It's fairly smooth, just slower. I don't notice any stuttering in the benches or my games, and I think after almost a decade of Crossfire usage, I should be pretty familiar with what stutter feels like. :)

It's actually reducing GPU usage by about 20% across the board on both GPUs when active (never goes higher than 78% on either core), and that's translating into a corresponding drop in frame rate.

I'm also running the Skyn3t BIOS on mine, which disables Boost, 3D clock speeds are locked, and I'm wondering if that's having an impact. It's not temp related, and it's not power target related, both are staying below limits, and even if I clock down to speeds in the stock range it's still capping GPU usage by the same amount, and frames are dropping by the same percentage.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I would assume that pulling numbers out of your butt makes you look like you're part of the crowd your signature is addressing. If you just go across this topic, I'm not "assuming"... but I'm going to estimate that the percentage of people that like this over the ones that are like "meh" is actually greater than 5% (ie > 1 in 20 people).

http://www.overclock.net/t/1403553/...ion-thread-microphone-recording-feature-added

Also an official thread about it on OCN for bug reporting that has an Nvidia rep personally reporting in.

Like I said, also, it's really one of those things that you have to taste once and to understand. I was originally one of those people that never recorded anything, what with the hassle that is opening up Fraps, staring at a greater-than-two-digits uncompressed video file, and then conversion. Then for fun I recorded an Assassin's Creed Brotherhood replay of me screwing around. Painlessly done, fully encoded video file immediately ready. Not only did it make me go "wow, that was easy" but it made me go "hey, maybe I should do a few more video recordings so that I can save all of this cool stuff for the future if I ever want to rewatch it".

Looks like Nvidia has every intent to keep supporting and improving this. Considering how good it already is, I'm pretty excited to see where it goes. It's pretty impressive how they managed to pull this capability off, imo.
Click to expand...

I've been gaming since 1985. I've never once recorded anything of myself playing. I'm sure as hell there are a lot more people like me who don't care to record themselves gaming than there are of you. Yes it's a neat feature for those who care, but don't kid yourself to the amount of people who do care. I think the people who most want to use these features are kids who can't afford a videocard.
 
trungracingdev said:
I've been gaming since 1985. I've never once recorded anything of myself playing. I'm sure as hell there are a lot more people like me who don't care to record themselves gaming than there are of you. Yes it's a neat feature for those who care, but don't kid yourself to the amount of people who do care. I think the people who most want to use these features are kids who can't afford a videocard.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure using similar logic we can prove everything unneeded.
 
bexamous said:
Pretty sure using similar logic we can prove everything unneeded.
Click to expand...

Well, While I am not sure of the numbers, I am pretty sure that most gamers don't use or will never use recording features.

You can even look at the thread title, why isn't there a bigger splash about shadowplay? It's a great feature and seems to work really well but at the end of the day it's only a minority that uses it.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
I would assume that pulling numbers out of your butt makes you look like you're part of the crowd your signature is addressing. If you just go across this topic, I'm not "assuming"... but I'm going to estimate that the percentage of people that like this over the ones that are like "meh" is actually greater than 5% (ie > 1 in 20 people).

http://www.overclock.net/t/1403553/...ion-thread-microphone-recording-feature-added

Also an official thread about it on OCN for bug reporting that has an Nvidia rep personally reporting in.

Like I said, also, it's really one of those things that you have to taste once and to understand. I was originally one of those people that never recorded anything, what with the hassle that is opening up Fraps, staring at a greater-than-two-digits uncompressed video file, and then conversion. Then for fun I recorded an Assassin's Creed Brotherhood replay of me screwing around. Painlessly done, fully encoded video file immediately ready. Not only did it make me go "wow, that was easy" but it made me go "hey, maybe I should do a few more video recordings so that I can save all of this cool stuff for the future if I ever want to rewatch it".

Looks like Nvidia has every intent to keep supporting and improving this. Considering how good it already is, I'm pretty excited to see where it goes. It's pretty impressive how they managed to pull this capability off, imo.
Click to expand...

Now it's you that's making up numbers? Where are you getting the one in twenty from? I know a couple of hundred gamers from steam, lan party's etc I know none of them record anything ever. The majority of gamers use crap video cards if you go by steam surveys, so they aren't recording. I would think 5% is been kinda generous.

You can't use your own subjective experience as baseline for the numbers that will be using shadowplay. You said it yourself, why isn't there more noise about it? Nobody uses it, that's why. A thread over on OCN doesn't prove that's it widely used. Most of the same posters time and time again.

Don't get me wrong, Shadowplay is awesome. And I am really interested it, I would never use it myself but I think it's a great feature and I have followed it's progress all along. And maybe because of it's ease of use more and more people will start to use it.
 
I absolutley love it. Use it all the time to capture hilarious moments in BF4 with my friends.
 
who really cares about recording gameplay? I guess some people are into that stuff.
 
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bigbeard86 said:
who really cares about recording gameplay? I guess some people are into that stuff.
Click to expand...

"I guess some people are into that stuff."

Yes, yes they are. The older guys aren't, but A LOT of the younger folks are really into streaming and recording gameplay. This is a feature that a lot of those guys will love, and shadow play really is worlds better than DXtory or FRAPs in terms of system resources. Twitch streaming is bigger than it ever has been and is growing - And for the younger gamers, they really love that stuff.

It should also be mentioned that for the newer generation of gamers, a lot of people actually make money doing that stuff in terms of streaming, just take a look at the guys on LCS/LoL and what not. Most of these folks have youtube channels with uploaded gameplay and shadowplay is absolutely of use for people like that, the newer generation of gamers - they really dig streaming/recording.

That said, it's there if you want it. Personally I think a lot of people will really enjoy it, but it isn't by any means compulsory.
 
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