When you and your friends finally pull off a heist in GTA 5, or a stunt race sends your car flying somewhere it should never go, showing the clip beats describing it. This guide covers one method only: recording GTA 5 with the free Windows app DOR, cutting out the moment you want, and sending it as a link. You can also see how DOR records GTA 5 on the GTA 5 game page.
How the recording works first
In DOR, GTA 5 uses whole-session recording. Everything from the second you start the game until you quit becomes one video; it is not split each time a mission or race ends, and no automatic highlight clips are made. That means the real work of sharing is finding roughly where in a long recording the moment happened. The basics of choosing a start and end point are in how to trim game clips.
From GTA 5 session to a link your friends can open
- 1Install DOR and launch GTA 5DOR is a free Windows desktop app. After you install it, launching GTA 5 makes DOR detect the game automatically and start recording. The loading screens right after launch are part of the recording too, so a long intro section at the start of the video is normal.
- 2Jot down roughly when something great happensThe recording starts when the game starts. When a heist wraps up or a race turns into a disaster, note on your phone how many minutes it has been since you launched the game. Even in a session several hours long, that one note narrows the search a lot.
- 3Quit the game and open the recording in the libraryWhen you close GTA 5, the whole session is saved as a single mp4 and shows up in the DOR app library. Jump to the time you noted and check that the moment was captured.
- 4Use the trim tool to keep just the momentSet a start and an end in the library trim tool. For races, starting a few seconds before the jump or crash helps friends understand what happened; for heists, ending just before the results screen keeps it clean. Choose an output ratio of 16:9, 9:16 or 1:1.
- 5Combine several scenes in the studioIf you want to show everything from the setup missions to the finale in one piece, open DOR Studio in your browser and merge the clips you cut. Add text like 'finally done on the third try' and adjust background music and volume on the same screen.
- 6Paste the dor.gg link into your crew chatOnce trimming is done, you get a dor.gg link. Paste it into your crew group chat or a Discord channel, and your friends can play it right away in a phone browser without installing DOR.
Finding and cutting GTA 5 moments in the recording
| Moment to show | What to look for in the recording | What to keep when you cut |
|---|---|---|
| A successful heist finale | The point where the whole crew reaches the drop-off and the results screen appears | From the last chase before the escape to just before the results screen |
| A stunt race with friends | The starting countdown and the moment you cross the finish line | A few seconds around your biggest jump, or the entire final lap |
| A pileup mid-race | A sudden position change or a car flipping over | Start a few seconds earlier so the setup before the crash is visible |
| Funny accidents and absurd physics | The part where your own laughter is loud on your mic | From the moment that explains the accident until the laughing dies down |
| A police chase in free mode | The moment your wanted level goes up | From the start of the chase until you lose them or get caught |
| Showing off a new car | The part where a garage or shop screen opens | Keep it short and focus on actually driving it |
Checks before and after recording
- Before launching GTA 5, my recording drive has comfortably more than 20GB free.
- Ahead of a long heist session, I deleted old recordings I no longer need.
- My mic is connected because I want my own reactions in the video.
- I noted, at least roughly, when the moment happened.
- The trimmed clip starts early enough to show what caused the crash or how the race stood.
- I picked 9:16 for friends watching on phones and 16:9 for friends watching on a PC.
Sharing GTA 5 with DOR, in short
DOR is a free Windows app. When you launch GTA 5 it detects the game and records until the game closes, saving one mp4 in the app library. Unlike match-based games, no highlight clips are created automatically, so you find and cut the moment yourself. Recordings are large and fill a disk fast, and recording stops automatically when free space drops below 20GB. For tips on keeping a multi-hour session intact, see recording long gameplay sessions. With an NVIDIA graphics card, NVENC hardware encoding is the default, and game sound and your mic are recorded together. Instead of passing a huge file around, you hand over one link, and merging several scenes can be done with no install in the DOR browser editor.
