Introduction
For years, I’ve been streaming with Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), and have used it to record footage that I later edit in Final Cut Pro on my Mac, with a little conversion between the two platforms unfortunately being required (due to the way the two systems handle audio, supposedly).
However, when I want to record just raw gameplay (i.e. no camera, microphone, screen reader etc), there didn’t seem to be an easier way than loading up an instance of OBS, putting my game window to the top of the scene, turning on the desktop audio and hoping beyond hope that the levels would be fine in post, given I can’t see the meters in the program to verify that the game wouldn’t burst everybody’s eardrums.
That has been the case, until recently, when Steam launched recording features into its beta branch, then subsequently into the full public releases of the client.
Having played around with this feature myself, I can confirm that, barring a fair number of unlabelled buttons, the basic functionality of recording a clip, saving it and exporting the whole thing into a separate editor is all doable without the need for assistance.
Want to learn how to do this yourself? Read on!
Setting Up Shortcuts
Before you begin recording your masterful gameplay of whatever titles you choose, the most important thing to get sorted is just what keys you are going to press to make that happen. After all, though you can record in the background, it’s always good to have a shortcut on-hand to be able to choose when you start recording as well (to save an upcoming fighting game match, for instance).
In order to set these and other elements up, first start Steam in Big Picture mode.
What Is Big Picture?
Big Picture mode essentially turns your Steam library and other areas into an experience closer to what you’d find on a console interface such as the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. In previous years, screen readers would not read much of the settings menus other than the main tabs, but the accessibility of this has fortunately improved in recent times.
Finding Shortcuts
Given you’re already in the Steam Window with Big Picture active and your list of games navigable with left and right arrows on your keyboard, press Escape to bring up the root menu including home, downloads and, key to this, settings.
Activate the settings option, then croll all the way down to in-game recording.
Once you’re on this screen, take a look around and you’ll see not only settings for shortcuts further down the page, but also to adjust what mode the recording functionality is in and how long background recording will store footage for, to name just a few.
Note that if you’re using NVDA, to be able to read what the various edit fields are, you’ll have to press NVDA+ space to change from focus to browse modes.
In terms of shortcuts, I personally use Control in combination with a selection of function keys, though your preference may vary.
Once you’ve established your key bindings, there’s no need to save, just exit the dialogue and you should be good to go.
Recording
Recording is as simple as going into your game of choice, hitting the shortcut you’ve just set up and Journeying through whatever world you find yourself in.
There are accompanying UI sounds for when you start/stop a clip, take a screenshot or add a timeline marker as well, similar to those you’d hear from the Big Picture interface.
Exporting Footage For Further Editing
Once you’ve got whatever footage you want, the question becomes how do you get the recording out of Steam and into whatever program you want to use, given Steam doesn’t use a standard video editor compatible format?
After doing some research, I discovered that the desktop and Big Picture modes for Steam’s UI actually both have slightly different option sets as of the time of writing.
Instead of being able to use the Big Picture mode for this part of the process, you’ll have to right click the Steam icon on the system tray (press the applications key on your keyboard) then, when the menu appears, press “Exit Big Picture”.
This should bring up Steam’s less accessible desktop interface, at which point you should scroll down from the top to find the word “view”.
Once you press enter on this, go all the way down to the bottom of the page with control+end and you should hear “new, recordings and screenshots” or words to that effect.
Activating this option means you are now on the page with the list of recordings and other media you’ve accumulated. Though you won’t be able to see the clips without hitting enter on them first, find the clip you want and right click it.
With the clip’s context menu open, find the share item and hit enter, at which point the first option you should be presented with is “export video file”.
Once you press enter on this, you’ll see a number of taps and options, but for the sake of the basic process, we’re going to go down to the unlabelled button just below the file name.
Hitting space on this button allows you to brows for a location and change the clip name, as by default it has a long string of numbers as most of its default naming scheme which is very much unhelpful for screen readers when not formatted well.
Once you’ve found where you want to store your clip, you can easily move it into other editing programs just like any other file.
A Note On Background Recording
Whilst you might think that background recording would be the best solution as you don’t have to worry about when you start or stop capturing your greatest moments, unfortunately there is a hidden accessibility issue that you might not expect as a screen reader user, at least currently.
Background clips, it turns out, are treated completely differently to ones you record yourself. Though they technically have a start and end point, what you have to do to save footage from a background clip is set a start and end point on the timeline.
Though I’d love to be able to do this myself and I’m sure others would too, the methods of setting this points require not only using unlabelled buttons, but also dragging a mouse pointer in an area that didn’t appear to show up with NVDA.
As a result, I’d only recommend using start /stop recording as a method, as much as that means you also won’t be able to save clips, though you could always have background recording turned on and delete the background clips later as well as an alternative.
Closing Notes
Many times I’ve gone to record footage and I’ve found it to be frustrating to get up and running quickly and efficiently. As a result I’ve found the above to be infinitely more useful and less time consuming.
I hope the instructions provided here are of help , whether you’re looking to just begin your content creation journey or extend it through things like shorts or presentations for instance, even if those aspects might take additional learning to perfect or work with.