Zwift Video Screenshots (Apple release) [February 2023]

What's New? Zwift Game
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Hi folks!

I’m Evan, and I’m a Senior Engineering Manager at Zwift. Our teams have been working on a new feature called Video Screenshots that I’m super excited to share with you today:

Video Screenshots let you capture short, 15-second video recordings of your activities in Zwift. When you take a Video Screenshot, the video recordings are saved locally to your device so that you can share them on social media, and if you’ve integrated your Zwift account with Strava, you can also select one video to upload to Strava at the end of your activity. Whether you want to capture the challenge of pushing up the Alpe du Zwift, or the camaraderie of a massive group ride, or perhaps the dinosaurs of Titans Grove – Video Screenshots are an awesome way to capture interesting moments in Zwift.

And speaking of interesting moments: whenever you have a notable moment in Zwift, we’ll automatically capture a Video Screenshot as well! That means you’ll never miss setting a new PR, finishing an event or challenge, completing a workout, or taking a jersey.

FAQs

Which Zwift activities support Video Screenshots?
Both cycling and running.

Which platforms or operating systems support Video Screenshots?
Video Screenshots are currently available for the following platforms:

  • iPad and iPhone (minimum iOS/iPadOS version: 13.0)
  • Mac (minimum macOS version: 10.15)

Note: Video Screenshots are gradually rolling out in Zwift Game version 1.33.2+, but device capabilities and age may affect feature availability.

What about other non-Apple platforms?
In order to achieve optimal performance, this feature requires a unique implementation per platform. Rather than waiting until the feature is implemented for all of them, we’re rolling it out on a per-platform basis.

We plan to make this feature available for other platforms as soon as possible.

How do I capture a Video Screenshot?
To manually capture a Video Screenshot, just bring up the action bar (hit the up arrow on your Mac or tap your iPhone or iPad screen) and tap the new filmstrip icon shown below. This will save a video of your most recent 15 seconds of gameplay to your device.

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Manual capture will often not be necessary, though, since most of your highlights will be automatically captured as Video Screenshots thanks to Zwift’s notable moments feature. Automatically captured highlights include:

How do I turn off Video Screenshots?
You can enable or disable Video Screenshots in Zwift Settings. When disabled, you will no longer see the filmstrip icon in your blue Action Bar, Video Screenshots will no longer be automatically captured after Notable Moments, and no video recordings will be saved to your device.

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Where are Video Screenshots saved on my local device?
iOS (iPhone, iPad): Video recordings are saved to the Apple Photos app which is installed by default on your device. For more information, see:

macOS: Video recordings are saved in your Finder under your personal folder in the ~/Movies/Zwift/ folder.

How do I delete Video Screenshots?
iOS (iPhone, iPad): You can delete your Video Screenshots in the Apple Photos app, just like deleting any other image or video file.

macOS: You can delete your Video Screenshots by opening the Finder, navigating to your personal folder, opening the ~/Movies/Zwift/ folder, and deleting the video recordings.

Can I capture a Video Screenshot using the Zwift Companion mobile app?
Not yet; currently the only way to capture a Video Screenshot is by interacting with the new filmstrip icon in the blue action bar in the Zwift game app. We are adding the ability to capture Video Screenshots in Zwift Companion in an upcoming release.

What are the specs of the video recording?
Video Screenshots are saved as .mp4 files with H.264 encoding, and are automatically downscaled to a maximum height of 720 pixels, regardless of the resolution in which you’re running the game. Audio is encoded using AAC at 48 kHz.

What are the file sizes of Video Screenshots when saved locally?
File size varies depending on the length and contents of the recording, but in general, most are between 8-18MB.

What if I have concerned about disk space?
We recommend disabling Video Screenshots if you are concerned about disk space, and instructions for how to disable it are included above. In general, if you have less than 10% free disk space, we recommend disabling video screenshots.

Will Video Screenshots affect my game or device performance?
Based on our testing across various models of iPhones, iPads, and Macbooks, we observed no major impact to game performance, device performance, or battery life. That’s part of the benefit of our platform-specific approach; we were able to take advantages of some great Apple technologies that are efficient and don’t add much overhead to what is already happening to render the game on your device.

How do my Video Screenshots get uploaded to Strava?
If you’ve connected your Zwift account to Strava, your Zwift activities will automatically be uploaded to your Strava account. When you end your Zwift activity, if you’ve captured any photo or video screenshots, you’ll see them in the “End” screen where you can select a maximum of five photo screenshots and a maximum of one video screenshots to upload to Strava. (Note: All of your media is saved locally; these limits are just specific to what appears on Strava).

Do Video Screenshots use my network connection during an activity?
No. Video Screenshots work completely offline and video recordings are only saved locally to your device during your activity. The only time Video Screenshots use your network connection are if you have integrated your Zwift account with Strava and you choose to upload them at the end of your activity.

How long does it take for my Video Screenshots to appear on Strava?
In general, it takes about five minutes after ending your activity for your photo and video screenshots to appear on Strava. Upload time may vary depending on the speed of your network connection.

Thanks everyone, and I look forward to seeing your Video Screenshots!

Evan

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Interestingly it was available for me on AppleTV tonight.

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Good catch! We’re occasionally opening the feature up for early preview on Apple TV, and are planning to roll it out more broadly coinciding with the Zwift Companion integration in the near future. :blush:

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Is there a list of iPad models this feature isn’t available. I’ve a 9th Gen iPad (2021 model) and the feature isn’t showing so I’d imagine it would be iPads with a minimum amount of ram that the feature is available only, ie, 4GB ram which would rule out certain models. Are you able to expand a little more on specific requirements other than iOS version. Possibly the roll out hasn’t landed on my unit.

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@K_McCarthy See the first post:

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Great work Evan. Really nicely implemented and really appreciate how you’ve communicated it. This is the kind of thing that keeps us engaged. I personally have wanted this feature for years now, and I think you’re going to see a spike in social media shares. For me this will hopefully solve the “how did that final sprint for the line play out?” bewilderment/curiosity. If you want to supercharge this, I’d consider thinking about simultaneous multiple camera angles for incredible replays on YouTube.

If/whilst I have your attention, please consider cheerleading in your team for the following:

  • Bigger map option, the maps are useless really and the elevation profile might as well not be there for anyone without a projector.
  • Fix the colour slider for bike frames so they don’t have to be high saturation colours only
  • Custom Jersey Marketplace!!

Again, great work and thank you.

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Feedback (Ipad Pro 4th gen 12.9) OS16.3
I completed the WRTL TT last night and had the video (manual option available) on the action bar. It did not take a video of any notable parts of the race but did show a random 15 sec video available to upload to Strava (which it did no problem).
Some have mentioned a prompt to allow Zwift access (I didn’t get this), today the manual option has gone as well or is it only event specific (apologies if I missed that in the above post)
I have also looked in photo’s and video’s for past screenshots and there are none so maybe it has never worked?
There is no option to enable or disable video in the settings menu as shown above.

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Thanks for highlighting, and yes, i did see this. My iPad updated yesterday to Zwift software 1.33.3 so presumably the rollout from 1.33.2+ means this would suggest that that both Zwift and iOS are of the correct versions. Hey I’m not a software engineer but I figured that with iPhone and iPad uploads across social media already being performed, it would be available to all now with the latest update from AppStore which leads me back to my original question if there are some hardware limitations even on relatively new Apple devices that would exclude this functionality.

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I don’t know if I understand your question.

But if you are asking why you did not get the update to use Video screenshots then the answer is Zwift is gradually rolling it out to users. So even if you are on the latest version you may not have it enabled for some time.

Is you ask what the minimum requirements is to get the video screen shots then it is: iPad and iPhone (minimum iOS/iPadOS version: 13.0) and Mac (minimum macOS version: 10.15)

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That’s fine and thanks for the insight. The reason I ask is because other software out there advertise works with devices on iOS 13 and above.

However, they don’t mention that the device requires to have minimum 4GB ram which then excludes iPad Gen 9 and below which have 3GB ram, it doesnt exclude iPad Air, iPad mini, and iPad Pro. Long story short, whilst system requirements for iOS devices is often just required to have a certain iOS version, there is in rare…. and I mean rare occasions that even though you have the correct iOS, the hardware still doesn’t quite meet the technical requirements and this is sometimes overlooked.

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Yep, as others have mentioned, we’re still rolling this feature out gradually over the coming days and weeks, so even if you have eligible hardware, you may not yet see the feature just yet. We’re currently doing a partial rollout to iOS devices with minimum Apple A12 chips (which includes your 9th-gen iPad which has an A13 chip).

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Thanks Evan, appreciate the feedback.

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@Lewis_Cooper Thank you the feedback and the additional suggestions! I really appreciate it and we’re excited to keep improving this feature as well as the game itself.

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If someone hasn’t taken a photo or video screenshot before (or experienced a notable moment), then there is a one-time prompt on iPhone/iPad asking for permission to save media to the Photos app. In the next release, we’re going to move that prompt to when you first open the game so that it doesn’t risk disrupting during an activity (and again, it only ever happens once).

The manual video screenshot is not event-only - it is available in all modes and activities. Are you still not seeing it enabled? We’re doing a gradual rollout over the next few days/weeks which might affect availability.

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That explains a few things. I stopped seeing the video button after that event (in free ride/event / workout), so reinstalled the game and then tried again (nothing) I took a manual screenshot and got the prompt! The video button is still MIA but it may be a glitch and I have to wait for a roll out now I reinstalled?
When it appears again i will do a manual video to hopefully get a prompt :+1:
This is great btw but i would gladly swap it for a favourites button in the Garage :innocent:
Thank you for all the great work!

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Yep with a reinstall your new install might not have been selected in the random distribution. But we’ll be expanding to additional users very soon - planning to increase more next week.

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Just made a run workout. After finishing the run i saw two pictures and a video has been uploaded. The uploads worked without any error, but i don’t see any video in the activity - only the two auto pictures. Same in strava. Is this because of a test phase of the video capturing feature? (iPadPro, iPhone)

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@Heribert_S If you’re comfortable doing so, please DM me your Strava activity and we’ll look into it!

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It is nice to see you guys are implementing other ways to take screenshot.

But it amazes me that the simple feature to not take automatic screenshots at all is still not available.
Or at least give us the choice to uncheck all screenshots. Now we always have to upload at least one screenshot that we have to manually delete from our Strava activities.
Difficult to understand that there are resources going to features nobody really’s asking for and features people actually want are being ignored.

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