Troubleshooting & FAQ
Recording
“Couldn’t start — No encoder.” Your machine didn’t provide a hardware H.264 encoder at record start. Recap requires one. Ensure your GPU drivers are current and a display is attached. (Recording refuses to start rather than degrade your machine.)
“Couldn’t start — Source lost.” A selected source disappeared between arming and starting (e.g. you closed the window). Refresh sources on the Record tab and try again.
“Window minimized” warning while recording. A window you’re recording is minimized, and Windows can’t capture a minimized window — nothing is drawn, so there are no pixels to save. Restore the window and recording resumes on its own (the warning clears itself). If you often minimize that window, record the monitor it sits on instead. This is expected and is not a fault — see Record your screens. (Minimizing Recap itself is fine; it keeps recording from the tray.)
Recording seems on but nothing is being written / REC turned to “degraded.” Recap detected that recording silently stopped, or a disk/source problem occurred. Check the degraded banner (it names the subsystem), free disk space, and that the recorded window/monitor still exists. (If the banner says Window minimized, that’s the benign case above, not a failure.) Logs are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Recap\logs\.
“Disk low” warning / recording stopped. Free space fell below ~200 MB (or is close). Free up space, lower the keep‑days or size‑cap for raw footage in Settings, or point raw footage at a larger drive.
Trades & clips
A trade didn’t produce a clip (row shows “No clip” or “Failed”). The clip window may have no covering footage (you weren’t recording that source at that time), or segments were unreadable. “No clip” means there was no footage for the window; “Failed” means extraction errored. The trade row still exists; raw footage (if any) is untouched.
No trades appear at all. Recap shows trades once your platform connector starts sending them. Check that: (1) you’re recording; (2) Recap was already running when you opened your trading platform; (3) the connector is installed for your platform — see Connect your platform. If Recap shows a “Trade capture down” banner, restart it. Trading in your platform’s simulation mode is a quick way to confirm the connection end‑to‑end.
The Recap strategy isn’t in MotiveWave’s list. MotiveWave silently ignores a connector built for a newer Java than the one it runs, so the strategy never appears and Recap keeps showing the connector as offline. Click Download & Install on the MotiveWave card again — it copies the new .jar over the old one (or reports Locked/Not detected if it can’t) — then restart MotiveWave. Remove any older Recap or TapeDeck .jar from your MotiveWave extensions folder while you’re there — running two copies at once double-counts every fill.
The P&L looks off / it’s in points not dollars. P&L is shown in points, not dollars, and is gross (before fees and commissions). Unfamiliar instruments are labeled estimated until their point size is known. See Known limitations.
A NinjaTrader chart shows up as a black video. A known NinjaTrader 8 quirk: NT chart windows can capture black when recorded as individual windows. Record the monitor your charts live on instead — full-monitor capture and SuperDOM windows work fine.
A clip won’t play on the Review screen (“Clip file missing or unreadable”). If you moved your clips out of the folder set in Settings, Recap can’t play them — keep clips in their configured location. When one feed’s file is bad, only that tile shows the warning; the other feeds still play.
Peak/Heat say “not recorded.” Nothing tracked how far those trades ran. Most often your trading platform simply doesn’t report a trade’s best/worst excursion. On Sierra Chart, it can also mean the position was already open before the Recap study started watching it — the study measures the run from the moment it sees you enter, so a trade that was live before it loaded has nothing to measure. Restart the study while you’re flat and the next trade records normally. Nothing is wrong either way; the rest of the trade’s stats are unaffected.
“Couldn’t load notes for this trade.” The Review screen couldn’t read the trade’s saved notes, so editing is temporarily switched off to protect what you’ve already written. Click Retry.
Markers, settings & storage
“Not recording — nothing to mark.” You pressed Drop Marker (or your marker hotkey) while not recording. Start recording first.
Can I change the marker hotkey? Yes — Settings → Markers. Click the combo and press a new one (it needs Ctrl, Alt, or Shift, or a bare function key), or Clear to disable it. If Recap says the combo is in use by another app, another program registered it first — your previous binding is kept; pick a different combo.
Settings won’t save with a validation error. “clip length must be at least 1s, others 0 or more” — set Max clip length to at least 1 second and remove any negative values.
Where are my recordings? %LOCALAPPDATA%\Recap\sessions\ (raw) and ...\clips\ (final clips), unless you changed the storage locations in Settings.
Common questions
Does recording slow down my platform? Recap is built to stay out of your way — it records efficiently in the background using your GPU’s hardware video encoder, so it doesn’t compete with your trading.
Is my data uploaded anywhere? Your footage and clips stay on your machine. See Security & privacy for the full picture.
Can I edit, trim, annotate, or share clips? Share Clip on the Review screen takes you straight to the trade’s .mp4, ready to post or send anywhere. Recap doesn’t trim clips, draw on them, or upload them for you. You can journal every trade right on the Review screen — written notes, a mood rating, and pinned moments. See Known limitations.
Still stuck? Use Settings → Diagnostics → Send logs so we can see what happened, then email [email protected].