A chicken dinner with nothing to show for it but a screenshot is a uniquely PUBG kind of pain. Battle royale is the worst-case genre for manual recording: matches stretch past twenty minutes, and kills can come anywhere from the hot drop to the final circle. No hotkey habit survives that. This guide draws a clear line around what PUBG's built-in death cam, spectate mode, and replays actually do, then walks through a setup that records every match in full, clips each kill automatically, and answers the practical question behind it all: where do the recording files end up, and how do you keep them under control?
What death cam, spectating, and replays won't do
PUBG already ships three ways to look backward. The death cam plays a short view from the player who killed you the moment you go down. In a squad, you spectate surviving teammates. And once the match ends, replay mode reconstructs the whole game with a free camera and a timeline. All three are viewing tools, not recording tools. The death cam lasts seconds. The replay isn't a video at all — it re-simulates match data tied to that game version, plays only inside the client, and older replays commonly stop working once a patch lands. The controls and review techniques are covered in the PUBG replay guide. If you want an actual video file, recording has to be running while the match is played — there is no after-the-fact export.
Set up button-free PUBG recording
- 1Install the free desktop app — DOR is a free desktop app for Windows. Download the installer, run it, and the setup part is over.
- 2Start PUBG — detection is automatic — DOR recognizes the game on launch. There is no record button to press and no hotkey to memorize.
- 3Play the match; kills become clips as they happen — The whole match is captured as one full recording, and every kill is saved as its own clip in the moment. A fight-heavy game simply produces more clips.
- 4Review your deaths from the full recording — The death cam gives you seconds; the full-match file lets you scrub back to the fight's beginning and watch it from your own perspective.
- 5Trim and share with a dor.gg link — Cut the fat off a clip in the browser editor and pass the dor.gg link around — it plays in a phone browser, no file transfer needed.
What you want to keep vs what each tool gives you
| What you want to keep | With in-game features | With full-match auto recording |
|---|---|---|
| Why you died | Death cam shows the killer's view for seconds | Scrub the whole fight, before and after, from your own POV |
| A full-match review | Replay mode works, but often breaks on patches | A real video file that plays the same forever |
| A collection of kills | Hunt each one down on the replay timeline | Each kill is already its own clip |
| The chicken dinner moment | Often unplayable once a patch lands | The final circle sits in the full recording |
| Something to send a friend | Nothing leaves the client | One dor.gg link, plays in a phone browser |
Your PUBG recording files: a management checklist
- After the first match, open the library and confirm both the full recording and the kill clips are there.
- PUBG matches run long, so full recordings are not small files. Keep an eye on free space on the drive they accumulate on.
- Once a match is reviewed, clear the full recording and keep only the moments as clips — storage stays manageable.
- Sharing is a dor.gg link, not a file transfer. Send one to yourself and confirm it plays in your phone browser.
- A replay is client-only data, not a video. If an old match matters to you, record its playback before a patch breaks it.
The part DOR takes over
DOR is free. It detects PUBG on launch, records the entire match, and saves kills and other highlight moments as individual clips along the way. NVENC hardware encoding is the default, so the load on the game stays low, and full-match recordings stay in your library until you need them. If frames ever feel shaky with recording on, walk through the recording FPS drop fix. When recordings start piling up, the PUBG recording storage guide covers keeping disk space under control.
Verify against the official documentation
The official control scheme for replay mode is documented in PUBG Support's replay mode hotkeys article — free camera, timeline toggle, playback speed, and the rest. Notice what the list contains: every entry is for watching, and none is for exporting video. That is the division of labor in practice — replays for review, a real-time recorder for footage you keep.
