How to Record Minecraft Gameplay

Do you want to record Minecraft gameplay for your YouTube channel? Maybe you want to capture your speedrun, or just make a let’s play? This means that in addition to the screen, you might also need to record your webcam or microphone — or even both at the same time.

To help you out, we’ve put together a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it using the VSDC Screen Recorder. It’s a free screen recorder for Windows PC with a built-in game capturing mode that allows you to save footage in ultra-high resolution.

Without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Step 1. Launch VSDC Screen Recorder on your PC

After you’ve installed VSDC on your PC, you can launch it through the shortcut on your desktop. Once opened, you will see this window:

The interface is pretty simple and user-friendly, so you should have no trouble navigating it, even if you’re not tech-savvy. Before getting started, you’ll need to enable your recording devices. Let’s see how you can do it.

Step 2. Enable recording devices

If your webcam and/or microphone are external (not built-in), you’ll need to connect them to your PC first. After doing that, click the Enable sound button to enable microphone sound in your video, and hit Enable camera to record video from your webcam.

Keep in mind that if you choose to record your Minecraft gameplay using the Game capturing mode, it will be impossible to place the facecam over the game window. Instead, the webcam video will be recorded separately and you can add it to the video later (we’ll show you how to do that). To save the video from your webcam as a separate file, open the settings window, go to Mixer and tick the Save camera recording as file checkbox.

Step 3. Configure your settings

It’s important to set the software up before starting to record. For instance, you can tweak the output video quality as well as the folder where the resulting video will be saved.

To configure the details, use the Common settings and the Export settings. The former allows you to change your Output Folder by clicking Change next to the corresponding option. If you leave the default settings, your video will be saved to the default folder: Videos\VSDC Free Screen Recorder. The latter allows you to configure the number of frames per second, resolution, hotkeys, and the overall quality of the recording. We recommend keeping the quality at 70-80%.

Once you’re done, the settings will be saved automatically.

Step 4. Record your Minecraft gameplay

You can now launch Minecraft. In the VSDC taskbar, right-click on the Game Capturing button and choose the game. Then, switch to the Minecraft window and press Start recording hotkey, by default it’s Ctrl+F5.

Once you’ve finished recording your footage, press the Stop recording hotkey, which is Ctrl+F8 by default. To quickly navigate to your recordings, hit the Open Output Folder in the VSDC taskbar.

Step 5. Add your facecam to the video

If you chose to record your webcam along with the gameplay, it’s time to add it to the video. You can use any free video editing software of your choice, however, for the sake of this tutorial, we’ll use VSDC Free Video Editor.

Launch VSDC on your computer and use the Import content option to add the gameplay video to the scene. In the pop-up project settings window hit OK. Next, press Shift + V to add a new video to the scene and select your facecam video from the computer. In the pop-up window, select Add new layer, so that the facecam video is placed over the main video with the gameplay.

From there, all you need to do is grab the handlers of the facecam video and resize it and place it in the corner of your choice.

Enjoy the result

Now that you know how to record your footage, why not try it for yourself? Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next big Minecraft YouTuber! All you have to do is try. In case you want to edit your video, look through the list of tutorials here or check out the VSDC YouTube channel.