FAQ and troubleshooting
Setup
The dashboard says “setup issues”. Click the pill: each failed check shows its fix. Most often ffmpeg is missing (Windows: winget install Gyan.FFmpeg, macOS: brew install ffmpeg, Linux: your package manager). Then restart start.bat / start.sh.
“Cannot launch Chromium”. Run reelforge doctor --fix. On Linux, also run the installer again and accept the system libraries prompt.
“ffmpeg not found” although I installed it (Windows). Close every terminal and start.bat, then reopen: Windows only picks up the new PATH in new windows.
More setup fixes are in Installation.
Episodes
A word reference fails: Word "x" not found in line l7. The error shows the closest word in that line. Words are matched without punctuation and diacritics. For a word containing an apostrophe use double quotes: l7:"Conway's". You can also use the word index: l7.3 (4th word).
The caption wraps over three lines (V-10). Add break: ["word"] to the script line to split the caption before that word, or lower captions.max_chars in the theme.
Text overflows its box (V-9). Shorten the text, lower fontSize, or enlarge place.w/h. Titles, quotes and stamps shrink automatically to fit.
An element sits under the TikTok buttons (V-7). Press Z in the editor to show the safe zones, and keep content out of the red areas. In the lower part of the stage keep x + w ≤ 920.
Two elements overlap (V-8). Give the first one an exit before the second enters, move one of them, or put badges and stamps on layer: overlay.
A line is “spoken too fast” (V-14). It has more than about 3.5 words per second. Split it into two lines or shorten it.
Fonts, languages and formats
Can I use my own fonts? Themes can use any bundled family (Space Grotesk, Inter, Manrope, Playfair Display, JetBrains Mono, Cairo, Noto Kufi Arabic, Noto Naskh Arabic, Readex Pro). Fonts are bundled so renders never depend on the machine; other fonts are not supported yet.
Which languages are supported? English and Arabic captions, including Arabic sentences with English terms.
Can I make square or landscape videos? Not in 1.0: ReelForge renders 9:16 vertical video only (ADR-016). Square, portrait and landscape are on the roadmap.
Offline use, servers and AI
Does ReelForge need the internet? Only during installation (dependencies, Chromium, ffmpeg) and for the one-time download of the optional speech models. Creating, editing and rendering are fully offline. If you use an AI assistant, the assistant itself needs its own connection and account; ReelForge's MCP server stays local.
Can I render on a server or in CI? Yes: everything is available from the command line (--json gives machine-readable output) and works headless on Linux.
Does ReelForge send my files anywhere? No. The servers bind to 127.0.0.1 by default and the render engine blocks network access. An AI client only sees what it reads through the tools.
Rights and files
Can I sell the videos I make? Yes. The videos are yours, including for clients and monetized channels. See License.
Where are my files? Each episode is a folder in episodes/ containing episode.yaml, voice.wav, cues.json, assets/ and out/. Back it up like any other folder (Git works well).
Getting help
Ask in GitHub Discussions or open an issue. Include your operating system, the output of reelforge doctor --json and the command you ran with --verbose.