Enable 1080p Game DVR Recording and Save to External Drive on Xbox One

Game DVR Features on Xbox One let you record games, then share it anywhere you want. It’s an off-the-shelf game capture app that can record a few minutes of your gameplay, then save it to your console or external drive that you can use later.

In a recent update for Xbox One, Game DVR can now record gameplay at 1080P Resolution instead of 720P @ 30 FPS. This is great if you are looking for better quality. However, you will have to enable this option manually.

Enable 1080p Game DVR recording on Xbox One

To enable this, you will have to open Setting in Xbox One, then search for DVR option. The option is available in the settings of the control panel.

Press the button Xbox Guide on the controller. This will reveal instructions.
Now keep pressing Right Buffer (RB) until you get to the system section.
Here, select "Settings" and press "A."
This will open Main Settings.
Scroll down Interest.
Choose Play and shoot.
In the "Shooting" section, go to Game clip resolution.
Option 1080p SDR.

During the selection process, you will see that when switching from 720p SDR to 1080p SDR, recording time is reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes.

If you have an Xbox One X console, you’ll see a 4K resolution option that will shoot at 60 FPS and HDR.

Save Game DVR Clips to an external drive

Now that you know how to switch to 1080P while doing this, you may have noticed that there is an option to change "Capture location" just below it. This means that if you have external storage, you will be able to save it right there. This will make it easy to take with you wherever you want. However, once you unplug the control panel, the settings revert to the "internal" default.

To do this, you will need a USB 3.0 Hard Drive. However, there is no limit on the minimum storage size.

First, connect the hard drive to the PC and format it to NTFS.
Next, connect the external drive to the USB port on your Xbox One.
A prompt will appear asking if you want to use your external drive for:
1. Use for media.
2. Format the storage device.
3. Cancel.
Select vehicle.

If you have an NTFS formatted hard drive, rest assured that none of your data will be lost when using it only for media. The message clearly says:

If you choose to use this external storage for media, i.e. music, videos and pictures, you will keep any existing content on the device.
If you choose to use it for games and applications, the drive needs to be formatted. Everything on the device will be erased. You can manage the device then in Settings > System > Storage.

Follow these steps to change the location to external storage:

Come back Broadcard & chụp as we did above.
Towards Location capture.
Select Outside. You should see the hard drive name there.

Next, when you select 1080P recording, the time limit is increased to 1 hour instead of two minutes. Since video recording takes up a lot of space, we intend to keep the limit to a maximum of 2 to 5 minutes when using internal storage.

Microsoft should absolutely make this drive available online, so there’s no need to unplug the hard drive when it needs to transfer clips to a PC.

Troubleshoot ‘First, format this device on your PC’

In case you get an error say

First, format this device on your PC. For cpature game clips and external screenshots, the storage must be NTFS formatted. Connect it to your PC and format it, then refactor it to your Xbox (0x80bd003c)

Please format this device on your PC first

In this case you will need to reformat your hard drive as NTFS to make it work. When you format the drive, you should uncheck the Quick Format option and then format it. It took longer than usual, but that worked for me. Also, I had to try several times, and then only it worked for me.

Also remember, if you convert between Game and Media, you will have to format it all the time. A hard drive formatted to use Xbox Games cannot be used to save media files.