How to Record GTA 5 Gameplay: Save Your Best Moments

To record GTA 5 on PC, hold Alt and press F1 to start a Rockstar Editor clip and F2 to stop it. For a normal video file you can upload anywhere, press Win + Alt + R to record with Xbox Game Bar, or use OBS Studio for long sessions and GTA RP.

The best GTA moments never get scheduled. A heist crew falls apart in voice chat, or an RP scene turns into a ten-minute bit. If nothing was recording, they’re gone the second the session ends.

This guide covers how to record GTA 5 with the tool that fits your session, how to keep frame rate steady while you capture, how FiveM changes things, and what to do with the footage afterward.

Key Takeaways
– The Rockstar Editor records with hold Alt + F1/F2 on PC, but its editor menu only opens in Story Mode, not GTA Online.
– Xbox Game Bar (Win + Alt + R) is the fastest zero-install option and saves to Videos\Captures.
– OBS Studio with a Game Capture source is the safer pick for multi-hour GTA RP and FiveM sessions.
– A 1080p60 recording at 19,000 kbps uses roughly 8.5 GB per hour, so check free disk space before a long session.
– Recording only gets you raw footage. Turning the good moments into clips is a separate step.

What You Need to Record GTA 5

The checklist is short:

• A PC running GTA 5 (Steam, Epic or Rockstar Games Launcher all work the same for recording).
• Recording software. The Rockstar Editor is built in, Xbox Game Bar ships with Windows, and OBS Studio is a free download.
• Storage. Video files grow fast. At the 1080p60, 19,000 kbps setting quoted later in this guide, one hour of gameplay is about 8.5 GB (19 megabits per second x 3,600 seconds, divided by 8).
• Performance headroom. Recording costs GPU and CPU time. If GTA 5 already runs at the edge of your hardware, lower a few graphics settings before you hit record.
• A mic, if you want commentary. Check that both game audio and mic show up in your recorder before a long session.

How to Record GTA 5 Gameplay on PC

Pick the method by what you need the footage for.

Option 1: The Rockstar Editor (built into GTA 5)

Per Rockstar Support:

1. Hold Alt (the Switch Characters key) on your keyboard.
2. While holding it, press F1 to start recording.
3. Press F2 to stop.
4. To edit, go to Story Mode, pause, and open the rightmost tab, Rockstar Editor.

That last step catches people out. Rockstar’s own support page says the Rockstar Editor menu is not available in GTA Online, so you record in Online and edit in Story Mode.

Rockstar Editor clips aren’t regular video files. You build a project from them in the editor and export a video from there. That makes it great for free-camera shots, and slow when you just want a raw file to upload.

Option 2: Xbox Game Bar (already on Windows)

1. Launch GTA 5 and get into the game.
2. Press Win + Alt + R to start recording. Press it again to stop.
3. Find the file in Videos\Captures.

Press Win + G to open the Game Bar overlay if you want to check the mic toggle first. It’s the least setup of the three, and the file is a normal video you can drop into any editor.

Option 3: OBS Studio (for long sessions)

1. Install OBS Studio and open it.
2. In Sources, click + and add Game Capture. Set it to capture GTA 5’s window.
3. Check Settings > Output > Recording Path so you know where files land.
4. Click Start Recording, play, then Stop Recording.

If OBS shows a black screen instead of the game, our guide to fixing Game Capture not working in OBS walks through the usual causes.

How to Record GTA RP and FiveM Gameplay

There’s no single official FiveM recorder. FiveM runs on your PC like any other game, so the same tools work: OBS or Game Bar for full sessions, and in many cases the Rockstar Editor too.

A few FiveM-specific points from the Cfx.re forums:

• Rockstar Editor in FiveM. Players open it with the /rockstareditor command or from the pause menu, depending on the server.
• Escrowed assets can break it. Forum users report the editor force-disconnecting them from servers that use escrow-encrypted models. A community tool, clip2load, exists to strip those assets so clips open.
• Server rules come first. Some RP servers publish their own clipping docs. Read them before you record other players.

For RP, the practical choice is OBS. RP sessions run for hours, and the moment worth keeping usually shows up without warning, so you want a recorder that just keeps going. Test mic and game audio levels with a five-minute recording before a long shift. If you’re new to RP, how to play GTA RP covers getting onto a server.

How to Record GTA 5 Without Ruining Performance

Most recording lag in GTA 5 comes from a GPU that’s already maxed out. Fixes that come up again and again in OBS forum threads on GTA 5:

• Use Game Capture, not Display Capture, and never put both in the same scene. They interfere with each other.
• Turn on Windows Game Mode under Settings > Gaming > Game Mode.
• Turn VSync off and cap the frame rate (one user capped at 120 in the NVIDIA Control Panel) so the GPU keeps spare capacity for encoding.
• Use a hardware encoder such as NVENC on NVIDIA cards instead of CPU (x264) encoding.

A working GTA 5 setup shared on the OBS forum is a solid starting point:

If the game still stutters, drop to 30 FPS or lower the bitrate before you lower your in-game settings. A recording at 30 FPS is still perfectly usable for TikTok and Shorts.

How to Record GTA 6 Gameplay

Rockstar has announced GTA 6 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. No PC version has been announced, so PC tools like OBS and Game Bar won’t apply at launch.

On console, recording will depend on what the platform offers: the PS5 Create button and the Xbox Share button both capture gameplay today, and a capture card lets you record console footage on a PC. Whether GTA 6 ships with its own editor like the Rockstar Editor hasn’t been confirmed, so don’t plan around one.

The principle doesn’t change with the game. Capture the session first, then decide which moments deserve to become content.

How to Make GTA 5 Videos From Your Recordings

A recording is not a video yet. The workflow from raw file to something worth posting:

1. Record the full session.
2. Review the footage and note timestamps of the moments that land.
3. Trim each moment down. Short-form clips usually work best under a minute.
4. Reframe to 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, keeping the action and your facecam in frame.
5. Add captions and music where they help. Captions matter because many people watch muted.
6. Export at your platform’s preferred settings and post.

Step 2 is where most creators stall. Three hours of RP footage can hold two good minutes, and finding them means scrubbing the whole file. For already-short GTA clips, the GTA clip maker reframes a clip to 9:16 in the browser.

Want the reframing step done for you? Eklipse Studio converts horizontal gameplay to vertical without a manual crop. Continue with Twitch

Find the Best Moments in Your GTA Recordings

Recording solves one problem: you have the footage. The next problem is finding the moment worth keeping.

That’s the step Eklipse handles. Per the Eklipse help center, you can submit footage three ways:

• Upload a video file of your local recording, such as an OBS or Game Bar file.
• Paste a VOD link from Twitch, YouTube or Kick.
• Connect your Twitch, YouTube, Kick or Facebook Gaming account so streams import automatically.

AI Highlights then surfaces candidate moments from the footage. Treat them as a shortlist, not a finished edit. You review each one, keep the ones that work, and trim or reframe them before posting. The AI won’t catch every good moment, and some picks will miss the joke that only makes sense with context.

For GTA specifically, the GTA use-case page shows how this works for GTA streams, and our guide to GTA RP clips covers what makes an RP moment clip-worthy once you’ve found it.

Got hours of GTA footage and no clips yet? Upload the recording and review the moments Eklipse finds. Continue with Twitch

FAQ

How do I record GTA 5 on PC without extra software?
Use the Rockstar Editor (hold Alt, press F1 to start and F2 to stop) or Xbox Game Bar (Win + Alt + R). Both are already on your PC.

Why can’t I open the Rockstar Editor in GTA Online?
Rockstar’s support page says the Rockstar Editor menu isn’t available in GTA Online. Record your clips in Online, then switch to Story Mode and open the editor from the pause menu.

What’s the best FiveM recording software?
There’s no official one. OBS Studio is the common choice for long RP sessions because it records continuously and captures mic and game audio together. Game Bar works for quick clips.

How much storage does GTA 5 recording need?
At 1080p60 and 19,000 kbps, plan on about 8.5 GB per hour. Lower bitrates or 30 FPS cut that down.

Can I record GTA 6 on PC?
Not at launch, based on current announcements. GTA 6 is announced for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, so you’d use console capture or a capture card.

Conclusion

Recording GTA 5 comes down to picking the right tool for the session. The Rockstar Editor gives you cinematic control but only edits in Story Mode. Game Bar is one shortcut away. OBS is the dependable choice for long GTA RP and FiveM nights, and a hardware encoder plus a frame cap keeps performance steady.

Then the real work starts. Raw footage only becomes content once you’ve found the moments and cut them for where you post. Record every session so nothing worth remembering disappears when you log off, and let the review step decide what gets posted.

Ready to turn your GTA recordings into clips? Upload a session to Eklipse and pick from the moments it surfaces. Continue with Twitch