v3.4.0 — Record only the game, and updates

Windowed games are recorded without the desktop around them, Clipper can now update itself, and opening it twice no longer breaks the copy that was already running.

Record only the game

In Only in games mode, a game running in a window rather than full-screen used to be recorded along with everything around it — the title bar, the taskbar, whatever was open beside it. Now the recorder takes just the inside of the game's window and scales it up to fill the clip. A window of a different shape gets black bars rather than being stretched, and moving or resizing the window mid-game is followed straight away without losing the replay buffer.

It is on by default, under When to record in Settings. It is the same capture as before, cropped in the step that already scales the picture, so there is no second capture running. Two things to know: anything on top of the game — a notification, a window you drag over it — is still in the clip, because it is on screen in that spot; and a windowed game on a different monitor from the one you record is recorded whole-screen as before. Full-screen games are unaffected.

Updates

Clipper now checks this page when it starts and every six hours after — a few kilobytes from GitHub, with nothing about you or your clips. When there is a newer version it shows you these notes and waits. Nothing is downloaded until you press Update now, because the download is about 130 MB and updating restarts the app, which starts the replay buffer over. Later leaves an Update button in the titlebar; Skip this version stays quiet until the next one. If Clipper is in the tray, you get one Windows notification instead.

• Installed: the new installer runs, updates Clipper in place and starts it again. Settings and clips are untouched.
• Portable: the new exe is saved in the same folder as the one you run (Clipper 3.4.0.exe becomes Clipper 3.5.0.exe), Clipper restarts into it and deletes the old one. Start with Windows follows it.

Every download is checked against the checksum GitHub recorded for the file, and one that does not match is thrown away rather than run. Check for updates in Settings turns the background checks off; Check now beside it still works.

This is the first version that can do this, so getting here from 3.3.1 or earlier is still a manual download — one last time.

Opening Clipper twice

Double-clicking the portable exe while Clipper was already open did more harm than it looked like. The second launch correctly handed focus back to the first, but on its way out it deleted files the running copy was using — ffmpeg and the recorder among them — so thumbnails, exports and instant replay could quietly stop working until Clipper was restarted. Each launch now unpacks into a folder of its own, and a second launch simply brings the open window forward. In both versions, the second launch now stops the moment it knows Clipper is already open, instead of starting to build a window and tray icon of its own first.

v3.3.1 — Instant replay on laptops and super-ultrawides

Instant replay on laptops, machines with two graphics cards, and super-ultrawide monitors. On an ordinary desktop with one graphics card, nothing changes.

Recording on the graphics card that drives your screen

The recorder used to take whichever graphics card Windows listed first. On a desktop with one card
that is the only one there is. On a laptop it often is not: the built-in screen is usually driven by
the processor's integrated graphics, the HDMI port is often wired to the separate card, and which of
the two Windows lists first depends on its graphics settings for the app, not on where your screen is
connected. When the recorder picked the wrong one, Windows still delivered every frame, but it had
to copy each one from one card to the other through system memory, at your screen's full refresh
rate. That is exactly the cost the recorder is built to avoid.

It now works on the card your monitor is plugged into, and it only tries the video encoders that
belong to that card. On a laptop with Intel or AMD graphics next to an NVIDIA or AMD card, the first
encoder it tried used to be the other card's, and was often refused. Both choices fall back to the
old behaviour if they come up empty.

The card in use is named in the recorder's log, %LOCALAPPDATA%\clipper\capture.log, on the
capturing … line. This was built and checked against the documented behaviour, but it has only
been run on a single-card desktop, so if replay misbehaves on your laptop, that line is the thing to
send along.

Super-ultrawide monitors stay on the graphics card

Graphics card video encoders stop at 4096 pixels across for the format Clipper records in, whether
they are NVIDIA's, AMD's or Intel's. A 5120×1440 monitor at the Ultra or Native quality asked
for 5120, so every encoder on the card refused it, and the recorder quietly fell back to Windows'
software encoder. That meant 1440p at 60 fps encoded on the same processor your game is using, with
every frame copied back off the graphics card to get there.

Those monitors now record at 4096×1152 on the graphics card: a fifth less width, but none of the
game's frame rate. Any monitor up to 4K records at the same size as before.

The newest frame, every time

When Windows had two frames waiting, the recorder used to take the older one. It now takes the
newest and drops the rest, so the picture never trails the sound by a frame.

v3.3.0 — A sound on save, every app's audio, and bulk delete

Clipper now tells you a replay was saved without you looking away from the game, records the sound of every app on every output, and can delete clips in bulk.

A sound when a replay is saved

Press the replay hotkey and you hear a short chime once the clip is written, about a twentieth of a
second later. That's the one confirmation that reaches you mid-game, and hearing it means the file
exists, not just that the key was pressed. It's on by default. Settings → Replay & recording has the
switch and three sounds to choose from:

• Chime: two bell notes rising, over in about a second. The default.
• Pop: one soft note that slides into place. The shortest, and the easiest to miss under a busy game.
• Sparkle: a quick four-note run. The most celebratory, and the easiest to pick out over loud audio.

All three are mastered to the same loudness, a little under typical game audio, so switching sounds
changes the character, not the volume. Choosing one plays it.

Desktop audio: every app, every output, and never Clipper

Desktop audio used to record one device's mix, whichever output was the default when the recorder
started. That caused three problems:

• Switching outputs silenced your clips. Moving from speakers to a headset left the recorder on
  the speakers, recording nothing, until you restarted it.
• Audio sent to another output was missing. Voice chat on your headset while the game plays on
  your speakers came out without the call.
• Clipper's own sounds got in. The new save chime would have ended up in the next replay, and so
  would a clip you previewed in the grid.

Now the recorder asks Windows for the sound of every app except Clipper, on every output, and
all three problems are gone. Switch your default device mid-game and the recording doesn't notice.
Measured against the old way, it uses the same CPU (about 0.2% of one core), and the sound lines up
with the picture within 6 ms of where it used to.

On Windows older than 10 version 2004, which can't record per app, Clipper falls back to the old
way, with one improvement: it now follows your default output when you switch devices, keeping the
buffer. The desktop audio setting says which of the two is running.

Device changes are also handled on a thread of their own now, so switching outputs never costs a
frame of video. Before, it could drop a couple.

Delete several clips at once

A card's ⋮ menu → Select puts a checkbox on every card. Click anywhere on a card to tick it
(the box, the picture or the info row), or use Select all for everything in the category you're
looking at. The bar at the top shows how many clips you've ticked and how much space they take, and
Delete removes them all after one confirmation. Cancel or Esc backs out.

Deleted clips don't go to the Recycle Bin, the same as deleting one at a time.

v3.2.1 — Game audio that no longer crackles

A fix for game audio that crackles on some machines, and instant replay using half the GPU on a still screen.

Game audio that crackles now and then

On some machines, the game audio in a clip crackled now and then. It was the same fault v3.1.0 fixed for
microphones, still present on the desktop side: whenever a chunk of audio arrived a fraction of a
millisecond later than the recorder expected, it put a tiny gap of silence in front of it. On a
machine whose sound output keeps precise time, that never happens, which is why it could not be heard
everywhere. On one whose timing wobbles by a few milliseconds, it happened many times a second.
That can be a USB or wireless headset, or a virtual mixer between the game and your speakers.

The recorder now tells a wobble from a real gap. A wobble is left alone. A device whose clock runs a
little fast or slow has its audio sped up or slowed down by a fraction of a percent, which nobody
can hear, instead of having holes punched in it. That also keeps the audio in step with the video
over a long session. Silence is still added where audio was really missing, so the clip stays in
sync.

If your game audio already sounded right, nothing changes: on a device that keeps time, the audio
comes out bit for bit what it was before.

If it still crackles for you, the recorder's log now says what the desktop audio is doing. It is at
%LOCALAPPDATA%\clipper\capture.log, and it is the thing to send along with a report.

Instant replay uses half the GPU on a still screen

When nothing on screen changes, like a menu, a loading screen or the desktop, the recorder used to
redo the same colour conversion on the same picture every frame. It now reuses the last one. On an
RTX 5080 that halves the recorder's GPU use on a still screen, from 1.46% to 0.74%, and saves about
2 W of board power. With motion on screen almost every frame is new, so there it costs the same as
before.

v3.2.0 — Recording on demand, and hotkeys on your wheel

Clipper can now record from one press to the next as well as keep the last minute, and both of them can be bound to a button on your wheel.

Recording on demand

Settings → Replay & recording → Record on demand adds a second hotkey — Alt+F9 by default,
ShadowPlay's own — that records everything from one press to the next. The recording lands in a
Recordings folder inside your clips folder, which the grid shows as a category of its own. A
Record button in the titlebar does the same, and counts the time while it runs; a silent
notification tells you it started, since a hotkey pressed over a game gives no other sign.

It is the replay's own stream, written twice. The recorder already encodes your screen once for
the buffer; a recording takes a copy of those same frames. So it costs no GPU beyond what the replay
already spends, it is at exactly the replay's quality, screen and audio settings, and the replay
hotkey keeps working in the middle of a recording — press it an hour in and you still get the last
minute as a clip.

It records the screen, whatever is on it: Only in games and the folder-per-game sorting belong to
the replay. It works with instant replay switched off, too. Then nothing runs until you press the
hotkey, and the first second or so goes to starting the encoder; with replay on, the recording
starts on the keypress.

Nothing is lost if something goes wrong. A recording is written as a stream that is valid up to
its last byte and turned into an MP4 when you stop — copied, not re-encoded, so it takes about as
long as copying the file. If the recorder is killed or the machine loses power mid-recording, the
next start finishes the file. A screen switched to HDR or turned off for a moment does not end it
either: it waits, then carries on in the same file with the gap closed.

Buttons on your wheel

Each hotkey now has an Alternative bind under it, and that one can be a button on a sim racing
wheel, a button box, a flight stick or a gamepad, as well as a second key combination. Press
Change, then the button. Your hands are on the wheel when the moment happens.

Buttons and the D-pad on the rim both work, read from the device's own description of itself rather
than from a list of supported wheels. A bind remembers the device by make and model, so it survives
unplugging it or moving it to another port, and the field tells you when the device is not
connected. The main hotkeys stay keyboard-only, so one bind always works with nothing plugged in.

It costs nothing until you bind a button. With one bound, a small background reader runs — measured
at about a third of a percent of one CPU core with a MOZA R5, whose base reports its position
hundreds of times a second even while it sits still.

Smaller things

• The settings tab is now Replay & recording. Quality, screen and audio are shared by both and
  stay editable while either one is on; the replay's own settings fade when replay is off.
• Turning instant replay off while recording on demand stays on clears the replay's buffer from
  disk instead of leaving it there.
• The tray menu gets Start recording / Stop recording, and its icon turns red while a
  recording runs.

v3.1.3 — Instant replay follows your default microphone

Instant replay now follows your default microphone when you change it, without starting over.

A default microphone that stays followed

With the microphone set to "Use default device", the recorder looked up which microphone that meant
only when it started. Change your default in Windows afterwards — switching to a headset for a call,
say — and it went on recording the old one until something happened to restart it, such as a game
launching. v3.1.2 fixed the name shown in Settings, which is how it became clear the recording itself
was still on the old device.

The recorder now checks once a second and moves to the new default within about a second. It
switches the way it already handles a mic being unplugged and plugged back in: a few milliseconds of
gap in your voice at the moment of the switch, and nothing else. The replay buffer is kept, and
game audio and video are not touched.

It costs next to nothing: the check is a lookup Windows answers from memory. If you picked a specific
microphone rather than the default, nothing changes — it stays on the one you picked.

v3.1.2 — Start with Windows for the portable build, a default mic that keeps up

Two small fixes: Start with Windows now works in the portable version, and the microphone list
keeps up when you change your default mic.

Start with Windows, in the portable version

The portable .exe unpacks itself into a temporary folder every time it runs, and Clipper was
registering that temporary copy to start at sign-in. By the next morning the folder was gone, or
worse, half gone — so Windows either found nothing to start, or started a broken copy that closed
straight away. The switch in Settings said it was on the whole time.

Clipper now registers the .exe you actually launched. If you already had the switch on, you do not
need to do anything: opening this version once repairs the old entry. Since Windows starts the
file from where it sits, if you move the .exe later, switch the setting off and on again.

The installed version was not affected.

The default microphone, by name

"Use default device" shows which microphone that currently means. That name was read when Clipper
started, so changing your default in Windows left it showing the old one. It now updates as soon as
Windows reports the change — and when you plug a mic in or pull one out — at no cost while nothing
changes.

v3.1.1 — instant replay stops restarting itself

Instant replay no longer stalls and restarts itself — in VR every few seconds, and now and then on
an ordinary desktop.

A recorder that keeps recording

The graphics card's encoder takes frames one at a time, and it asks for each one. Clipper was
occasionally missing that request: it arrived at the exact moment Clipper was busy collecting the
previous frame, and was thrown away. The encoder never asks twice, so it sat waiting for a frame
that never came. Five seconds later Clipper noticed nothing was being recorded and started the
recorder over — and everything already in the replay buffer went with it.

How often that happened came down to timing. A graphics card working flat out makes it much more
likely, which is why a VR game could restart the recorder every few seconds. It could also happen
at random on a quiet desktop, or right after the recorder started.

Now a request that arrives at that moment is kept and used for the next frame. Measured with the
same settings, starting the recorder over and over: the previous version stalled in 4 of 10 starts,
this one in none of 16. It costs nothing — no extra work per frame.

If the recorder ever does restart, its log (%LOCALAPPDATA%\clipper\capture.log) now shows how
many frames the encoder asked for against how many it was given, so the cause shows up in the
log itself.

v3.1.0 — Noise suppression, hear yourself, a screen that is off at boot

Your microphone gets noise suppression and a way to hear yourself, and a recorder started with its
screen switched off now waits for it instead of quietly giving up.

Noise suppression

Settings → Instant replay → Suppress background noise runs your voice through RNNoise, a small
neural network that tells speech apart from fans, keyboards and the hum of a room, and turns the
rest down. It only touches the microphone — game audio never goes near it — and it cleans your
voice before the boost, so turning the boost up lifts you rather than the room.

It costs about 0.3% of one CPU core. The network holds your voice back by 10 ms; the recorder puts
that back, so your voice still lines up with the picture. Switching it on or off, or moving the
slider, applies straight away and keeps what is already buffered.

One slider, two halves. Up to 40% it mixes a little of the untouched microphone back in: the
most natural-sounding end, with noise brought down by the number on the slider in dB. Past 40% the
network runs in full and a gate closes whenever it is not sure you are talking — that is what
catches hiss and keyboards, which the network on its own lets straight through. Each step up closes
the gate deeper and asks for more certainty before it opens.

Measured on test signals, how far each kind of noise comes down:

	20%	40%	60%	80%	100%
Fan, room	−20 dB	−47 dB	−66 dB	−122 dB	−122 dB
Hiss	−9 dB	−10 dB	−10 dB	−23 dB	−69 dB
Keyboard	−7 dB	−8 dB	−28 dB	−48 dB	−68 dB

Your voice loses at most about 1 dB at any setting. At the very top, very quiet words can get
clipped — which is what the next part is for.

It needs your output device at 48 kHz, which almost every one already is. If yours is not, the
panel says so under the slider rather than suppressing at the wrong pitch.

Hear yourself

A Test button under the microphone settings. Click it, say something, click again, and it
plays back what you said — with the boost and suppression exactly as they are set now, through
the same code a saved clip goes through. So what you hear is what a clip of you will sound like.
Change a setting and test again to compare. It works while the buffer is running and does not
disturb it.

A screen that is off at startup

If you record your main screen but it is switched off when your PC boots — and Clipper starts with
Windows — the recorder used to exit on the spot. The panel went on saying "Starting…" forever, and
turning the screen on changed nothing until you switched instant replay off and on again.

It now waits for that screen, exactly as it already did when a screen went away mid-session, and
starts recording the moment it comes on. The Screen dropdown lists a missing screen as
"not connected" instead of quietly showing a different one as selected, and it refreshes when
screens come and go. And if the recorder ever does stop without being asked, the panel says so.

Smaller things

• Clip cards and the trim window no longer show the filename; a card is its picture and one row of
  details. Hover a card, or the trim window's Show in Explorer, to see the name.
• Setting titles are brighter, so they stand out from the explanation under each one.

---

Clipper Setup 3.1.0.exe installs for the current user; Clipper 3.1.0.exe is a portable single
file.

v3.0.2 — A window in the tray that costs nothing

Closing Clipper to the tray used to cost as much GPU as leaving it open — sometimes more than the
recorder it was leaving running. It now costs nothing.

Closed means closed

The window is hidden rather than thrown away when you close it with instant replay on. That is
deliberate: reopening is instant and your thumbnails are still there. What was not deliberate is
that it carried on drawing the whole time.

Measured on an idle machine with the recorder running, before and after:

	Before	Now
Window open	4.1%	0.09%
Closed to the tray	4.4%	0.00%

Zero is the same number you get with Clipper's window not running at all. Whatever is left on your
GPU meter is the recorder, which is the part actually doing something.

Out of sight, the window now stops animating entirely, and a clip left playing is paused rather
than quietly decoding for nobody. Everything picks straight back up when you open it again.

The recording light was the whole bill

The rest of it turned out to be one six-pixel dot.

The red dot in the titlebar that tells you the buffer is live was a smooth fade in and out. A
smooth animation costs a fresh frame every time your monitor refreshes, no matter how small the
thing being animated is — so that dot was costing about 3% of the GPU continuously, which was
essentially everything Clipper used while sitting there doing nothing.

It blinks now instead of breathing: on, off, twice every two seconds. Same signal, 0.06%. A
recording light blinks anyway.

---

Nothing else changed from 3.0.1. Clipper Setup 3.0.2.exe installs for the current user;
Clipper 3.0.2.exe is a portable single file.