Bandicam

About this release

Bandicam is a recorder rather than a broadcasting suite, and that focus is why people keep it. It captures what is on the screen, in a game, or coming in from a capture device, writes it to a file at high quality, and gets out of the way. There is no scene graph to build and no layout to configure before the first take, which matters when the recording is a lesson, a bug report or a walkthrough rather than a production.

The compression is the reason it stays on machines that are already busy. Hardware encoders on the graphics card do the work, so a game records at high frame rates with a small fraction of the processor cost a software encoder would take, and the resulting files stay a reasonable size without visible degradation. On a machine that is struggling to run the thing being recorded, that difference decides whether the recording is watchable.

Three capture modes cover the ground. Screen mode records a chosen rectangle, a window or a whole display and follows the mouse if you want it to. Game mode hooks the graphics layer directly and records what the game renders, which is cleaner and faster than capturing the desktop. Device mode takes an incoming signal from a capture card, a webcam or a console.

The extras are the ones that get used rather than the ones that pad a feature list: a webcam overlay with position and size control, microphone and system audio recorded on separate tracks, mouse click highlighting and cursor effects, live drawing on the screen while recording, a scheduler for unattended captures and a countdown before the take starts.

What it does

Hardware accelerated encoding

The graphics card does the compression, so the machine keeps running whatever it is recording.

Three capture modes

A screen region, a game through the graphics layer, or an incoming device signal.

Separate audio tracks

Microphone and system sound recorded independently so they can be balanced afterwards.

Webcam overlay

Position, size and shape controlled directly, recorded into the same file.

Drawing and cursor effects

Annotate live during a take and highlight clicks for instructional recordings.

Scheduled capture

Unattended recordings start and stop on a timer without anyone at the machine.

Changed in this version

• Support for the current generation of hardware encoders.
• Lower processor use during long high frame rate captures.
• Improved audio synchronisation on very long recordings.
• New output presets aimed at common upload targets.
• Fixed a capture failure with certain full screen exclusive games.

System requirements

Install order

1. Unpack the archive and run the installer.
2. Choose the hardware encoder in output settings rather than leaving it on software.
3. Point the output folder at a drive with room and speed to spare.
4. Record a short test and check audio levels before a real take.

Worth knowing before you start

File details