Video Recording

Capture browser automation sessions as video for debugging, documentation, or verification. Produces WebM (VP8/VP9 codec).

Basic Recording

bash

# Start recording
playwright-cli video-start

# Perform actions
playwright-cli open https://example.com
playwright-cli snapshot
playwright-cli click e1
playwright-cli fill e2 "test input"

# Stop and save
playwright-cli video-stop demo.webm

Best Practices

1. Use Descriptive Filenames

bash

# Include context in filename
playwright-cli video-stop recordings/login-flow-2024-01-15.webm
playwright-cli video-stop recordings/checkout-test-run-42.webm

Tracing vs Video

Feature	Video	Tracing
Output	WebM file	Trace file (viewable in Trace Viewer)
Shows	Visual recording	DOM snapshots, network, console, actions
Use case	Demos, documentation	Debugging, analysis
Size	Larger	Smaller

Limitations

Recording adds slight overhead to automation
Large recordings can consume significant disk space