This happens to me too. It may be tied to clip length. I made two 4 second clips and two longer clips and it happens on both of the short clips.

Same with my BG3 clips

same, exported video looks too dark and i was recording dead space so i barely see something haha

+
dark if I send a clip to Telegram or open it in VLC
but it looks normal in the default Windows player

This has to do with the color range. Most videos and videoplayers operate in the 16-235 range, but Steam is recording in the full 0-255 which leads to dark colors looking very crushed on most video players. No easy fix, Valve need to reconsider just having it record in a limited range, or you have to take every video and re-encode them.

Originally posted by spineduke:

This has to do with the color range. Most videos and videoplayers operate in the 16-235 range, but Steam is recording in the full 0-255 which leads to dark colors looking very crushed on most video players. No easy fix, Valve need to reconsider just having it record in a limited range, or you have to take every video and re-encode them.

Thank you, but I still don’t get it. Do I play games at a limited range? Why everything looks normal when I game, and too dark on steam recordings? In my player I can change the color range from full to limited, and it kinda fixes it. But it’s very strange that I only have to do that with steam recordings. Like every other video looks washed out that way.

I had the same issue; the footage also gets choppy. I switched to GForce for the moment. Hopefully, this gets solved fast. The recordings look amazing on the Steam app.

same for me, for example, when playing Hunt Showdown, the video recording from NIGHT map is just not watchable, it's too dark....switching to AMD recording for now

Originally posted by Ano player:

The recordings look amazing on the Steam app.

I’ve decided to use those source files from steam app for now. There’s a bunch of chunks in the game recording directory. You can use ffmpeg on session.mpd file to merge all the chunks into an mp4 video. I made a bat file with this line in it:

ffmpeg -i session.mpd -map 0 -c copy game.mp4

Then put it in the directory containing session.mpd. In my case:

F:\Game Recordings\clips\clip_611500\video\fg_611500

I also put ffmpeg.exe in that directory too. And then just ran the bat and got game.mp4, the same video that steam app plays. It has the proper color range, and it’s smooth too. Probably because it has variable framerate.
Steam previously exported clips with variable framerate too, but they changed it recently, and now it’s deadlocked at 60 fps. So the videos look choppy if you’re not playing the game at exactly 60, 120, 180, 240 fps. They also messed up the color range upon exporting. But the source files are still good.

So there is no way for fixing it?

The solution is to export video using codec H.264 instead of H.265.
The option to choose a codec is in extended parameters.

Originally posted by Wolfy:

The solution is to export video using codec H.264 instead of H.265.
The option to choose a codec is in extended parameters.

This made no difference in the clip that I tested. Looking at the H.264 vs H.265 files with MediaInfo also shows that they both have the exact same colour range. Codec choice isn't going to help here with the way it's set up currently. As stated above, giving us the choice of colour range during recording or exporting would be the ideal solution.

I have noticed that compared to VLC (which is darker), the colour range is closer to correct when playing back an exported clip in the default Windows 11 Media Player. It's still not correct when compared to the source clip in Steam however.

Originally posted by Tragedian:

Originally posted by Ano player:

The recordings look amazing on the Steam app.

I’ve decided to use those source files from steam app for now. There’s a bunch of chunks in the game recording directory. You can use ffmpeg on session.mpd file to merge all the chunks into an mp4 video. I made a bat file with this line in it:

ffmpeg -i session.mpd -map 0 -c copy game.mp4

Then put it in the directory containing session.mpd. In my case:

F:\Game Recordings\clips\clip_611500\video\fg_611500

I also put ffmpeg.exe in that directory too. And then just ran the bat and got game.mp4, the same video that steam app plays. It has the proper color range, and it’s smooth too. Probably because it has variable framerate.
Steam previously exported clips with variable framerate too, but they changed it recently, and now it’s deadlocked at 60 fps. So the videos look choppy if you’re not playing the game at exactly 60, 120, 180, 240 fps. They also messed up the color range upon exporting. But the source files are still good.

For some reason it only takes the first 3 seconds of the clip (and colors are still off)
VLC can play 'session.mpd' in it's entirety (with the skewed color range)

Originally posted by Wolfy:

The solution is to export video using codec H.264 instead of H.265.
The option to choose a codec is in extended parameters.

Nope colors are still off.

So I found an alternate solution (Nvidia Only, but might work on AMD but I don't know how)

In the Nvidia Control Panel under 'Adjust video color settings'.
Switch to 'With NVIDIA settings' and under 'Advanced' set 'Dynamic range' to 'Limited (16-235)'

https://i.imgur.com/l4HXCyp.png

You might need to close and restart any video player you have open.

EDIT
Nearly forgot to mention that for VLC to use the Nvidia setting, you need to change the video output to 'Direct3D9 video output' (under Tools -> Preferences -> Video tab)

For anyone else having this issue, you can fix your exported video file using the following ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i "video.mp4" -c:v libx264rgb "output.mp4"