hydroclipsRead recording health first#
Open Recording health & updates from the sidebar. The panel refreshes every three seconds and shows the selected NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Quick Sync, AMD AMF or CPU encoder; DXGI/GPU or GDI/Desktop capture; actual ready replay seconds; configured duration; free disk space and the recording folder.
Audio settings and device warnings are shown separately. Last export reports clip length and processing time. Last recording error contains the session error and timestamp; it is not cleared by opening the panel. A lost service connection marks previously loaded values as stale instead of showing a healthy status. Disk and error history are session diagnostics, not cloud telemetry.
The app is not recording#
- Run one native release and quit the old Electron app.
- Check the panel status. IDLE can mean capture is starting or disabled; REC means manual recording is active.
- Press Record once. Wait through Processing… and inspect any error notification.
- Check that the save folder is writable and the disk has free space.
- Make a short recording at a lower bitrate and play the actual MP4. For advanced resolution/frame-rate configuration, see recording quality.
Hardware encoder checks and capture fallback take time. Check the available duration shown on the replay button. Finishing a manual recording and changing only replay length no longer clear history. Repeated commands do not make startup faster; 2.0.7 ignores duplicate in-flight recording toggles.
Black or frozen gameplay#
First test the Windows desktop. If the desktop records but a game does not, try the game's windowed or borderless mode and check another short sample. Exclusive fullscreen, protected content, display switching and device resets can affect capture.
The native service tries DXGI and can fall back to GDI. The app cannot guarantee that every fullscreen game will work. Do not judge the file only from its thumbnail; play through it.
Export failed#
An export error includes a recovery directory under %APPDATA%\Hydro Clips\native-buffer\export-…. Keep its segment files. Make space on the drive, confirm your save folder is accessible, and preserve the error text.
Do not clear the recovery directory until you have recovered or intentionally discarded that session. Failed exports retain source snapshots; successful exports clean their temporary snapshot.
Find useful logs#
Open %APPDATA%\Hydro Clips\native.log. Note the time of the failure and look for “Recording failed,” “Capture exited,” device errors or a missing file. If the UI cannot start at all, confirm WebView2 Runtime and the complete portable folder.
For a useful report, include the app version, Windows version, capture settings, game/display mode, and whether a desktop test worked. Remove account information, tokens, webhook URLs and personal paths from log excerpts before posting them.