And More: Editing NVIDIA's Shadowplay Recordings and 'The VFR/CFR Problem' (Text-Only Version)

[Updates at bottom of article]

Just a quick post on the problem many people seem to be having with editing NVIDIA's Shadowplay recordings and how to work around it, for now...

For those who don't know, Shadowplay is a free game recording capability that is included in NVIDIA's GeForce Experience utility and is accessible by anyone with an NVIDIA GPU that is a GTX 650 or higher [they state "600 Series or higher"]. Simply install the GFx utility [my abbrev.] and turn it on and Shadowplay will record a buffered period of time, overwriting that space/file again and again, until you decide to save something cool that happened in the game.

Whether FRAPS sold NVIDIA the code to do buffered/looped recording (as FRAPS has had it for many years), or NVIDIA developed it on their own, the end result is the same. The problem is, a ton of people [if technical and game forums everywhere are an indication] are unable to edit the end output correctly, when using Shadowplay.

The main reason why this seems to happen, could be due to Shadowplay utilizing VFR to record it's video data into a file. VFR stands for Variable Frame Rate, and essentially it allows the frame rate to change from slow to fast, above and below the 'set' frame rate, many times if needed, within a single video file. This helps to save space by making low-motion (or static) scenes use less frames within the video file and make complex scenes (with high-action/movements) look smoother by inserting more frames into the video file. Sounds good and test videos look fine, but the problem is when going to then edit the 'Shadowplays'.

Many video editing applications (especially NLE's [Non-Linear Editors]) may not like Shadowplay and will choke on the video, hold back sound in spurts and spit up bits of food on your screen if you try to edit the recordings. This could be due to the usage of VFR.

Note: I don't want to 'put the blame' on NVIDIA or VFR here, NVIDIA is a fantastic company with great innovations and products, and VFR is a great method for organizing frames within video data that creates a lot of 'headroom for compression' (lower file sizes by reducing the number of frames used) while trying to maintain Quality as well (by increasing the frames utilized per second within the GOP data of the file, as the codec decides it is beneficial). It merely is not as compatible, when it comes to video editing programs. As another example, Plays.Tv uses Accelerated VFR in its' Client to buffer/record with, which it notes here in their Support section, is simply less compatible and can create audio/video synchronization problems - the issue is VFR and editing compatibility -  not these companies/utilities themselves...

Fortunately, the 'fix' [which in my opinion of more of a work-around] is relatively easy, if slightly time-consuming:

Simply re-render the Shadowplay recordings into CFR (constant frame rate) video (where 60fps really is 60 frames being recorded or played back in sequence, in the video, every second, throughout the entire clip). There are many apps that can do this, but the most popular [most-popularly-used in the video-editing circles that are experiencing this problem] is probably Handbrake (it is completely free to use). Simply import your video and choose Constant Framerate in the Video Tab. That's it.

Another program you can use, is built right in (if you use Windows): Windows Movie Maker [Note: Windows Movie Maker does not seem to be bundled with Windows 10, it may however be available as a separate download]. Simply import the video and without adjusting anything, export (render) it out to MPEG-4 (MP4) format. It will produce a CFR (Constant Frame Rate) video that you can then import into programs that were having trouble with VFR - like Adobe's Premiere and other video editing applications.

[Choose a high quality setting or high bitrate, to maintain as much of your original recording detail as possible (so it won't compress it even more and lose detail). If you need to set a BitRate for the export, make sure to set it higher than the original video clip(s) BitRate ((Personal Suggestion: 2x more if you can))]

Once this is done, you'll be able to import your Shadowplay 're-renders' without problem, whether you use Premiere, Vegas, Lightworks or some other video editing application that has been having trouble importing your VFR video (for instance, some people have had problems with Shadowplay recordings using CyberLink's PowerDirector and others have not had a problem with PowerDirector at all, importing it fine - I have not used Shadowplay Recordings in PowerDirector yet [I do not have a GPU capable of using Shadowplay at this time] but I have personally imported VFR material into PowerDirector 12 without problem).

[I might come back and add screenshots to this article in the future, or create a new one talking more specifically about VFR and importing it into Premiere, but for now I wanted to bang it out and get it up here to help people who have been having this problem (many since last year, when Shadowplay first came out, with even more people having the problem earlier than that with Premiere and VFR recordings from their cameras)]

I hope that helps some people out for now, anyway. Have fun recording - and See You In The Games!




Update 1:

Bandicam has now implemented an option in their game recording software (as of July 2015), which allows choosing CFR recording or VFR recording. Since it also uses GPU-accelerated codecs such as AMDAPP, NVENC, QuickSync (and can be made to use CUDA, if you still have that), it seems to have become a viable alternative to this problem. As a Registered User of Bandicam, I shall test out this latest version of the software and perhaps write a post about it Soon™


Update 2:

I have done some quick testing with this new version of Bandicam (with the ability to choose CFR as well as use VFR if desired) and have written a short post about it at this blog, here.


Update 3 - 2018.06:

NVIDIA's Game Recording Utility seems to have changed names a few times, known as Shadowplay, then Share, then In-Game Overlay. Whatever it is called today, while this issue with editing VFR might remain, on some older video editing applications; it seems to be less of an issue on the most recent versions of video editing apps (as of 2018) - tested personally with a few programs, such as Sony's Vegas Pro 14 (now taken over by MAGIX), CyberLink's PowerDirector 16, and Corel's VideoStudio 2018 - all three video editors did not have an issue Importing and Editing VFR material (as of June 2018 when I did these short tests) [I do not own and did not test Adobe's Premiere/Elements, at this time, sorry]. So, if you are having an issue editing Shadowplay/NVENC recordings circa 2018 or later, try updating your video editing application(s), if you can.