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Getting Started

This page gets ForgeAssembler running and walks you through your first combined output. Plan about ten minutes end-to-end.

What you need

  • A Windows, macOS, or Linux machine (x86-64)
  • 8 GB RAM minimum
  • Something to assemble. Either:
    • .forge scenes exported from FunscriptForge — the preferred input, because one file carries the video reference, every funscript channel, the estim audio, and the analysis sidecars, OR
    • clip folders: an .mp4 plus one or more sibling .funscript files

ForgeAssembler does not need ffmpeg installed — the release bundles its own.

1. Install

  1. Download the latest release for your OS from forgeassembler-releases.
  2. Run the installer (Windows .msi, macOS .dmg) and launch ForgeAssembler.

The app runs entirely on your machine — nothing is uploaded.

Option B — Run from source

You need Python 3.11+, Node 20+, and a Rust toolchain.

git clone https://github.com/liquid-releasing/forgeassembler.git
cd forgeassembler
pip install -r requirements.txt

cd ui/web
npm install
npm run tauri:dev

2. Your first forge

The app opens on the Home screen: New compilation, Open project…, and your recent projects. Click New compilation.

You land in a three-step pipeline across the top — Build, Output, Forge. Each step has an Accept button in the footer; accepting chains you to the next step.

Add your scenes

In the Build tab header:

  • Add .forge scene… — pick one .forge file.
  • Add folder… — pick a folder of them, added in one go.

Each .forge scene becomes its own section, and a section boundary is a chapter marker in the finished video. So a compilation of five scenes gives you five chapters without any extra work.

If the bundle does not carry its video — the default export is lean, and references the video beside it — you are asked to point at the file once.

A section card shows its clips, each with duration, the channels it carries as device pills (Stroke / Multi-axis / E-Stim), and a gaps pill if this clip lacks a channel its neighbours have. That pill is worth reading: a channel missing from one clip goes quiet for that stretch of the finished compilation.

Add a plain video to a section

Add clip in a section header takes a video (plus any funscripts sitting beside it). A video is a clip within a section, not a section of its own — so use this when two pieces of footage belong to the same chapter.

Set a transition

The + between two clips adds a transition there, splitting the section at that point and opening the joiner picker. Pick None for a straight cut or Fade through black for a fade — any colour, with independent fade-out, hold, and fade-in. Crossfade and swipe are listed but marked soon; no engine implements them yet.

Trim a clip

Click a clip to open the Inspector. Its Source tab has the player, with the whole scene drawn on a strip above it — the motion track, the audio waveform, and a ruler. Click anywhere on the strip to jump there, park the playhead, then Set in / Set out. The regions you are cutting are shaded on the strip as you go.

Check the join

The preview band along the bottom of the Build tab draws the joined funscript — the actual concatenated result, computed by the same code the forge uses, so it cannot drift from what you get.

Output and forge

Accept and chain moves you to Output: resolution, encode quality, frame rate, audio normalization, and which funscript channels to write. The defaults are fine for a first run.

Accept again to reach Forge, and press it. Progress streams into the footer. A one-minute output takes roughly thirty seconds on a laptop; GPU encoding is used automatically when your machine has it (see GPU acceleration).

Use Save as… to choose where the output lands and what it is called — that name is the basename for everything written:

  • <name>.mp4 — the combined video, with chapter markers at every section boundary
  • <name>.funscript — the universal stroke script, plus one folder per device (E-Stim/, FOC-Stim/, MultiFunPlayer/, …) holding that station's channels. Three stations write channels with the same names, so they cannot share a flat folder — see channels
  • <name>.forge — the compilation as a scene: every channel, the joined analysis, and its chapters in one file. Reopen it in FunscriptForge to keep editing, or play it in ForgePlayer
  • <name>.heatmap.png — a heat map beside each funscript
  • <name>.forgeproject.json — the reloadable project

Next steps

  • Sections & segments — the core mental model you'll use for every project
  • Overlays — drop images, audio, and text on top of any section
  • Joiners — fade-to-black between sections and at the very end
  • Channels — pick which funscript channels get written
  • Resolution & scaling — what choosing 4K does, and what it does not do
  • CLI — everything the app does, scriptable