Instant replay on PC

How instant replay works

An instant replay recorder encodes your game continuously, but instead of writing everything to disk it keeps a rolling window in memory. New footage goes in at one end and the oldest footage drops out of the other, so the buffer always holds the most recent minute or so of play.

When you press the save key, the recorder writes the contents of that buffer to a file. Nothing before the buffer exists any more, and nothing is written to disk until you ask for it. That is what makes instant replay practical to leave running for a whole evening.

Instant replay versus recording everything

Recording a full session gives you everything, but the files are large and finding the moment means scrubbing through a long video. Instant replay only keeps what you chose to save. Your disk fills with highlights instead of hours of menus and loading screens.

The trade-off is that you have to press the key. If you forget, the moment eventually falls out of the buffer. A longer replay length gives you more time to remember.

Setting up instant replay with Clippy

Clippy is built around instant replay, so there is very little to set up.

1. Install Clippy from the download page. It runs on Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit.
2. Launch a game. Clippy starts its replay buffer by itself when the game starts and stops when it closes.
3. Press F8 to save the replay as an MP4. You can rebind the key, or use a mouse side button or a controller button.
4. Optionally set a second, shorter save key in Settings that keeps only the last 15, 30 or 60 seconds.

Choosing your replay length

Clippy's default replay length is one minute. That covers most fights, goals and fails with some build-up before them. If you play games where a play develops slowly, a longer replay is worth it; if you mainly save single shots, a shorter one is fine.

The buffer lives in memory, so a longer replay and a higher quality both take more RAM. Clippy's Settings shows how much memory your chosen length takes before you commit to it. The shorter second save key is a good middle ground: keep a long buffer, and save just the last 15, 30 or 60 seconds when that is all you need.

Instant replay options on Windows

Several tools offer instant replay on PC, and which one you can use depends partly on your hardware. NVIDIA ShadowPlay, now Instant Replay in the NVIDIA app, needs an NVIDIA graphics card. AMD has its own recorder in Radeon software. Intel graphics users have neither. Xbox Game Bar is built into Windows. OBS Studio is free and very capable, but it is built for streaming and recording sessions, and its replay buffer needs setting up by hand.

Clippy encodes on NVIDIA (NVENC), AMD (AMF) and Intel (Quick Sync) graphics, with a software fallback, so the same app works whatever card you have. See how it compares with ShadowPlay, AMD's recorder, Xbox Game Bar and OBS.

Keeping the replay running when it matters

A replay buffer is only useful if it is running at the moment something happens. A few situations can interrupt a replay, and Clippy handles each one:

• Alt-tabbing out of an exclusive fullscreen game and back: the replay buffer survives.
• Launchers that hand off to the real game, such as FiveM: Clippy follows the game.
• A game that was already running when Clippy started, like Roblox starting with Windows, does not keep the recording once you are playing something else.
• Games run as administrator: they work through a small helper Windows asks you to allow.

Questions

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