Setup
Only the first one is required. Everything else ships with a value that works, and is here in case you want to change it.
Turn on the combat log
RequiredType /combatlog inside the game. It is how Astro PoVs knows when a pull starts, who died and at what second — without it nothing is recorded. You need to do it when you log in and every time you switch characters, because World of Warcraft turns it back off on its own.
And one checkbox, one time: Advanced Combat Logging, under System → Network in the game's options. It ships turned off, and it is what makes the log say everyone's class. Without it your videos still record and upload, but the cloud cannot tell who was in your group or paint each player their color. One person in the group having it on is enough — having it on yourself is the healthy default.
The app reminds you of this in its sidebar, and the Activity panel stays quiet if it cannot find it.
Or let the Astro PoVs addon do it: it turns logging on by itself when you enter a raid or a key. The next step explains it.
Install the addon
Astro PoVs has an addon of its own. It turns combat logging on, with Advanced Combat Logging, every time you enter a raid or a key, and turns it on again if you disconnect in the middle of a key. With it you never have to remember /combatlog again.
The easy way: the app offers to install it when it cannot find it, one click, and keeps it up to date. It is also on Wago Addons and CurseForge, and WowUp finds it if you search for Astro PoVs. Installing it yourself gives you the same files. If the app installed it but the CurseForge app still shows Install, click Scan once: that makes it pick up addons it did not install itself, and it keeps this one updated from there.
Its switches are in the game, under Options > AddOns > Astro PoVs or with /astropovs: automatic logging, sharing your character, sharing your chat position. Which content gets logged is decided by the app from your recording settings; change them with the game open and it asks you for a /reload. The addon never prints to your chat, never turns logging off, and sends nothing anywhere.
What gets recorded
Under Settings → Content. Raids are on by default and you can pick which difficulties are worth keeping: an LFR wipe is rarely reviewed, a Mythic one is. Mythic+ keys too, with a minimum level below which it does not even bother.
If a pull is not recorded, check here before anything else. It is by far the most common cause.
Quality, codec and audio
Under Settings → Video and audio. The codec picks itself: the app looks for the best hardware encoder your machine has — NVIDIA, AMD or Intel — and tells you which one it went for. With that, recording barely touches your in-game framerate. Quality decides how much space an hour takes, and it tells you the figure in gigabytes right there, before you save.
Where it is kept and how much it takes
Under Settings → Storage. You can put your recordings on another drive, and if you change it the app offers to move the ones you already had. There is a cap: once it is reached the oldest ones are deleted automatically, so your drive never fills up without anyone telling you.
Covering the chat before you share
Astro PoVs records your whole screen, so the video would include your chat: whispers, messages and the names of everyone playing with you. That is why Settings → Overlay has an image that covers it inside the recording — nothing changes in the game itself — and it ships turned on, tucked into the corner where the chat lives. Move it, resize it or turn it off; if your chat sits somewhere else, drag it over.
Recording by hand
For the moments the combat log has no way of spotting: a world boss, an arena match, something that just happened and you want to keep. Ctrl + Shift + R starts and stops, and it works with the game in the foreground — no need to go hunting for the window. The shortcut can be changed under Settings → Shortcuts.
If something does not add up or you cannot find a setting, ask on Discord. Answers come quickly and it is usually one line.
Discord