Fortnite has become one of the most popular games in recent years. With its engaging Battle Royale gameplay and constant updates, it’s no wonder so many gamers want to record and share their epic gameplay moments.
Capturing smooth, high-quality Fortnite footage on your PC takes a bit of effort but is very achievable if you follow some key steps. In this guide, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to record buttery-smooth Fortnite gameplay footage on your PC.
Table of Contents
Choose Your Recording Software
The first step is choosing software to handle your gameplay recording. There are a few good options to consider:
- OBS Studio – OBS is a free, open source recording program used by many gamers and streamers. It has tons of options for customizing your recordings.
- NVIDIA ShadowPlay – If you have an NVIDIA GPU, ShadowPlay offers high performance recording powered by your GPU. It’s easy to use and resource friendly.
- AMD ReLive – Similar to ShadowPlay, AMD’s ReLive software leverages your AMD GPU for high quality, low impact recording.
I personally recommend OBS Studio as it works well, is fully customizable, and is free. But ShadowPlay and ReLive are also great choices if you want simpler software powered by your GPU.
Optimize Graphics Settings
To get smooth footage in Fortnite, you need to balance visual quality and frame rate performance. The best way is to start with lower settings and increase them slowly while testing recording performance.
Here are the key graphics settings to focus on:
- Resolution – Start with 1080p resolution. Higher resolutions are demanding for both game performance and recording.
- Frame Rate Limit – Cap this to your monitor’s refresh rate. For a 60Hz monitor use 60 FPS.
- View Distance – Start with Near or Medium setting. Far and Epic view distances are FPS hogs.
- Shadows – Disable shadows completely or set to Low for best performance.
- Anti-Aliasing – Disable this or use FXAA for minimal performance hit.
- Textures – High textures don’t affect FPS much but require more VRAM.
Tweak each setting and test recording smoothness before moving to the next one. Finding the right balance takes some trial and error.
Encoder Settings
Both OBS and GPU recording software use video encoding to process and compress your footage. The encoder settings significantly impact recording performance and file size.
For OBS, use the Hardware NVENC or AMD encoder if available. Otherwise, the x264 software encoder works fine.
Some ideal encoder settings include:
- Rate Control – CBR or VBR rate control for consistent quality
- Bitrate – 60,000 Kbps (60 Mbps) for 1080p footage
- Keyframe Interval – 2 seconds or 0 for automatic keyframes
The same principles apply to NVIDIA ShadowPlay and AMD ReLive encoders. Target a bitrate between 40-60 Mbps for smooth 1080p recordings.
Higher bitrates produce better quality and filesize while lower bitrates save space at the cost of quality. Find your optimal setting through testing.
Recording Tips
Here are some quick tips when recording your Fortnite gameplay:
- Test performance before matches – Confirm smooth recordings before queuing ranked games
- Position your webcam and overlays – Perfect your scene composition in OBS
- Record in Fullscreen mode – Eliminates window borders and text for cleaner footage
- Disable notifications – Block notifications popups from disrupting your recordings
- Play in Borderless Windowed mode – Allows easier alt-tabbing if you need to adjust OBS
- Use push-to-talk – Stop ambient noise from triggering voice chat during recordings
Edit and Upload
Once you capture some awesome gameplay highlights, edit your clips down to key moments with video editing software. Add some visual effects, captions, logos, and background music to take your videos to the next level.
When ready, upload your videos directly to YouTube or TikTok to show off your Fortnite skills and edits. With this guide you now have all the tools to record and produce amazing Fortnite content to share online!