Can confirm this, it is also happening to me on EndeavourOS.
Using symlinks doesn't work either, but bind mounts do.
This seems like a big problem, writing recordings to other disks is a must, since background recordings can get pretty huge and continuous writing is very harmful for SSDs.
My solution was to add a bind mount to /etc/fstab binding a ~/Videos/Steam directory to my extra HD. That seems to solve it for me
Saying a me-too here as well; bind mount worked fine. But otherwise no previews
OpenSuse Tumbleweed
I'm experiencing this issue as well: the bind-mount work around worked for me.
Can confirm this is still an active issue. I can capture clips but cannot preview them on the window, though hovering over the timeline gives you preview frames.
Operating System: Bazzite 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.18.0
Qt Version: 6.9.2
Kernel Version: 6.16.4-115.bazzite.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 32 × AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT 16-Core Processor
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.5 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080
Manufacturer: BIOSTAR Group
Product Name: A320MH
To note, bind mount workaround continues to work, and provides a bit of info towards the cause
This has been driving me nuts since the feature was introduced. I have limited space on /home and this is a genuinely huge issue for me considering my other drive has literal terabytes free.
Thank you very much to @augustobmoura for the Bind Mount sugggestion.
I raise my own version, which uses Systemd user unit to call bindfs, skipping the need for root to mount or modification of /etc/fstab
Created a Systemd User Unit at ~/.config/systemd/user/steam-recordings-bindfs.service
[Unit]
Description=Bind mount Recordings folder to workaround steam-for-linux Issue 11630
After=syslog.target network.target
ConditionPathIsDirectory=/path/to/recordings/directory
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=bindfs "/path/to/recordings/directory" "/home/USER/Videos/Steam Recordings"
ExecStop=fusermount -u "/home/USER/Videos/Steam Recordings"
Restart=no
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
And then ran
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now steam-recordings-bindfs
And then instructed Steam to use the /home/USER/Videos/Steam Recordings
The unit should mount the directory on login and unmount on logout now.
EDIT:
Another option is just setting up a seperate BTRFS subvolume for recordings and mounting that into place using /etc/fstab. Or a regular bind mount in /etc/fstab, which should be different and more reliable than the bindfs command.
But if you edit /etc/fstab remember to test and ensure it works and use the correct procedure for updating your distro's initramfs before rebooting!
I have had some reliability issues with fuse bindfs crashing on me and then leading me to have to restart the above service (and my game) to get recording working again.
I wanted to add a thought to this.
Is it possible that this could be related to Pressure Vessel, I wonder?
I wonder if it's worth experimenting with launching Steam with an environment variable to allow access to the recordings folder
Nothing extracted yet.
Your system information
(No apparent errors were found in the log files, but I am attaching them just in case.)
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
As stated in the title, when the Recordings Folder for Game Recording is set to a path outside the ~/ directory, the preview cannot be played within the Steam client.
Recordings are created correctly in the specified folder, and exporting them works without issues, so this seems to be a problem specific to the preview functionality.
A similar report can be found below. Considering the mention of partition formats different from /home (XFS), such as ext4 and NTFS, it is likely that this case also involves placing the Recordings Folder outside the ~/ directory.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/3/6400272691576783214/
This bug appears to be present in both the current Stable and Beta versions.
Steps for reproducing this issue:
As shown below, thumbnails are displayed, but the preview does not play.
