wcap is simple and efficient screen recording utility for Windows 10.

It uses Windows.Graphics.Capture API available since Windows 10 version 1903, May 2019 Update (19H1) to capture contents of window or whole monitor. Captured texture is submitted to Media Foundation to encode video to mp4 file with hardware accelerated H264 codec. Using capture from compositor and hardware accelerated encoder allows it to consume very little CPU and memory.

Get latest binary here: wcap.exe (WARNING: Windows Defender or other AV software might report false positive detection)
Or get source code on github: https://github.com/mmozeiko/wcap

Features

  • press Ctrl + PrintScreen to start recording current monitor (where mouse cursor currently is positioned)
  • press Ctrl + Win + PrintScreen to start recording currently active window
  • press Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen to select & record fixed position area on current monitor
  • press any of previous combinations to stop recording right or double-click on tray icon to change settings
  • video encoded using H264/AVC or H265/HEVC
  • audio encoded using AAC or FLAC
  • for window capture can capture full window area (including title bar/borders) or just the client area
  • optionally exclude mouse cursor from capture
  • can limit recording length in seconds or file size in MB's
  • can limit max width, height or framerate - captured frames will be automatically downscaled

Recent Activity

&wcap update - now it can encode video to 10-bit HEVC (main10 profile). Theoretically it increases quality of image as there is more resolution for color values in conversion to YUV. But it depends on how GPU implements encoder. In practice it will be very hard to see any differences. From my non-scientific tests with Nvidia, it seems it encodes better - on some content it gets ~10% smaller video files than 8-bit HEVC.

Not all GPU's support encoding to 10-bit HEVC. Check your GPU support here:
Nvidia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC#Versions or https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new
Intel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

Get it on GitHub: https://github.com/mmozeiko/wcap

new &wcap feature - allow to choose discrete vs integrated GPU to use for encoding. By default it will select discrete one. Using integrated may be useful for laptop users with nvidia optimus when you're recording low framerate / low complexity screen capture, as that uses less power, which means less heat & better battery usage. I recommend using iGPU only if you're on Skylake or newer Intel CPU, as older CPUs than Skylake have pretty poor performance & quality. New version also includes minor fix for bad handling of minimized window capture. In such case no new frames are captured which means messed up timestamp or hanging of recording (if audio capture was also enabled). Now it will properly produce discontinuity in video stream. https://github.com/mmozeiko/wcap

new &wcap bugfixes: https://github.com/mmozeiko/wcap thanks @Crysist for debugging these