Game:

ShadowPlay (2010)

Category:

Tutorial

Duration: 4:39

7,879 views

98

A brief Nvidia Shadowplay – multi-track audio tutorial. I used to not use Nvidia Shadowplay at all because of the lack of multi-track audio, but finally decided I could try and make it work since it would allow me to capture small segments of gameplay from games that I normally wouldn’t be recording. It’s better to have bad footage than no footage at all, right? So, for the last couple years I have been using Nvidia Shadowplay with my microphone’s track recorded right in the game and Teamspeak audio, but it made editing a real pain in the ass. I had tried multiple forms of compression, constantly readjusting volume levels in game, Windows, GeForce Experience, on my mixer, and so on trying to get the balance… sadly, the dynamic of recorded audio is just too broad from different sources and there is no fix all other than adjusting each source AFTER the recording has completed. Obviously, this is impossible with Shadowplay’s old method of smashing all the audio into a single track, but Nvidia GeForce just recently released a statement concerning their update to Shadowplay with in GeForce Experience that will allow the user to separate system sounds from their microphone in Shadowplay recordings.

As someone who has made several videos using this software, I thought it would only be right to do an Nvidia Shadowplay – multi-track audio tutorial to usher in this new age of awesome tech. Okay, so it isn’t really new awesome tech... and really there are still other software developers who do it better. It is worth noting that this isn’t really Nvidia’s stomping ground though, so any step in the right direction with Shadowplay is a good thing. In my recent CSGO and Rainbow Six videos I had to work really hard to get the audio to an acceptable level and even then, I hated it. With the implementation of multi-track audio, I can now take Shadowplay gameplay and extract each audio track individually and compress/level my microphone separate from the game and Teamspeak audio. There is still some legwork to do before recording to ensure that your system sounds are well balanced, but that is much easier to do because of most programs doing compression for you and you hearing it live during playback.

As for the actual Nvidia Shadowplay – multi-track audio tutorial, there isn’t a whole lot to the process, as Nvidia implemented it in such a way that when you start it up it is pretty much good to go. Currently, the multi-track audio option is part of the experimental beta features, so you will have to start by opening up GeForce Experience and enabling these features. Once it is out of beta, you can skip this step. After that, clicking on the Share button will open up the Nvidia Shadowplay control panel where you can see all of the option for your recordings. All we need to do is click on the microphone and then go to settings where you can find the multi-track audio configuration options. The top track will record every sound that is made on your system and the lower track will record anything that passes through the device you select from the dropdown menu. Furthermore, you can still adjust the gain and boost levels through Shadowplay, even though it isn’t as important since you can manually adjust these on a per track basis during editing… all thanks to multi-track audio! Lastly, make sure that the button in the Shadowplay panel is lit up green saying “Separate both tracks.”

Next up in the Nvidia Shadowplay – multi-track audio tutorial, we can just start recording stuff! Once you get some stuff recorded go and plop it into your preferred video editor and start enjoy the freedom of controlling your voice independent of your game volume. Shadowplay has pretty good quality recordings in a convenient package that saves you a lot of drive space, so I am glad that Nvidia GeForce is attempting to refine the platform and make it a more powerful tool for the community of content creators who support their company. That being said, I don’t think content creators should limit themselves to a single capture/streaming software. Just to make this video I used Shadowplay, Dxtory, and FRAPs while also using OBS to stream. I think that tools are invaluable to creators, so the more you utilize, the more you can create. Speaking of which, if you need to extract the audio from your Nvidia Shadowplay recordings but don’t have a video editor software capable of such, you can use Format Factory (freeware) to convert your files into MP3s which will single out one track so you can just delete it within your video editor and keep the other track for editing.

Nvidia could still improve the system sounds track by implementing a device dropdown here as well. We could benefit by running our game sound through one device while running voice comms. or music through another device or even a virtual audio cable. This would allow the creator to comfortably do whatever they like while gaming without worrying of its impact on their Shadowplay recordings.

Other Statistics