Is It Recording

Is it recording?

ShadePlay guide › Getting started

How to tell that ShadePlay is recording, what its calm standby states mean, and how it fixes itself when something goes wrong.

The tray icon

The icon is a round dot in a light ring. Its centre shows the state:

Icon	Meaning
Red dot	Recording. Everything is fine.
Red dot with a small amber badge (bottom right)	Recording, but something can't be recorded right now, for example your mic. The status line says what.
Dark grey dot with an amber "!"	Not recording. ShadePlay keeps trying by itself. It also shows this for the few seconds while the recorder restarts.
Blue ring	Starting, or closing.
Blue-grey crescent	Standby: no display to record (a monitor switched off or unplugged) or the screen is locked. Nothing is wrong.
Grey dot with pause bars	The PC is going to sleep. Recording goes on when it wakes up.

A small red "!" in the top-right corner is something else: a newer version of ShadePlay is available (it also stays while the update runs, and when an update didn't work). It can sit on top of any of the icons above. At 100 % display scaling, where the icon is tiny, it is a plain red dot. See Updates.

Hover over the icon for a short status, for example:

ShadePlay – recording
Your game, voice chat and mic are included

The status line

The tray menu's first line and the top of the settings window say the same thing in plain words. In the settings window a coloured dot comes first: green for recording, amber for recording with a problem, red for not recording, and grey while starting or in standby.

Text	Meaning	What to do
Recording – your game, voice chat and mic are included	Everything is fine. The end changes with your tracks: your game and voice chat are included, your game and mic are included, or your game and all other sound are included.	Nothing.
Recording – ... (no mic connected)	The mic track is on, but the PC has no microphone.	Nothing, or plug one in.
Recording, but your game's sound can't be recorded right now	The picture is recorded, but one sound source fails. Other endings: voice chat can't be recorded right now, your mic can't be recorded right now, sound can't be recorded right now, some sound can't be recorded right now, Windows is blocking your mic, and the screen can't be recorded right now.	ShadePlay retries by itself. If it stays, see Troubleshooting.
Not recording – ShadePlay keeps trying	The recorder can't start or keeps failing.	Wait a moment. If it stays, see Troubleshooting.
Waiting for a display – recording starts again by itself	No monitor shows a picture: switched off, asleep or unplugged.	Nothing. Sound keeps recording.
Screen locked – recording goes on when you’re back	The lock screen, the sign-in screen or a UAC prompt is up. Windows lets no program record it.	Nothing.
PC sleeping – recording goes on when it wakes up	The PC is going to sleep.	Nothing.
Starting… / Restarting the recorder…	The recorder is starting, or starting again after a problem.	Nothing.
Finishing 1 clip before closing… / Closing…	You chose Exit; a clip being written is finished first.	Nothing.

When your PC's memory can't hold the whole buffer at this quality, the settings window adds a second line, for example Your PC’s memory holds about 2 min 30 s at this quality, so clips are shorter than 5 min. See Buffer length.

Standby is normal

A monitor switched off at night, a monitor that is asleep or unplugged, the lock screen and UAC prompts are not errors. ShadePlay waits calmly, keeps recording sound, doesn't restart anything and doesn't warn you. The picture comes back by itself when the screen does.

It fixes itself

ShadePlay is two parts: the small tray app and the recorder, which runs as a separate process.

• The tray app watches the recorder. If it crashes, hangs or stops sending its status for 10 seconds (a driver reset can do that), the tray app restarts it: after 1 second, then 2, 4, 8 and at most 15 seconds between tries, for as long as it takes.
• A restart starts the replay over, so a clip saved soon after one is shorter than your buffer length. Pressing the hotkey during the restart itself gives Clip not saved: "The recorder is restarting, so there is nothing to save yet."
• If nothing could be recorded for a whole minute, one notification says ShadePlay is not recording: "Nothing could be recorded for a minute. ShadePlay keeps trying by itself." Standby and a sleeping monitor never cause it.
• There is no pause. ShadePlay records until you choose Exit in the tray menu, and it starts again at your next sign-in.

Starting ShadePlay again while it runs

Only one ShadePlay runs at a time. If you start it again (for example from the Start menu, or by double-clicking ShadePlay.exe), no second copy starts:

• the Start menu entry and the desktop shortcut open the running ShadePlay's settings window;
• starting ShadePlay.exe itself shows a notification ShadePlay is running with the status line and "Press F10 to save the last 1 min. Right-click the tray icon for more."

More detail

With Show advanced settings on, the Status page shows the codec, resolution, frame rate, the seconds buffered, the encoder, live sound meters and any warning, and the tray tooltip and menu get technical status lines (Advanced settings overview). The logs have everything: Settings file, logs and command line.

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Next: Clips, folders and names

See also: The tray menu and notifications · Monitors and displays · Troubleshooting