Highlights

5Stack turns finished matches into shareable video automatically, and gives you an in-app editor to cut your own clips. Both render on a GPU node.

Automatic highlights

When an admin turns on Auto-generate match highlights, every map's demo gets one highlight per player the first time it's parsed: that player's best round, the round with the most kills, trimmed down to the action. Admins can raise the bar with a minimum kill count, and append up to three knife kills from other rounds.

• Only players who have signed in to 5Stack at least once get a highlight.
• Imported matches only get highlights when Include imported matches is also on.
• A clip stops at the end of the match's final round, so it never runs on into the victory screen.

Where highlights show up

• Highlights page: every public clip on the platform (admins see private ones too), filterable and sortable. See below.
• Watch page: the top plays, filtered by Show plays (All / Aces / 4Ks) and Time range (Today / This week / All time). If this week has no plays yet, it opens on All time. The lead clip is tagged Play of the day, Top play this week, or Top play.
• Match page: the match header and its highlights are one stage. The featured clip plays inline and moves on to the next by itself, with an Up next list beside it. Each player row has a film button with their clip count.
• Player profile: a Highlights section with the player's clips, newest first.
• Team page: a Highlights tab with the current roster's clips.
• Events: the event's top plays, and a Highlights view next to Uploads in its media.

Top plays puts the most kills first, then the shortest clip, then the most views, so a fast 4K beats a slow one.

A clip counts a view once a viewer has loaded half of it. Bots, downloads, and the next clip being loaded ahead of time don't count, and the same viewer counts at most once every 6 hours.

The Highlights page

Filter by Player and Kills (Any kills / 2+ / 3+ / 4+ / 5 kills), and from the filters menu by Date (All time, or the last 24 hours, 7, 30, or 90 days) and Sort (Most recent, Top plays, Most viewed). Admins also get a Visibility filter (All / Public / Private).

Match Clips groups clips by match; Singular Clips lists each one. Filtering, or sorting by anything but Most recent, switches to Singular Clips.

Links to a clip open it on the Highlights page, and unfurl in Discord, Slack, and other apps with the video playable inline.

The clip player

A clip opens in a player with its title, the player, the round and map, who clipped it, and when. Beside the video:

• Kill feed: the player's kills in that round, with weapon, headshot, victim, and where it happened.
• Scorecard: the match it came from, with both teams' scores and a View match link.
• Up next: the next clips, which play on automatically. The next one loads ahead of time, so it starts instantly.

Theater mode (press T) fills the window with the video and puts the details over it; the player remembers your choice. It needs a window at least 640px wide.

Key	Action
T	Theater mode / default view
← / →	Previous / next clip
Space or K	Play / pause
F	Full screen
M	Mute
Esc	Leave theater mode, then close

The person who made a clip can rename it, and make it public or private from its tile (admins can do this for any clip). Share has Copy link and Download (with the file size); admins also get a Public switch and Delete clip there.

Making your own clips

Players with the Streamer role and above can cut clips during demo playback, two ways:

• Auto clip from preset: pick a player and a preset, and 5Stack builds the clip from the parsed kills.

  Preset	What it clips
  Multi-kills	Every round with 2+ kills, trimmed to the action
  Best round	The single round with the most kills
  Knife kills	Each knife kill, with a 5s lead-in
  Match recap	Every round the player got at least one kill

• Clip Editor: drag on the timeline to add a segment, then trim, split, or delete segments and preview the cut. Each segment can follow a set player or stay on whoever is being spectated. Up to 20 segments.

The clip renders right away in your own playback session, with progress shown inline, then Open clip or Download. You also get a notification when it's ready. Clips you make start out public. Resolution and frame rate are set by your admin, not per clip.

Admins can also queue a highlight without opening playback: Render highlight… on a player's row in the match page, or Create Player Highlights in the match actions, which runs the automatic highlights for that match even when auto-generation is off.

Render queue

Automatic and queued highlights render in batches. The Queue button on the Highlights page (admins, streamers, match organizers, and tournament organizers) opens the Render Queue with every active and recent batch and why a batch is waiting, for example for a free GPU or for a live match to end.

Admin controls

Under Settings → Application → Highlights:

Setting	Default
Auto-generate match highlights	Off
Include imported matches	Off
Pause Highlight Renders During Active Match	Off
Bake player chip + outro into highlights	On
Minimum kills to generate a highlight	Any kill (everyone)
Always include knife kills	Off
Minimum Retention (days) / Maximum Storage (GB)	1 / 10

Highlight Codec (H.264 or H.265 / HEVC, default H.264), Highlight FPS (30 or 60, default 60) and Highlight Resolution (720p or 1080p, default 1080p) are under Settings → Application → Video Encoding.

• Minimum kills ranges from any kill up to Aces only (5K).
• Default visibility for auto-generated highlights makes them Public or Private. Clips players make by hand start out public.
• Pause Highlight Renders During Active Match holds renders while a match is live on a server backed by a GPU node, and resumes them when it ends.
• FPS and resolution apply to every render, automatic and hand-made.
• Highlights are kept at least the minimum retention; once storage passes the maximum, the oldest highlights past their retention are deleted first.

When auto-generation covers imported matches, players who haven't linked their Steam match history get a Feature Spotlight card in their notifications panel, Highlights From Every Match You Play, with a Link Account button. Dismissing it hides it on every device.

TIP

Highlights, clips, and demo playback all share your GPU nodes. If renders are slow or queued, check the GPU pool and the Pause Highlight Renders During Active Match setting.