How to make a CS2 frag movie

01What a frag movie is

A frag movie is a montage of one player's best kills, edited together, usually to music. It's as old as Counter-Strike itself: a few aces, clutches and flicks, cut tight, with the best play saved for last. Most run a minute or two; the classics ran longer, but a short one gets watched to the end.

02The manual way: record, edit, add music

1. 01Collect the demos. In CS2 open Watch → Your Matches and download the matches with your plays. Only your last 8 are listed there, and Valve deletes demos after a while, so grab them early. More in how to download old demos.
2. 02Find the rounds. Load each demo, open demoui and jump round by round, noting the tick of every play you want. The demo commands cheat sheet has the ones you need.
3. 03Record each play. HLAE (Half-Life Advanced Effects, Windows) records demo playback at a fixed frame rate with its mirv_streams commands and its bundled FFmpeg, so the footage stays smooth even when your PC can't play it back in real time. CS Demo Manager can drive it for you. Or play each round back and record it with OBS. Either way, cl_draw_only_deathnotices 1 hides the HUD except the crosshair and kill feed.
4. 04Edit. In a video editor (DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, CapCut), trim each recording to the action, put them in order, line the cuts up with the music, then add an intro and transitions.
5. 05Export. One 16:9 for YouTube, then reframe and export again for 9:16 if you post to TikTok, Reels or Shorts. A centre crop cuts off HUD near the edges, so the vertical version takes its own pass.

Honest take: it makes the best-looking movies if you have the time, and it takes hours. Recording alone is a few steps per play, and the edit is where the evening goes.

03The killcam.gg way: Studio

If your matches are on killcam.gg, Studio edits your plays from them into a frag movie for you, clipped or not. Anyone signed in can open it and try the editor; making a movie needs Pro, which gets a few a day.

1. 01Open Studio. Your clips are listed with their map, kills and length. Filter by map, highlights or fails, sort best first or newest, or search. Or switch to Matches and pick a match to see all your plays in it, clipped or not.
2. 02Add 2 to 30 plays to the storyboard (12 for Ultra cinematic), up to 5:00 of footage in total. Drag them into order, or use a one-click order: Story (match date, then round), Build-up (best play last) or Best first. Auto-pick fills the storyboard with your best clips that fit. In a match, Make a reel of this match fills it with that match's highlights in round order, keeping the best ones if they don't all fit. The Make a frag movie of this match link on a match page opens Studio with that reel ready.
3. 03Pick a style: Hype (fast cuts, flashes, punch-ins, slow-mo on big kills and a running kill counter), Cinematic (letterbox, a colour grade, slow-mo finishers and dips to black), Clean (straight cuts, minimal overlays) or Ultra cinematic (your plays re-recorded on a neon-noir night with wet streets and god rays, with cutscenes of you running in and sweeping camera moves cut between your kills, made at 1080p 24fps with film motion blur).
4. 04Pick a soundtrack: Beat, an original synthesized track with the game audio under it and the cuts on the beat; Your music, an MP3 you upload, with the cuts on its beat and its drop on your first kill, or started from a point you choose; or Game audio only.
5. 05Pick the quality (Ultra cinematic is always made at 1080p 24fps), give it a title if you like, and hit Make my frag movie.

killcam.gg records each play again from its demo, trims it to the action around your kills and cuts the dead time. The movie opens with a title card, gives each clip a short caption (map, round and what happened, like ACE or 1v3 CLUTCH) and ends on a stats card. It comes in both 16:9 and 9:16 with a small killcam.gg logo at the bottom centre. Download either format, share the link, or set it to unlisted or private.

• Daily allowance: Pro's movies are counted per UTC day, starting at 00:00. One that fails doesn't count.
• Demos expire: each play is recorded again, so it needs its demo. A play whose demo is gone shows Demo expired and can't go in. Make your movie while the matches are recent. More in why a demo expires.

04Tips for a good frag movie

• Mix it up. Different maps, weapons and kinds of play: an AWP pick, a spray transfer, a Deagle one-tap, a clutch. Five rifle 3Ks in a row blur together.
• Build up to it. Open with something quick and clean, let the plays get bigger, and put your best play last. Studio's Build-up order does this for you.
• Fewer, better. Six to ten strong clips beat thirty average ones. If you'd skip it watching, cut it.
• Keep it tight. Studio takes up to 5:00 of footage and trims every clip to its plays, but a finished movie of a minute or two holds attention best.
• Match the style to the plays. Hype suits multi-kills and fast rounds, Cinematic suits clutches and big AWP shots, Clean lets the plays speak for themselves, and Ultra cinematic turns a handful of big plays into a short film. It takes longer to make, so start it early.
• Post both formats. 16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts. More in clean 9:16 clips.

Not sure which plays make the cut? See what makes a good CS2 highlight.