Guidelines and tips for screen capturing movies

Capture your screen the proper way

Capturing movies and videos played on UHD displays

(available with WM Capture 10v12 from WM Recorder)

Resizing video windows

On UHD screens, web browsers typically play movie videos on the entire screen. However, recording videos in 2K or 4K resolution does not always result in high-quality footage. Many of the restrictions occur on computers that do not have NVIDIA graphics when capturing movies from Netflix or similar platforms using Chrome, Edge, or other browsers.

On NVIDIA systems, configuring the NVIDIA Control Panel's 3D settings to High Performance, selecting Display Mode as NVIDIA GPU (or Optimus), utilizing the NVENC encoder, and choosing the D3D recording mode prevents any issues. This setup allows recording 4K movies and videos of excellent quality at up to 60 fps or beyond.

On computers without NVIDIA hardware, web browsers now employ Automatic Bitrate Adaptation (ABR) during playback, which lowers the broadcast quality (bitrate or video resolution) to avoid buffering when download speeds are insufficient or average CPU usage exceeds a specific threshold (typically 30%). Recording a 4K screen, even with D3D modes, can raise CPU usage unless the system is very powerful.

As an example, the Chrome browser attempts to keep CPU usage below 30% by switching video size from 1920x1080 to 120x720 or even lower sizes. This involves one or more quick reconnections, which can sometimes cause audio to go out of sync. You can check this out by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shit+D when playing/recording a Netflix movie and setting the focus to the video window.

For this reason, it is necessary to resize the recording window so that its playback area has the correct size that closely matches the original broadcast size (usually 1920x1080) and decreases the CPU workload. It can also be used when an HD video needs to be downscaled to 720p, such as when capturing DVD format. It should be used with streaming movies from Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube TV, and other videos with a similar playback format. Videos from YouTube or played in Fullscreen are not supported.

IMPORTANTANT NOTE: If your video playback window is a browser tab the entire browser window with all the tabs will be resized. To avoid this, drag the video tab out of the browser window.

Here are some suggestions for WM Capture users. Feel free to ignore this if it doesn’t concern you.

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·Mark the window playback area. Use the 'Mark window' button to do this manually or play your motion video and click the 'Get Video' button to automatically mark the video playback area. Make sure the entire playback area is marked including the stripes.

·Click the 'Resize video window' button. If no size was specified, the window playback area will be resized to the standard broadcasting video size (1920x1080). Optionally, you can input a different window size, but it must be one of the accepted broadcasting resolutions. Example: 960 × 540 (qHD) · 1280 × 720 (HD) · 1600 × 900 (HD+) · 1920 × 1080 (FHD) · 2048 × 1080 (DCI 2K) · 2560 × 1080 (UWFHD) · 2560 × 1440 (QHD) · 2880 × 1620 (3K) · 3840 × 2160 (4K UHD) (see Wikipedia - Display resolution standards)

Make sure the detected window name is the one you want. If not, click the top bar of the window to set its focus.
If the resized transparent window does not fit exactly the playback area move the entire transparent window over the playback area. Do not adjust the marked dimensions.

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Playing back resized videos on UHD displays
When playing a lower resolution recording on a UHD screen, upscaling is necessary (this is not the same as simply stretching the video window). If your system has an NVIDIA RTX 30 or 40 series GPU installed and recognized, both VLC and the Chrome browser will utilize NVIDIA RTX capabilities. If not, these applications will rely on alternative upscaling software, which generally provides lower but good enough quality, to enlarge the video.

Streming movies broadcast details
Streaming movies typically broadcast at 720p (HD Basic resolution) or 1080p (FHD Standard resolution), with dimensions (resolution) of 1280x720 or 1920x1080 pixels. Premium subscriptions may offer 4K (UHD) broadcasts, but these are usually encrypted and cannot be captured via screen recording. Disabling web browser acceleration limits the broadcast video resolution to 1920x1080 or less.

The native frame rate is generally between 23.976 and 24 frames per second (fps), giving a cinematic feel. Some content streams at 25 or 30 fps, while specialized high-frame-rate videos can reach 50 or 60 fps, though 24 fps remains the standard for most of the catalog.

For 1080p Full HD (Standard/Premium), typical bitrates range from 3 Mbps to 7 Mbps, depending on the complexity of the content. For 720p HD (Basic), bitrates usually fall between 1.5 Mbps and 3 Mbps. Audio bitrates for 5.1 surround sound often run at 640 kbps, while Dolby Atmos can reach up to 764 kbps.

You can check the stream’s native frame rate and resolution by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D while watching it in a web browser. The playback window must have the focus (click the browser top bar or address bar to do this).

(Data sourced from AI search)