How to Record Sons Of The Forest with DOR: Official Guide (2026)

Sons Of The Forest records automatically once DOR is installed: launch the game and the AI takes care of it. You never press a record button before heading onto the island or draw a capture area. DOR detects the game and keeps one continuous video from the moment you come to on the beach after the helicopter crash, through the days you spend sending Kelvin off for logs, to the night the cannibals came with torches. When you close the game, the recording ends. The moments worth rewatching in this game rarely give a warning: a mutant around a cave corner, or the scream your friend let out first. This guide focuses on pulling those moments out of a long survival log quickly, and walks through installing DOR, saving moments, finding co op chatter, editing an island survival video, sharing a link, and recommended settings and fixes for a GPU heavy game.

• Keep your time on the island in one video, from waking up on the beach after the crash to the ending.
• Save the moment your log fortress is finished or a cannibal night raid is held with the clip save shortcut.
• Use AI Voice Notes to find who yelled "Something's behind you, run" first in co op and jump to right after the scream.
• Combine the finished fortress, a mutant in the cave and a hang glider flight into one island survival film.
• Turn a jump scare into a 9:16 horror Short and send it to your Discord server with a dor.gg link.

Before you record Sons Of The Forest: install and recording mode

DOR records the Windows PC version of Sons Of The Forest that you launch through Steam. DOR is a free Windows app and never puts a watermark on your videos, so nothing covers the scary part when you post a jump scare. It uses full session recording: no matter how many days pass on the island, the file is not split, and everything stays in one video until you close the game. There is no recording time limit, so a speedrun attempt is kept from launch to the ending. Dense forests and night scenes make it GPU heavy, so check the resolution and frame rate row in the table below first. For the general routine of recording PC games, read how to record PC games.

Record Sons Of The Forest with DOR: step by step

1. 1Install DORDownload and install DOR. It takes about a minute and is free. Leave DOR running once it is installed. If you are starting a new save with friends tonight, get this done before you log in.
2. 2Launch Sons Of The ForestStart Sons Of The Forest from Steam. DOR begins recording as soon as it detects the game, so on a new game the helicopter going down over the island is in the recording.
3. 3Check that recording is runningAround the time you come to on the beach and check your GPS for the first time, glance at the DOR app once to confirm recording is in progress. If the game is not picked up, follow what to do when the recorder does not detect your game. After that, focus on surviving, whether you are chopping logs or heading into a cave.
4. 4Save the clip right after you surviveWhen you hold off a torch carrying cannibal group from behind your walls, or barely escape after running into a mutant around a cave corner, press the clip save shortcut right after. The last 30 seconds are saved as a separate clip.
5. 5Quit and open My ClipsSave your game and quit. The full survival log and every clip you saved appear together in My Clips in the DOR app. On the day you reach the ending, that scene is in the recording too.

Find your recordings

Your island footage builds up in My Clips in the DOR app, also called the library. Each time you open and close Sons Of The Forest becomes one session, and moments you saved during play show up as separate clips. To find a moment inside a long session, use dusk, when the screen darkens, and the next morning, when it brightens again, as landmarks and you can split the recording day by day. Cannibal raids tend to cluster in the night stretches and fortress building in the day stretches, so narrow your search by what you are looking for. Set a start and an end point to trim the part you need, then export as 16:9, 9:16 or 1:1. Trimming tips are in how to trim game clips. Like the videos you want to keep, such as the day your fortress was finished or the ending. When space fills up, older videos you have not liked are cleared first, so liked ones stay put.

Save the moments you want to keep

Even with the whole survival log recorded, saving a moment as a clip on the spot makes it far easier to find. Press the clip save shortcut and the last stretch of gameplay is saved as a clip. The default length is 30 seconds, and you can choose 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds in settings. In Sons Of The Forest, good times to press it are right after the last wall of your log fortress goes up, right after a cannibal night raid is held, right after you run into a mutant in a cave, and right after Kelvin does something baffling. A jump scare is over in seconds, so 15 seconds is plenty, but a hang glider flight over the island or a defense that runs from dusk onward flows better at 60 seconds. To pick the right length for each kind of moment, see saving the last few seconds instantly.

Find what was said with AI Voice Notes

Running the island in co op means plans and screams all mixed together. Lines like "Tell Kelvin to grab more logs", "GPS is showing a cave marker", "Night's coming, light the fire, get inside" and "Something's behind you, run" keep coming. DOR records game audio and your microphone together, and AI Voice Notes writes what your group said onto the recording timeline as text. If you want to know who shouted "something's behind you" first in that cave, find the line in the timeline text and select it. You skip straight to right after the scream and see what jumped out. If your group meets in a Discord voice channel, check your device settings with recording Discord call audio.

Build a montage with AI Highlight

To turn your days on the island into a short film, use AI Highlight. In the library, check the crash site wake up, the finished log fortress, the mutant in the cave, the cannibal night raid you held and a hang glider flight, then select AI Highlight. DOR weaves them into one video. Check them in order from the crash and it plays like a survival diary; slip in a Kelvin being Kelvin clip between the tense parts for a breather. If you would rather set the clip order yourself, see how to merge game clips.

Edit in DOR Studio

DOR Studio opens in your browser with nothing to install. A jump scare only lands with a shake zoom: trim from just before the mutant appears, put the shake zoom on that frame, and use a handheld effect to keep the tension going as you run. Glitch transitions suit the switch between day and night, and so do text lines like "Day 3" over low background music. Export horror moments as 9:16 Shorts and fortress building logs in 16:9. Framing tips for vertical video are in recording games for vertical Shorts. When you are done, download an mp4 or share it as a link straight away.

Share with a dor.gg link

Send trimmed moments as dor.gg links. Whoever opens the link plays the video right in the browser without installing anything, so posting the moment everyone screamed to your Discord server lets the group rewatch it immediately. Send the finished fortress to the friend who could not join that night and pull them into the next save. Tips on picking base building and night raid moments to send are in sharing Sons Of The Forest gameplay videos, and posting to Discord is covered in sharing clips on Discord.

Sons Of The Forest recommended settings and troubleshooting

Sons Of The Forest is full of dense forest and night scenes with complex lighting, which makes it GPU heavy. Recommended spec hardware or better keeps both your in game frame rate and the recording stable. Recording starts at 1080p and 30fps by default; switch to 60fps if you want hang glider flights and fights to look smoother. DOR uses GPU hardware encoding, so its effect on your frame rate stays small even in the forest or during night raids. If your PC still struggles, drop recording to 720p/30fps mode, and if the stutter only happens while recording, start with fixing FPS drops while recording. For survival sessions that run for hours, also see recording long gameplay without stutter. Fullscreen, windowed and borderless all record, and where anti cheat blocks game capture, DOR switches to monitor capture. DOR has no cheat features and never touches your game files or save data.