My friends and I are really excited about the game clip sharing features of Xbox One, but we're a little confused by it's implementation right now. It seems that saving, editing, uploading, and sharing a clip involves 4 different apps, 2 different devices, and a lot of ambiguity. Correct me if I'm wrong and there is a simpler way:
1. Game DVR: You can either snap this app while playing a game (Xbox, snap Game DVR) and then 'start' and 'end' recording to record a clip. Or, because Xbox is always live recording a 5-minute cache of game footage, you can simply choose to 'end clip', choose how far back you want it [30 seconds, 1 minutes, etc.] and then edit the front end later. Or, if you're in the heat of battle and don't have time to bring up the Game DVR, for a quicker recording method you can say, "Xbox, record that" to record the previous 30 seconds of gameplay.
2. Upload: After you record a clip you go to this app to view the clip. Here you can also view your other clips, your friends' clips, and strangers' clips. This is like a general shared space of game clip uploads that you can view by friends or by games, or simply focus on your own recorded game clips.
3. Upload Studio: If you want to edit and upload one of your clips, select the clip in Upload and choose to edit it, which will then automatically take you to this app where you can trim clips, add some fancy bells and whistles, and so forth. Once you edit it, you can either 'upload' it (to the general public, for viewing in Upload and for viewing in the game Store) or 'upload and upload it to SkyDrive' (so it will do the former and it will also add it to SkyDrive so you can share it with friends).
4. SkyDrive: If you want to share the clip with friends you then have to go to SkyDrive on your PC (I can't seem to find a way to share it via the SkyDrive app on Xbox One), go to the video clip, and then share it by manually typing in friends' email addresses (or post the link on Facebook). They'll get the message (on their phones, tablets, or PCs, but not on their Xbox), click the link, and then watch the clip via skydrive.com. To do this go to SkyDrive > Pictures > Xbox GameDVR and then right-click on the file and select 'share' from the context menu to get a URL link.
I'm not sure why don't they have one app for all of these steps. Having a separate app to record, another to edit, another to upload, and another to share surely seems needlessly complicated right now. The sharing part, in particular, is very cumbersome (having to both know and remember my friends' email addresses, switching from the Xbox to the PC, etc.). I think they need to put implement all of this into one app, and I hope they do this in a future update. For instance, go simply to Game DVR to make, edit, upload, and share your clip. After you edit and upload it you should be able to share it by going through your Xbox friends list and selecting gamer tags (multiple at a time). Then, when they log into Xbox One, like getting a Message, they should get a notification to view my game clip. That would be better.
What I think would be really cool is to have kind of a shared video upload space that only you and your "favorites" can share to and post messages. That would be fun as you play each other in Killer Instinct or FIFA or whatever and upload clips taunting each other, and then your other "favorites" get message notifications of the new posts--or it is added as a section on the Xbox One dashboard like a Facebook-style news feed. Anyway, even if that is too much, they still need to simplify the Game DVR sharing experience: you should be able to do all of it from one app, and from the Xbox One console only (for both sharing and viewing shared videos). For now, though, the steps listed above seem to be the only option.
1. Game DVR: You can either snap this app while playing a game (Xbox, snap Game DVR) and then 'start' and 'end' recording to record a clip. Or, because Xbox is always live recording a 5-minute cache of game footage, you can simply choose to 'end clip', choose how far back you want it [30 seconds, 1 minutes, etc.] and then edit the front end later. Or, if you're in the heat of battle and don't have time to bring up the Game DVR, for a quicker recording method you can say, "Xbox, record that" to record the previous 30 seconds of gameplay.
2. Upload: After you record a clip you go to this app to view the clip. Here you can also view your other clips, your friends' clips, and strangers' clips. This is like a general shared space of game clip uploads that you can view by friends or by games, or simply focus on your own recorded game clips.
3. Upload Studio: If you want to edit and upload one of your clips, select the clip in Upload and choose to edit it, which will then automatically take you to this app where you can trim clips, add some fancy bells and whistles, and so forth. Once you edit it, you can either 'upload' it (to the general public, for viewing in Upload and for viewing in the game Store) or 'upload and upload it to SkyDrive' (so it will do the former and it will also add it to SkyDrive so you can share it with friends).
4. SkyDrive: If you want to share the clip with friends you then have to go to SkyDrive on your PC (I can't seem to find a way to share it via the SkyDrive app on Xbox One), go to the video clip, and then share it by manually typing in friends' email addresses (or post the link on Facebook). They'll get the message (on their phones, tablets, or PCs, but not on their Xbox), click the link, and then watch the clip via skydrive.com. To do this go to SkyDrive > Pictures > Xbox GameDVR and then right-click on the file and select 'share' from the context menu to get a URL link.
I'm not sure why don't they have one app for all of these steps. Having a separate app to record, another to edit, another to upload, and another to share surely seems needlessly complicated right now. The sharing part, in particular, is very cumbersome (having to both know and remember my friends' email addresses, switching from the Xbox to the PC, etc.). I think they need to put implement all of this into one app, and I hope they do this in a future update. For instance, go simply to Game DVR to make, edit, upload, and share your clip. After you edit and upload it you should be able to share it by going through your Xbox friends list and selecting gamer tags (multiple at a time). Then, when they log into Xbox One, like getting a Message, they should get a notification to view my game clip. That would be better.
What I think would be really cool is to have kind of a shared video upload space that only you and your "favorites" can share to and post messages. That would be fun as you play each other in Killer Instinct or FIFA or whatever and upload clips taunting each other, and then your other "favorites" get message notifications of the new posts--or it is added as a section on the Xbox One dashboard like a Facebook-style news feed. Anyway, even if that is too much, they still need to simplify the Game DVR sharing experience: you should be able to do all of it from one app, and from the Xbox One console only (for both sharing and viewing shared videos). For now, though, the steps listed above seem to be the only option.
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