How to clip on PC,
whatever card you have.

Clipping on PC is two different jobs.

The first job is capture: a tool sits in the background, keeps the last few minutes in a buffer, and writes a file when you press a key. That is what people mean when they ask how to clip something on PC, and it is already solved by software you did not have to install. The second job is finding the moment afterwards, inside a recording you did not clip at the time. Different tools, different problem, covered in section 06.

Every capture tool below does the same three things: it needs a buffer length, it needs a save hotkey, and it writes to a folder. Once you know those three settings for your tool, you know how to clip on it. Defaults are listed as the vendors document them; hotkeys can be changed and vendors do move them, so confirm in the overlay if yours differs.

Four steps, any tool.

How to clip with NVIDIA, AMD, Game Bar or OBS.

• How to clip with NVIDIA. The NVIDIA app replaced GeForce Experience and ShadowPlay, and the feature is still called Instant Replay. Open the overlay with Alt+Z, switch Instant Replay on, and set the length, which goes up to 20 minutes. The default save key is Alt+F10, and Alt+F9 starts a manual recording instead. Files go to a folder under Videos named after the game. The encode runs on the NVENC block rather than the shader cores, so the frame-rate cost is small; we explain where it actually comes from, and what does not cause it, on the clipping without an FPS drop page. If you still have GeForce Experience installed, the same feature lives under the same name.
• How to clip on an AMD card. AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition has the same rolling buffer under the same name, Instant Replay. Open the overlay with Alt+R, turn Instant Replay on in the Record & Stream tab, and set the duration. The default save key is Ctrl+Shift+S, and Ctrl+Shift+R starts a full recording. It encodes on the card's media block, so the cost while playing is similar to NVIDIA's. If you are on AMD and shopping for tools beyond the driver, our AMD clipping software page is the honest list, including where our own tool falls short on your hardware.
• How to clip on Windows with nothing installed. Xbox Game Bar is already there on Windows 10 and 11. Win+G opens it, and Win+Alt+G saves the last stretch of play without opening anything. The reach-back length is set in Settings under Gaming, then Captures, with a default of 30 seconds and a ceiling of ten minutes, and "Record in the background while I'm playing a game" has to be on or the hotkey does nothing. Files land in Videos, in a folder called Captures. It works on any GPU. What you give up is control: the quality options are thin, some games never attach, and it is the tool most often found to have been silently not recording.
• How to clip with OBS. OBS Studio is free and runs on every GPU and every operating system. The feature is Replay Buffer, which is off until you enable it under Settings, then Output, then the Replay Buffer tab, where you also set the length in seconds and a memory cap. Assign a Save Replay hotkey under Settings, then Hotkeys, and start the buffer from the main window each session, because unlike the driver tools it does not start itself. Files go wherever your recording path points. It is the only option here with no vendor behind it, and it is the one that survives a driver update.
• How to clip on Discord. Discord's own Clips control saves the last stretch of a Go Live stream, your own or a friend's if they allowed viewers to clip, from the button in the stream window, and writes the file locally. It only exists while a stream is running inside Discord, so it covers the session you shared with friends and nothing else. For everything you play without streaming it, use one of the four above.
• How to clip the last 5 minutes. Set the buffer to five minutes in whichever tool you use: the NVIDIA app and Adrenalin both allow it directly, Game Bar allows up to ten, and OBS allows whatever your RAM cap permits. The trade is that every save is now a five-minute file, and a night of saves is tens of gigabytes. Most people settle at two to three minutes and save twice when a fight runs long.

The four built-in ways, on one table.

Defaults as the vendors document them. All four hotkeys can be changed in the tool's settings, and vendors occasionally move them between versions, so treat the table as where to look rather than as a promise.

Pick by what is already on the machine.

• NVIDIA card. The NVIDIA app. It is already installed with the driver, the encoder is dedicated, and the ceiling is the highest. There is no reason to add anything for capture.
• AMD card. Adrenalin's Instant Replay, for the same reasons. OBS with the AMD encoder if you want more control over bitrate and format.
• Laptop, integrated graphics, or a machine you do not administer. Xbox Game Bar. It costs nothing and asks nothing, and its weaknesses only matter once you clip often enough to care.
• You want one setup that survives every driver update. OBS. Learn it once and it does not change under you.
• You keep forgetting the hotkey. That is a different product. Tools like Outplayed and Medal auto-save on in-game events instead of waiting for you, and the trade-offs are laid out in the clipping software roundup.

You recorded three hours. Now what.

Every tool above saves the moment you noticed. None of them helps with the moment you did not: the play that happened while you were busy playing, the reaction you forgot to press the key for, the session you recorded in full and never rewatched. That footage is on the drive, and the buffer tools have no opinion about it.

That is the job CutBench does, and it is the only one it does. Point it at the whole recording, a full session or a downloaded VOD, and it works through the entire file, ranks the candidate moments against each other, and hands back a short list of vertical clips with captions burned in. You approve the ones worth posting and reject the rest. It records nothing itself, so nothing about your capture setup above changes; it starts where those tools stop.

It runs on your own PC. Nothing uploads, there is no per-minute allowance, and it is bought once rather than monthly. The honest costs: Windows 10 or 11, an NVIDIA GPU with 6 GB of VRAM for the supported path, and a 3-hour session takes roughly 2 to 5 hours on an RTX 3060 class card, so most people start it when they stop playing and read the list in the morning. On an AMD card it runs below the supported spec on the processor and takes several times longer, which is spelled out on the AMD page rather than hidden here. The free demo is the whole tool on your own footage, with a watermark on the exports, so you can check the ranking on last night's session before deciding anything.

If the footage is a stream rather than a local recording, the workflow from download to finished clips is written up in how to clip a 3-hour stream, and the tool question for Twitch specifically is on the Twitch clip maker page. If the session already went up as a YouTube video and you want clips from it, start from the recording rather than the upload: how to clip a YouTube video covers the three cases.

How to clip on PC FAQ.