Preparing a shoot

BEATFORGE imports a whole shoot folder at once. It reads the folder tree and turns it into sources: one source per camera or recorder, holding all of that device’s takes in order. A tidy folder means nothing to fix afterwards.

A layout that works

Give every camera and every audio recorder its own folder, named after the angle:

Warehouse 2026-09-12/
├── AUDIO/      the recording from the desk or front of house
├── CROWD/      handheld camera in the crowd
├── BOOTH/      action camera facing the artist
├── FOH/        locked-off wide from front of house
└── STAGE/      handheld from behind the artist

• One folder, one source. Each folder that holds media becomes a source, named after the folder.
• Leave the takes as the camera wrote them. A camera that stopped and started ten times is one source with ten takes. The original file names help: BEATFORGE uses a camera’s own numbering to double-check the order of its takes.
• Split recorder files are joined for you. Multitrack recorders that split a long recording into several files, and cards that put each take in its own folder, are grouped automatically.
• Mixed cameras are fine. Cinema cameras, action cameras and phones can sit side by side, each at its own frame rate.

The clean audio matters most

Everything is synced against one recording, the reference. The best reference is a clean feed from the mixing desk or a recorder at front of house: it has the whole set on it, uninterrupted, without crowd noise.

If there is no separate recording, BEATFORGE uses a camera’s own sound as the reference instead. Pick the camera that rolled the longest.

File formats

BEATFORGE reads MP4, MOV and MXF files with H.264, H.265, ProRes or DNxHR video, which covers nearly every camera, action camera and phone. If a camera records something else, convert its files to one of those before importing.

Camera RAW formats, such as Blackmagic RAW (.braw) and REDCODE RAW (.r3d), are not supported yet. BEATFORGE lists them at import with what to do, rather than skipping them silently: transcode them to ProRes or DNxHR, or record ProRes alongside the RAW. Support for more formats may follow. See Supported formats.

See Supported formats for the full list.