Guide to setting up Bandicam to record video from games. How to use Bandicam: detailed instructions What is bandicam and how to use it

Bandicam is one of the most popular programs used to record screen videos. Most gamers who create content based on playing games use this software. Every day more and more beginners come to this area, respectively, with many leading questions about interacting with Bandicam and its correct configuration for recording games. Today we would like to help newbies understand this issue by providing all the necessary guides.

We will divide our today's instructions into steps to make it as easy as possible for everyone to understand each stage and configure it for themselves. Of course, on some points you can give 100% effective advice, but some parameters are configured by users individually. Keep this in mind when reading the current material. Let's begin to analyze the task at hand, starting from the very first step.

Step 1: Purchasing a license

Bandicam has a free version, but it is limited by the size of the recorded file, and the program logo will also be visible on the screen. Therefore, it is recommended to purchase a license, which is not that expensive. However, this should only be done in cases where you really plan to actively use this software for a long time. You will find detailed instructions for registering Bandikam in our other material at the following link.

Step 2: Select Recording Mode

After successfully downloading and installing Bandicam, you can immediately proceed to the settings. First of all, you will be greeted by a tab called "Home", where the most basic parameters are located:


Step 3: Basic Options

We won't focus too much on the basic options, since there aren't that many of them added here. At the very top of the window, select the output folder for finished records, that is, the place where they will be saved. Next, you can activate the function so that Bandicam is on top of all windows, starts only in the tray, or starts along with Windows. This doesn’t really apply to games, so we only advise you to change the save location, and then immediately proceed to the next stage.

Step 4: Output FPS to Screen

FPS - number of frames per second. This parameter determines the smoothness of the picture. The software in question has a special section in which you can configure the display of the FPS counter on the screen over the game.


Step 5: Video Setup

One of the important stages of configuring Bandicam for recording games is setting the recording parameters, because the professionalism of all the material depends on the quality of the picture. All necessary editing is carried out in the tab "Video".


Step 6: Sound Settings

Usually, what is happening on the screen is recorded with sound capture; in addition, some users like to accompany the actions with active monologues over the microphone. If you are going to record an audio track, you should definitely make sure that all the settings are set correctly, and our separate article, which is available at the link below, will help with this.

Step 7: Webcam Recording

The last configuration step is to set up video recording from the webcam, which is carried out in parallel with the main track. We put this step in last place only because only a few users use similar functions of Bandicam. Especially for them, we will take a closer look at the organization of this recording.


There are many more useful tools and functions in Bandicam that are beyond the scope of this article. If you want to get acquainted with all the possibilities in more detail, we advise you to read the corresponding article on this topic on our website by clicking on the link below.

Now you know everything about setting up Bandicam for games. As you can see, there is nothing complicated about this, especially since these actions will only have to be performed once, and then you can immediately launch the game and press the button "Record".

Open Video Format settings. You can change the video recording settings to get the best possible file quality under your conditions. Click on the Video tab in the main program window, then click the "Settings" button in the "Format" section.

Select your screen resolution. By default, the "Full Size" option is enabled. In other words, the resolution of your video file will be the same as that of the recorded program. If the program is opened, as they say, in full screen, then the entire screen will be recorded. If the program is open in a window, only the window area will be recorded.

  • The recording resolution can always be changed, which can be especially useful when you are preparing video for devices that only support playback of files of a certain resolution and distort all video files of a different format.
  • Adjust the recording frames per second (FPS) setting. FPS is how many frames the program records per second of time. The base value is 30, which is the maximum for YouTube. If you want to make a higher quality video, then you will have to increase the FPS.

    • The higher the FPS, the larger the resulting file and the more difficult it will be for your computer to record video. If you are working on a frankly weak computer, then be prepared to experience deterioration in performance.
  • Select a codec. A codec (encoder/decoder) is a program that processes video during recording. The default codec is Xvid as it is supported on most devices. However, if your video card supports this focus, then you can use a different codec.

    • Do you have a new and powerful card from Nvidia? Select "H.264 (NVENC)" if you want better recording quality. Older cards from Nvidia can work with "H.264 (CUDA)", owners of cards from AMD can select "H.264 (AMP APP)", and for integrated video cards from Intel, accordingly, you can select "H.264" (Intel Quick Sync)".
    • If you have several video cards at once (Nvidia and Intel, for example), then you need to select the option that uses your active, working video card. If your monitor is connected directly to the motherboard, then it is an Intel codec, and if the monitor is connected to a video card (Nvidia or AMD), then select the appropriate codec.
  • Set the video quality. The "Quality" drop-down menu is where you can set the overall recording quality. In that menu you will see numbers, and the higher the number, the higher the quality. The higher the quality, the correspondingly larger the file. However, if you sacrifice quality, then the result will be appropriate.

    Bandicam is an incredibly popular video recording and screenshot program that is used by a huge number of users on the Internet. This utility is used to create game videos, educational guides and other video content that we use almost every day.

    Bandicam has a fairly simple interface, but still some users have minor problems installing and configuring the program for various purposes. In our guide today, we will look at a number of issues: how to set up Bandicam for recording games, how to set up sound in Bandicam, how to set up Bandicam for weak PCs, etc.

    How to set up Bandikam to record games?

    First, let's look at the basic setup of the Bandicam utility for recording footage from video games. Go to the developer's official website and download the Windows version of the program. Be aware that the utility is distributed in both free and paid versions. What exactly is the difference between them? Well, after downloading the free version, two not very pleasant restrictions are imposed on the program: Watermark and 10-minute videos.

    Accordingly, if you want to remove these restrictions, you will need to purchase a licensed copy for the amount indicated on the site or... use a pirated copy of Bandicam, which we do not encourage in any way, of course. In general, install Bandicam into the system and let's move on.

    So, Bandicam has been installed and now it's time to launch it. The following window should appear in front of you (its appearance will depend on the version of the program, but the functionality, in principle, should be the same):


    Ok, let's start setting up video recording. To begin, click on the button made in the gamepad video. Then click on the “Basic” tab to go to the basic settings of the program. A window will appear in front of you in which you can select a folder for video output, as well as some other additional options.

    Select a folder on your computer where your videos will be stored. Also check the boxes next to those options that seem necessary to you. Now let's move on to the second settings tab. Go to the "FPS" tab.

    There shouldn't be any problems here either. In this tab you can set the position for the FPS counter, set the keys to hide the counter and change its position. Also, do not forget about the possibility of setting a frame rate limit.

    Regarding the limitation: you can set any value here. For example, if you record a video at 60FPS, but you need to slow down the frequency to 30 at a certain moment, then set the desired FPS and the button that activates this function. Also, don’t forget to check the “Only when capturing” option if you want the FPS lock to work only when recording video.

    Ok, we're done with the FPS counter settings and frame rate limiting. Let's move on to the most important part, namely the “Video” tab. Click on it and go to this window:

    In this window you can select a hotkey to activate recording and pause it. Plus, other useful options that should be chosen only based on your wishes. You should also notice an option such as “Add video from a webcam.” If you want footage from a webcam (if you have one) to be added to your recording, you can check the box next to it.

    Great, we're done with the basic setup of the program. Already with these settings, you can start recording videos or taking screenshots. However, we still have to set up the sound, microphone, and video format for Bandicam.

    How to set up bandikam for sound and microphone?

    You should still have the previous window open. Click on the “Settings” button in the “Recording” section, after which a separate window will open with other parameters. To begin, go to the “Sound” tab. Many users are wondering how to set up the bandikam for sound. But everything is quite simple.

    To activate sound recording, first, you need to check the box next to the “Sound recording” option (if you want to separately save sound files in WAV format, you can check the corresponding option).

    As soon as you check the box, you will see a number of other settings that will be related to the sound device and your microphone. Use the drop-down menus and select your equipment from the available lists. For example, for the main device you can select Speakers, and for the Secondary device - Microphone. How to set up bandikam so that you can hear your friend on Skype? To do this, you need to set Microphone and Win7Sound in your equipment (if you have Windows 10, then Win10Sound).

    As you can see, setting up the sound is incredibly easy. Let's move on. Go to the “Webcam” tab. By opening this tab, you will understand that Bandikam has extensive settings related to the webcam.

    So, if you want to record video from your webcam while recording gameplay video, check the box next to the “Save webcam video in parallel” option. You also have a choice in what form to record video from the webcam: over the main, recorded video or as a separate file. Choose the option that suits you.

    Using the drop-down menus below, select your webcam (it must be connected to your computer) and the video format. You can also choose the position for your webcam in the recorded video. Ok, let's move on to the next setup step. Go to the "Mouse" tab.

    In this tab, everything is quite simple: check the box next to the “Show mouse cursor” option if you want your pointer to be displayed in the recorded videos. Accordingly, if you don’t want to, then uncheck the box. Also in this tab you can find other options that may be useful to you.

    How to set the video format in Bandikam?

    That's it. We're done with the recording parameters. Now it's time to move on to setting the format in which your video will be recorded. Close the window where you set the Recording settings. If you want to record gameplay for your Youtube channel (most likely, this is the case), then we have good news for you: you can simply use the choice of the desired template.


    As you can see in the screenshot above, you can bypass the process of manually setting the format by using one of the pre-made templates that are located in the video format setting. Select a template and look at the video options. Nevertheless, let's look at more detailed format settings:

    Again, if you are recording a video for your YouTube channel, then choose MP4 as the media container (although you can also choose the AVI format). Next, select the settings you need for the video format. For example, the eternal classic: 1920×1080, 30FPS, H264 codec for video, AAC codec for audio, stereo, bitrate at 192 kbit/sec.

    Now you are ready to record footage of your gameplay. Launch the game and you will see the FPS indicator in the selected corner of the screen. If it does not appear, then click on the button selected in the settings to display the FPS counter. Once you see the FPS counter, click on the video recording button and then on the pause or stop button to finish recording. Once video recording starts, the FSP counter will change from green to red. It's that simple.

    How to set up bandikam for weak PCs?

    We have explained to you in detail how to set up a bandikam to record games. Plus, we also looked at how to set up sound, microphone and other useful aspects for recording. It wasn't all that difficult, right? We just showed you where the settings are and what they do.

    Well, you start recording video from the game and realize that it is simply impossible to do anything in it due to the incredibly low FPS. What went wrong? Perhaps your PC simply does not support the recording settings that you set when you followed the steps from the guide above.

    How to set up Bandikam so that it doesn’t lag during recording? Let's figure it out. First you need to review the settings you have chosen. So, let's say you decide to record a video in FullHD at 60FPS, but games begin to lag severely with such recording. First of all, you should try changing the recording priority. Go to the “Video” tab and go to the Recording settings.

    If you are experiencing any problems while recording game videos using Bandicam, then try setting the priority to Higher than Medium. Then try recording the video again. If nothing has changed or has become a little better, then try setting High priority.

    Setting the priority to High can sometimes fix lags in games while recording video with Bandicam. However, this may not be enough. If this is the case, then you can try reducing the quality of the recorded video. Open the Video tab again and go to the video format settings.

    Try setting the video resolution lower, for example, go from FullHD to just HD. Be sure to lower the frame rate: you can lower it down to 29,970 or even cinematic 24FPS. Set the video codec to MPEG-4. Regarding the sound: set the bitrate to 128 or even 96 (terrible quality), and PCM codec if you record video in AVI format.

    Nowadays, there are a lot of different programs for capturing images from the screen, the most popular of which are NVidia Shadowplay, Fraps and Bandicam. What exactly can Bandicam boast of, given such a monster as Nvidia, a leading developer of video cards? In the case of “Shadowplay”, everything is obvious; if a person is an adherent of the “red” AMD\Radeon camp, then he will not see such a feature.

    Next on the list is Fraps, which seems to be an excellent option, but the resulting video files are unrealistically large. 1 minute of material takes up several gigabytes of hard drive space. Yes, and the frames sag, be healthy, so what remains is Bandicam.

    Setting up the program

    In the “Basic” tab in Bandicam, you can select the output folder for the captured files. Also here you can set such parameters as “On top of all windows”, “Launch in tray”, “Launch with Windows”. When you click on the “Advanced” button, you will be allowed to configure in detail various application parameters, such as settings for “capturing” images, outputting to a folder and labeling video files, selecting languages ​​and working with video capture properties. In general, all the settings, but with one button. On the same tab, you can automate the process based on several conditions.

    Recording options

    The first section of Bandicam, which is important when recording, is “Video”. We install a button, when pressed, the “capture” will begin. We also assign the key to pause if necessary, and then mark whether or not such things as “display cursor”. For the same purpose, you can enable the “mouse click effect”, that is, every time you click the mouse, the cursor will blink, highlight, and generally show in every possible way that a click has occurred. By checking the “add video from webcam” option, a recording from the camera will also be added to the footage.

    In the “Recording” department in the “Video” tab, click the “Settings” button and we get advanced options for setting up video. Here we indicate which source the sound will come from, you can specify up to two sources, for example “WIN mixer” + “Microphone”, in the end this will give you the sound of what is happening in the system and the sound from the microphone. If desired, these sources can be recorded into two different audio tracks by unchecking the “Shared audio track with the main device” checkbox. If suddenly you need the sound to be recorded at a certain moment, then set “Sound is played while the key is held down” and assign the key.

    For users who also record from a webcam, there is a “Web Camera” tab, everything is made simple and clear. First, we choose which camera to write from, then we get the size of the pictures as a percentage, and there is a preview of what happened. Next, we select where the webcam will be on the screen, either using pre-prepared positions or manually specifying the percentage of shift from the edges. If you don’t want your video to be stolen, then you can add your logo on top of the video, all settings are the same as on the webcam, we indicate the path to the logo, and then find a place for it on the video. You can choose the effect of mouse clicks, color and that’s all. The last tab is “Options”, we select what priority recording will be in tasks. If you set it low, then the application will drop less in FPS, but the video quality will be poor, and, accordingly, vice versa, when choosing the maximum parameter.

    Format selection

    Click on “Settings” in the “Format – AVI” section and let’s go. The first step is to select the format of the media container into which the recording will be made. If we don’t go too deep into technology, then with peace of mind we settle on “avi”, stylish and fashionable for youth. Next, to your taste and needs, select the resolution of the output file. Either a full size or a pre-prepared option, you can also specify your own by selecting the “Special” option. The next stop is FPS, how many frames per second will be in the video, set it to 60 if you are confident in your PC. Codec, well, here everyone films as they want, go to Google and read information about different codecs, this cannot be described within the scope of this article. We set the “quality” parameter to 100, if again the hardware allows it, but we select it experimentally.

    Sound settings of Badikam, and again the codec, and again the same advice to use search engines, but here I can recommend installing MPEG-1 L2. The bitrate is set according to your wishes, the higher the higher, the better the audio quality, but the larger the file size (slightly) and the greater the load on the computer. At the crossroads between stereo and mono sound, it is better to choose stereo. With frequency the principle is the same, higher is better.

    The latest feature of Bandicam is simply screenshots. In the "Image" menu you can configure the screen format, capture key, cursor, and many pictures in a few seconds.

    Bottom line

    Bandicam is the most cost-effective screen capture option. Unless you own video cards from Nvidia, unless you have a lot of hard drives worth several terabytes and you don’t have an I7 processor. At the same time, the quality of the final material is the same as that of Fraps. At the moment, nothing better has been invented.

    The Bandicam program is used in cases where it is necessary to record video from a computer screen. If you watch webinars, video tutorials or play games, this solution will be of great help to you, because in the future all material can not only be reproduced, but also posted on a social network or transferred to removable media. In this article we will tell you how to use the main functions of Bandikam in order to always have at hand a recording of important data and access to its distribution.

    Registration in Bandicam is necessary if you need to remove restrictions on the size of recorded videos and remove the annoying watermark. Of course, this software is distributed for a fee, so the procedure for creating a profile involves purchasing a license key on the official website. However, if you use the software frequently, such an investment is absolutely justified. You will find all detailed instructions for purchasing a license in our other material by clicking on the link below.

    Setting your own logo

    Above, we mentioned the corporate watermark, which disappears after purchasing a license, but this function can be used for your own purposes by replacing the logo with any necessary one. This solution will allow you to identify the author of the video and protect it from copying. This operation is performed through the Bandicam settings, which is described in detail in our other article below.

    Sound settings

    When capturing what's happening on screen, it's important to adjust the audio capture source, its sensitivity, and the codec used to ultimately get high-quality footage. This should be done before you start recording the main content, and also be sure to check to ensure that the configuration is correct. Editing all parameters will not take much time and is done directly in Bandicam.

    Microphone activation

    Some users prefer to use Bandikam to record game progress or voice over video tutorials. Creating such a video almost always requires recording a voice track in live mode, which is done using a connected microphone. In the program itself, you need to set certain settings so that the capture is correct and the tracks do not interrupt each other in volume, because after the recording is completed, it will all be very difficult to adjust.

    Selecting a target window for recording

    Typically, several applications are running on the computer at the same time, so when recording, the Bandicam's focus should be aimed exactly at the required area so that only the desired image gets into the frame. To do this, inside the software there is a setting for selecting the target window. The user only needs to indicate what exactly should be recorded, and only then can the capture process itself be started.

    Changing the recording voice

    Not all users want to record material in which their natural voice will be heard. To do this, some change its tonality and timbre for various reasons. When working with the application in question, it is possible to use a distorted voice, but you must follow certain steps to do this. Read more about this in the article below.

    Setting up for game recording

    A fairly large circle of users use Bandicam specifically for the purpose of recording gameplay or to capture specific moments. Then, before starting such a capture, you will need to set additional parameters in order to improve the quality of the recording and get a good picture and sound at the output. There is nothing complicated about this, the main thing is to understand the functionality of the program.

    Fix codec initialization error

    One of the most common problems is a codec initialization error, which appears immediately after you try to start recording and is accompanied by automatic termination of the program. It consists of conflicts between video card drivers and this software and can be resolved by adding certain DLL files to the root of the Bandicam directory.

    As part of this article, we have demonstrated basic lessons that should help a novice user understand Bandicam and record the required content without any problems.



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