The whole idea behind the PS4’s Share function is that the console is always recording the last 15 minutes of whatever game you happen to be playing, so that you can quickly show off that awesome headshot you just took, or share a weird glitch that spawns flying dragons in Flower. Unfortunately for some, that just doesn’t work.
Instead, a variety of problems crop up. Sometimes, no video or gameplay is shown as available to share; other times, the first 15 minutes of gameplay is available, no matter how long you’ve been playing; or sometimes it’s just a random 15 minutes of gameplay. Battlefield 4 also seems to be the game that most of those with issues cite as having been trying to share, but the glitch is by no means limited to EA’s shooter.
With millions of PS4s sold, it’s hard to tell how widespread the problem is, but there are certainly countless examples of people complaining on social networks and gaming forums.
Over on Reddit, one user came up with a fix (after first rudely saying there was no problem), that has been met with mixed results – it may work, it may not. He also goes on to explain the way to use the Share button, which the PS4 itself does little to show you:
I’m tired of reading that the share feature doesn’t work when in fact there is nothing wrong with the Share feature, it’s most likely that you are using the feature wrong and don’t understand it fully.
First of all, there is only one genuine problem reported that the share feature currently has and it’s the fact that a few people have problems where the PS4 only records the first 15 minutes of your session and then stops until you restart game.
To fix that: hold PS4 power button for about 8 seconds until you get to safe mode and then click on rebuild database.
That being said, I will now explain how share feature works.
Clicking the share button; opens the share menu and will automatically take a screenshot AND save your last 15 minutes of footage.
Holding share button; takes a screenshot.
Double tap share button (this is important); this will DELETE your unsaved final 15 minutes of footage and create a new video file that will take your new upcoming footages of 15 minutes.
And finally I would like to mention that the developers have the ability to block gameplay footage from some parts of their games, go to share settings options and enable notification for start and end scenes where the PS4 will not record gameplay.
Another commenter pointed out that if you share a video on Facebook, but your account is set to private, said video is also set as private.
Even for those that can use the Share function, its interface has been criticized and there are repeated calls for YouTube support, local video/image saving and the ability to share directly to PSN friends. Hopefully, however, such features will be added in later with a firmware update, along with a fix for the bug.
What do you think of the PS4’s share button? Does it work for you? Are launch bugs acceptable? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and be sure to rebuild Disqus if you have trouble posting.
