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I want a piece of Windows software that will constantly record what I'm doing on my desktop, discarding footage that's over [30] seconds old. Its recording would be a rolling one.
The idea is that I can somehow hit a button and see "what just happened".
I don't want to have to babysit it. That is, I don't want a piece of software designed for screencasting (which I'm not trying to do). My bias against that is based on my (maybe incorrect?) assumption that I'd regularly have to start/stop the recording throughout the day.
The idea is that this piece of software would consume fewer resources (than a screencast recorder) on my box, as it's only keeping a very limited amount of footage in memory (and low quality would even be acceptable), because it's discarding frames fairly quickly after they're captured.
Where can I find a piece of software with features like this?
2let us know your platform. On linux writing a script that does just that using ffmepg would be trivial. – brice – 2010-02-12T15:59:59.637
I agree. I can't believe this doesn't yet exist. Xbox One's Game DVR has had this exact functionality for years, as have GoPros ("looping recording") and other camcorders ("pre-recording"). – Aldaviva – 2017-08-14T06:23:14.160
Turns out Open Broadcaster Software has this exact feature, it's called "Replay Buffer." Enable it in Settings > Output and choose a duration, then hit "Start Replay Buffer". You'll want to assign a hotkey to Replay Buffer - Save Replay, which writes a video of the last N seconds to your Recording Path. FYI you don't actually need to be broadcasting your stream anywhere just to use OBS for recording, so you can use it locally only and not broadcasting to Twitch or anything.
– Aldaviva – 2018-06-25T03:51:22.180Here is my DUP of the question. It maybe spells out some requirements in more details than this question. Also it uses different terms, so would be a different target for google search, etc. https://superuser.com/questions/1429943/looking-for-continuous-screen-capture-for-retroactivly-reproducing-errors-timeb - I wonder though if OBS can record mouse events and keystrokes...
– Arioch 'The – 2019-04-26T10:33:23.730I've edited the question to reflect that I need a Windows solution. – lance – 2012-01-13T15:10:28.760
I'd love to have exactly this, anyone come up with a Windows solution? – Kieran – 2014-02-20T11:05:37.847