Rendering and publishing

Render from the dashboard (Render on a card), the editor (⌘/Ctrl+Enter) or the command line. Every option is listed in the CLI reference.

reelforge render ep10
reelforge render ep10 --preset reels --share-size 50
reelforge render ep10 --from 12 --to 20      # quick partial check → out/ep10.part.mp4
reelforge render --all                       # every episode in episodes/

Outputs (episodes/<id>/out/)

File	Use
<id>.master.mp4	Archival quality: H.264 High, CRF 18, AAC 192 kb/s
<id>.share.mp4	Upload this one. Two-pass encoded to fit the share size (default 28 MB)
<id>.srt	Captions for YouTube or accessibility
<id>.sheet.jpg	12-frame contact sheet for a quick review
publish.md	Your cover text, caption, hashtags, pinned comment and chapters, ready to paste
<id>.cover.png	Cover image (reelforge snap <id> <time> --cover)

Every video is verified after encoding: H.264 High profile, yuv420p, 30 fps constant frame rate, AAC 48 kHz, “fast start” (plays while downloading) and the size limit.

Options

Option	Meaning
--preset tiktok|reels|shorts	Platform layout and safe zones
--share-size <MB>	Size cap of the share file
--workers <n>	Parallel render processes (default: CPU cores − 1)
--fast	Faster final encoding (slightly larger master)
--no-sfx	Without sound effects
--silent	Allow rendering without a recording (for previews)
--no-share	Master only
--lossless	PNG frame capture instead of JPEG (slower, for archiving)

Performance

Rendering uses all your cores. Approximate times for a 2-minute episode: 4 cores ≈ 10 min, 8 threads ≈ 5–6 min. Press Ctrl+C (or Cancel in the dashboard) at any time: partial files are removed.

Before you render

• reelforge validate <id> shows 0 errors, and warnings are fixed or understood (--strict fails on warnings too, useful in CI).
• Preview a few frames shortly after things enter: reelforge snap <id> "l3:'bucket'+0.8".
• meta.publish (cover, caption, hashtags, pinned comment) is filled in; it becomes publish.md.
• Phone recording? Set audio: { denoise: true } or pass --denoise.

Publishing

publish.md collects everything you paste when uploading: the cover text, caption, hashtags, pinned comment and chapter timestamps. Make a cover image with reelforge snap <id> <time> --cover.

• TikTok: upload share.mp4; paste the caption and hashtags from publish.md.
• Instagram Reels: render with --preset reels for its safe zones.
• YouTube Shorts: render with --preset shorts (max 3 minutes); upload <id>.srt as subtitles.

Rendering on a server or in CI

Everything works headless on Linux. --json prints machine-readable progress events, exit codes are stable (0 success, 1 failure, 2 usage error), and rendering needs no network once Chromium and FFmpeg are installed. Render a whole folder with reelforge render --all.