Exporting video

Hindsight renders video frame by frame at a fixed frame rate. Each frame moves the replay on by exactly one frame’s worth of time, however long your computer takes to draw it, so the video comes out perfectly smooth even on a slow PC. You don’t need to record your screen, and the game’s sound is recorded in step with the picture.

Export a video

From a replay:

1. Open a replay and press ’ for the replay editor.
2. Make a camera path and check it with Preview.
3. Press Export video, or Export settings to choose the size and the rest first.

With no camera path, Export video films from where you are now to the end of the replay, from the camera’s current place.

From a timelapse: press Export video on the timelapse controls, then My export settings…, and press Export video there (or pick one of the ready-made one-click videos). The whole timelapse is filmed from the start, with the camera as you’ve set it, and a couple of seconds on the finished build at the end. See watching a timelapse.

While it exports, the game runs on its own clock: the HUD is hidden, the playback keys do nothing, nothing plays through your speakers, and the window title shows the progress, like “Hindsight: exporting video 42%”. When it’s done, chat says where the video was saved and everything comes back.

Export settings

Press Export settings in the replay editor (or Export video > My export settings… on a timelapse). Your choices are remembered.

Setting	Choices
Picture	Same as the window, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 4K, Vertical (1080 × 1920, for Shorts, TikTok and Reels) or Square (1080 × 1080). The size doesn’t depend on your window: 4K works on a 1080p screen.
Frame rate	24, 30, 60 or 120 frames a second.
Quality	High, Balanced or Small files. Used when FFmpeg makes the video.
File	MP4 video, WebM video (keeps a transparent sky; needs FFmpeg) or PNG pictures (a numbered picture for every frame, for editors that prefer image sequences).
View	Normal, or 360° video: the camera looks every way at once.
Sky	Normal, Transparent (the sky is left out: see-through in WebM and PNG) or Green screen (a plain green sky to key out in your editor).
Motion blur	Off, Light or Strong. See motion blur.
Encoder	Graphics card if possible or Processor. Used when FFmpeg makes the video. See the encoder.
Sound	On, On, voices separate (each speaker’s voice in a file of its own, see voices), or off.
Chat subtitles	On or off: the chat seen during the shot, saved as a subtitles file. See subtitles.
Timelapse date	On or off: timelapse videos show the date of what’s being built and a thin progress line.

Under the buttons, a line says whether FFmpeg was found, and points out anything that won’t work together (an MP4 can’t be transparent, for example).

Sound

The game’s sound goes into the video: blocks, mobs, music, explosions, and voice chat if the replay has it. Sound is mixed one frame at a time with the picture, so they never drift apart, however long the export takes. It’s recorded at full volume whatever your master volume slider says; the other sliders (music, blocks and so on) still shape the mix.

• MP4 with FFmpeg: the sound is AAC, like any video.
• MP4 with the built-in encoder: the sound is uncompressed (PCM). Video editors, VLC and YouTube all read it.
• WebM: Opus.
• PNG pictures: the sound is saved beside them as sound.wav.

Motion blur

Real cameras blur things that move quickly; games don’t. Motion blur draws each frame several times at moments spread across it and blends them, so fast flying, spinning mobs and falling blocks smear the way they would on film. Light blends 4 moments over half of each frame, Strong 8 over the whole frame.

Every frame is drawn 4 or 8 times, so exports take that much longer. Sound isn’t affected.

Voices in separate files

Choose Sound: On, voices separate and voice chat is left out of the video’s sound. Instead, each speaker’s voice is saved beside the video as its own WAV file, named after them, like my-replay.mp4.voice-Steve.wav. Every file starts at the start of the video, so they line up when you drop them into your editor, ready to turn someone up, down, or out.

Chat subtitles

With Chat subtitles on, the chat seen during the shot is saved beside the video as a SubRip subtitles file with the same name (my-replay.srt; chat.srt inside the folder for PNG pictures). Each message shows for four seconds from when it arrived. YouTube, VLC and video editors all read SRT files, and you can edit them in any text editor.

Chat itself never appears in the video: the HUD is hidden while exporting. Players you’ve renamed or made anonymous are renamed in the subtitles too.

360° video

Choose View: 360° video and Hindsight films six directions around the camera for every frame and joins them into one picture that covers everything. The camera’s position and the way it faces (the middle of the picture) follow your camera path; tilting up or down and rolling don’t apply.

The video is twice as wide as it is tall: the Picture setting’s width is used (4K gives 3840 × 1920). MP4s are marked as 360° video, so YouTube, VLC and VR headsets show them as a sphere you can look around in.

Every frame is drawn six times, so 360° exports take about six times as long.

Transparent and green-screen skies

Sky: Transparent leaves out the sky, sun, moon, stars and clouds, so only the world is drawn. In a WebM or PNG export, everything behind the world is see-through, ready to put over anything in your editor. Sky: Green screen puts plain green there instead, for editors that key out a colour.

Shader packs draw their own sky, so these work best with shaders off.

Export queue

Line up several videos and export them in one go, from one replay or many, each with its own camera path, settings and visuals:

1. Set up a shot in the replay editor, open Export settings, choose its settings and press Add to queue.
2. Do the same for the next shot, in this replay or another.
3. Press Queue (in Export settings, or at the top right of the Replays screen) to see what’s waiting. x removes one.
4. Press Export all. Hindsight opens each replay in turn and exports it; chat says when the queue is finished.

Your own camera path and settings are put back afterwards.

The encoder

There’s nothing extra to install.

• Built in. Hindsight includes its own MP4 encoder, so export works on any PC. When it’s used, chat says it’s exporting “with the built-in encoder”, and mentions that installing FFmpeg makes smaller, sharper files.
• With FFmpeg. If you have FFmpeg installed, Hindsight uses it automatically instead, for smaller, sharper files. WebM needs it.
• On the graphics card. With FFmpeg, Hindsight tries your graphics card’s video encoder first (NVIDIA NVENC, AMD AMF or Intel Quick Sync), which is much faster than the processor and leaves it free for drawing frames. If none works on your PC, it uses the processor (x264) as usual. Choose Encoder: Processor to always use x264.

Hindsight looks for FFmpeg on your PATH, in the hindsight folder inside your game folder, and in the usual install places. If it’s somewhere else, give its full path in config/hindsight-client.properties:

ffmpeg=C:\\ffmpeg\\bin\\ffmpeg.exe

On Windows, write each backslash twice (as above) or use forward slashes.

Where videos go

Exports are saved in .minecraft/hindsight/exports/, named after the replay and the time you exported it.

Good to know

• Shaders show up. Whatever the game draws, the export records, shader packs included.
• Exporting takes a while. Every frame is drawn in full, so a minute of 60 fps video is 3,600 frames. It’s quicker at a smaller size or fewer frames a second. Big pictures (4K) need a capable graphics card.
• Framing. Turn on Guides in the replay editor to see the exported picture’s frame and rule-of-thirds lines while you set up a shot. See framing guides.
• The window shows a cropped view while exporting at a size other than the window’s. That’s normal: the video is the full picture.
• Settings file. Everything on the settings screen is also in config/hindsight-client.properties (exportSize, exportFps, exportQuality, exportFormat, exportProjection, exportBackground, exportSound, exportVoiceTracks, exportSubtitles, exportMotionBlur, exportEncoder, timelapseOverlay). exportCrf overrides the quality with an exact x264 CRF (0 to 51, lower is better) when it isn’t 0.