Everything you need to master BIP and transform your event photography workflow — from your first card to automatic delivery.
BIP 4.0 · macOS & Windows
BIP (Bulk Image Processor) is an app for photographers who shoot events with a draw sheet — rowing regattas, school portraits, race days, anything where every group on the camera maps to a row of metadata. BIP turns a card full of RAW + JPEGs into ready-to-deliver folders and uploads, in one pass. It runs natively on macOS and Windows; this guide uses macOS keys (⌘) — on Windows, read ⌘ as Ctrl.
| If you want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Install BIP and run it for the first time | Getting started |
| Understand the draw sheet (rows, runs, columns) | The draw sheet |
| Ingest a card | Ingest |
| Auto-upload after ingest (FTP) | Uploads |
| Retrieve delivered photos by order / customer | Order Retrieval |
| Find a menu item | Menu reference |
| Memorise keyboard shortcuts | Shortcuts |
| Recover from a crash, expired licence, or stuck state | Troubleshooting |
| Know which features your licence unlocks | Tiers |
Everything you do is undoable (⌘Z / Ctrl+Z), autosaved, and
round-trips through portable .bip event files.
.bip (e.g.
~/Documents/MyEvent.bip).~/.BIP/ on macOS, C:\Users\<you>\.BIP on
Windows (autosaves, crash reports, autocomplete database).
Wherever this guide says ~/.BIP/, read the Windows path
equivalently.~/Library/Preferences/com.BIPCustomers.BIP-Qt.plist
on macOS; the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\BIPCustomers
on Windows (recent files, window layout, "auto-float" toggle,
first-run flag).To completely reset BIP: Help → Clear all BIP-4.0 settings… — this wipes both locations and re-launches into the first-run wizard.
BIP-Support@mybip.org.Download the latest BIP-4.0 release from mybip.org, open the
.dmg, and drag BIP-4.0 into Applications. The app is signed
and notarised, so Gatekeeper opens it without warnings.
Apple Silicon vs Intel. Pick the
arm64build on M-series Macs,x86_64on Intel. Mismatched builds will run under Rosetta but slower.
…-Windows-x64-setup.exe) from
mybip.org..bip file type so double-clicking an event
file opens it in BIP.64-bit only. The Windows build requires 64-bit Windows 10 or 11.
Everything in this guide applies to both platforms. Where you see ⌘ in a shortcut, use Ctrl on Windows — the Shortcuts page lists both side by side.
On the very first run, a four-page wizard appears:
.bip if you're resuming an event.
- From CSV if you have the running order in a spreadsheet
(the most common starting point).
- Blank for a free-form event you'll build in-app.After the wizard, you land in the main window with whatever you chose loaded. The wizard runs once; re-run it any time from Help → Run setup wizard….
Cancelling the wizard still marks it seen. To force it back, use Help → Clear all BIP-4.0 settings… — that's a full reset.
If your install isn't already licensed, BIP prompts on launch with the License activation dialog:
Your licence covers up to 4 computers at once (trial licences: one computer). Once activated, the dialog also lets you Clear stored license (resets this machine to an unlicensed state and — from BIP 4.4.2, when online — releases this machine's seat on the server) and shows your current key, tier, expiry, and machine reference. Seats can also be managed from your Customer Portal's Installations tab, which works even for a machine that's dead or offline.
You can reopen the dialog any time via Help → Activate license….
Offline? BIP keeps a 7-day offline grace. After that you need network to revalidate. If the server flat-out says expired, the app won't launch until you activate something valid or quit.
The main window has three dock panels (all toggleable from the View menu):
The big table in the middle is the draw sheet. See The draw sheet for what each column means.
Floating, hidden, or rearranged a dock and want it back? Use View → Reset layout.
The draw sheet is BIP's central table. Each row is one group you photographed — a crew, a team, a class, a session. Each column is metadata about that group: name, race, time, school, whatever your event needs.
When you ingest a card, BIP uses the draw sheet to decide which photos belong to which row, which folder each row gets, and what filename pattern to apply.
Three starting points, all under the File menu:
| Menu item | Use when |
|---|---|
| New from CSV… | You already have the running order in a spreadsheet. Pick the CSV, then the foldering wizard maps it. |
| New drawsheet… | You want to design columns from scratch in-app. |
| New | Quick blank sheet with default columns (Run, Athlete, etc.). |
| Import from CSV… | Append rows from another CSV onto the current sheet. Maps by column title. |
The New from CSV path also opens the column-order wizard — drag the columns into the order you want them displayed, mark which ones drive foldering / filenames, and confirm.
The run number (often labelled "Run #" or your "refcol" — e.g. "Race", "Class", "Session") drives ingest. Set the starting run in the run-control panel; as you ingest, BIP advances it.
The starting-run row is highlighted: a taller row in light yellow across all data columns, point size bumped 50%. Change the starting run and the highlight moves with you.
A ✓ next to a row number means every file that row uploaded to your gallery host has been processed online — see Uploads → Tracking gallery processing.
Inverse mode flips the direction BIP walks through runs. Use when your draw sheet is laid out bottom-to-top or runs are numbered in reverse.
Use Team event when a single camera run needs to appear under more than one name in your delivered galleries. Typical examples:
For a cutting event you'd typically tick rider and horse. For
a pair round, both rider-name columns.
For every ingested row, BIP produces one full set of proofs (and video thumbnails) per ticked gallery column, named after that column's value for the row.
Example — row has rider = "Alice Smith", horse = "Trigger",
both ticked, foldering pattern based on rider:
Proofs/.../Alice Smith/ ← base gallery (matches foldering rule)
101_001.jpg
101_002.jpg
…
Proofs/.../Trigger/ ← duplicate parallel gallery
101_001.jpg ← identical proof
101_002.jpg
…
Video Thumbnails/.../Alice Smith/ ← same pattern for video
Video Thumbnails/.../Trigger/
Originals/.../Alice Smith/ ← raw originals stay SINGLE — not duplicated
101_001.NEF
…
Originals (raw files) live in just one folder — the base gallery's — because duplicating gigabytes of raw is wasteful and customers order from proofs anyway. Proofs and video thumbnails are the customer-facing deliverables, so those get the copies.
Untick Team event and the row goes back to producing the normal single set of proofs based on your foldering rule.
Settings round-trip through the .bip file, so each event can
have its own team configuration.
The draw sheet behaves like a spreadsheet:
Right-click a cell for the full menu — copy/paste variants, fill sequence (e.g. fill 1, 2, 3, 4… down a numeric column), insert / delete rows, group ingested rows.
Ingested rows are read-only by default — BIP won't let you edit a cell after photos have been written to disk against that row, to keep folder names stable. Use the right-click context menu's "Allow edit of ingested row" if you really need to.
If your show has a master list (back number → horse, rider, owner…), BIP can fill entire rows for you as you type. Set it up once via Tools → Draw lookup (auto-fill)…:
A lookup can be stored globally (every event on this machine) or
inside the current .bip (travels with the event; wins while
that sheet is open). If a master-list column would overwrite your
reference column (your card numbering), BIP warns and skips it
by default — your numbering is never silently replaced.
Built a big multi-row selection and lost it to a stray click? Get it back with right-click → ↺ Restore selection, Edit → Restore selection (⌘⇧R / Ctrl+Shift+R) — or just press undo (⌘Z / Ctrl+Z) immediately: in the moment right after a lost selection, undo restores the selection instead of undoing data.
As you type into a cell, BIP suggests values from past .bip files.
The autocomplete database lives at
~/.BIP/autocomplete.sqlite.
Manage it from Tools → Autocomplete database:
.bip.The .bip file is a portable JSON document. Window layout, column
order, and panel visibility persist per file, so different events
can have different views.
Next: Ingest a card →
Ingest is the moment BIP reads photos off a card, sorts them into runs, writes them to your output folder under the right filenames, applies your watermark, and (optionally) kicks off uploads.
BIP has three ingest modes. Pick whichever matches how the card is organised.
| Mode | What's on the card | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Foldered (Regular) | One folder per run (camera card-creation, e.g. Sony multi-card mode) | Most events, when you can set up the camera to do folder breaks |
| Guided | One mixed folder of files; you sort them visually | Cameras without folder breaks; selected files only |
| Remote | Mixed folder + you give BIP a reference photo per run; it figures out the rest from timestamps | Two-photographer events, tethered shooting, or any case where you can flag a single "I'm starting run N" frame |
The three buttons live on the right-side Run-control panel.
This is the fast path.
Scratches / missing runs. If a run number in your range isn't on the sheet (a scratched entry, say), BIP skips it and pulls the next available run instead — and tells you first, listing every skipped number and the exact runs it will use, so you can confirm or cancel.
Already-ingested cards. If the card's runs were ingested before, BIP warns you — and it's smart about where: a run that folds to a different output folder (a new day, a different arena) doesn't trigger the warning. When some runs are genuinely done, Skip + pull next carries on with just the new ones. 5. A progress dialog shows per-file progress. When clean, it auto-closes after 5 seconds (adjustable — see Auto-dismiss timings); on warnings / errors it stays open so you can see what happened. 6. The Ingest summary dialog appears with the run-by-run results. From here you can browse the output folder, review any unmatched files, or just close it.
If you configured uploads (see Uploads), they fire automatically after the summary closes.
Drag any row to reorder. If you drop a folder onto a run that already has a folder assigned, BIP offers three resolutions:
For cards where there are no folder breaks, or you want to hand-pick which images go to which run.
Important. Guided mode walks files one-by-one — there's no card-position concept. Don't expect the "preview cards" drag-to-reassign UI here.
For multi-photographer events, tethered shoots, or any case where a card has a continuous stream of photos and you need timestamps to split them into runs.
Bow, Stroke).
- Offset (seconds) — clock drift between this camera and
your "master" camera. If you have two photos of the same
instant, BIP can auto-calculate this for you.
- Buffer (seconds) — how much padding to apply around each
run's start_times / end_times.start_times / end_times bracket its timestamp. Files that
don't match any row land in output_folder/Remote/conflicts/.Unmatched files don't block the rest of the workflow. The summary dialog shows a Review N unmatched… button if there are any. Or do it later from Tools → Resolve remote-ingest conflicts….
Inside the resolver:
When you assign, BIP moves the raw + JPG pair into the chosen row's output folder, renames to match that row's filename pattern, and records it on the row. Rollback is automatic on failure.
Many cameras record video to a folder outside DCIM, separate
from the stills:
CLIP folder (under PRIVATE/M4ROOT
or M4ROOT)..MP4 clips to XFVC/REEL_**** and Cinema RAW Light
.CRM clips to CRM/REEL_****.BIP keeps these video folders out of the preview-card list — they aren't a "card position" in any meaningful sense (one folder can hold clips spanning multiple photo runs). Instead, the regular ingest worker timestamp-matches each clip into the right photo run behind the scenes, so every run delivers its stills and the videos shot during it. No extra clicks.
Video-only rows get real times too. When a row's ingest is a single video clip (video-only events), BIP records the clip's capture time and duration as the row's start/end times — so video-only rows show up correctly in the by-day counters and the "Today" totals, just like stills.
Point BIP at the card root, not at
DCIM. The video folders sit next toDCIMat the top of the card, so BIP can only find them when you select the card's root volume. (Pointing straight atDCIMstill ingests the stills — you just won't pick up the out-of-DCIMvideos.)
If your event needs the same capture in multiple galleries (cutting events, paired rounds, etc.), tick Team event in the run-control panel and pick two or more Gallery columns before ingest. Each row then produces one full set of proofs and video thumbnails per ticked column, named after that column's value. Full mechanics + on-disk layout: Draw sheet → Team events.
If Backup is enabled in the Settings panel, every ingest first mirrors the source folder(s) to your backup directory, then ingests from the backup copy. This means the original card is read once, and you have a redundant copy before any processing happens.
The backup dialog shows separate progress; on cancel the ingest itself doesn't run.
Before every ingest, BIP checks free space on the volumes it's about to write to — your output folder, your backup folder (when backup is on), and the local cache (when used). It logs the per-volume estimate to the activity log, e.g.:
disk-space check — est. new data ~4.2 GB:
Output: needs ~5.0 GB, 850.0 GB free — OK (/Volumes/EVENTS)
Backup: needs ~4.2 GB, 1.2 TB free — OK (/Volumes/BACKUP)
If any volume looks short, BIP warns you before anything is copied. The estimate is approximate (final JPEG sizes vary), so you can Continue anyway or Cancel to free space first. The Disk usage panel gives you a live view of every drive at a glance.
macOS "available" vs actually writable. About This Mac often reports space that is mostly purgeable — space macOS reclaims lazily (old local snapshots, evictable iCloud copies, caches) that may not free up fast enough for a bulk card copy. BIP checks the space the system will actually let it write right now; when the difference matters, the warning explains it and gives you the command to reclaim the purgeable space, and the Disk usage panel shows both figures (e.g. "1.9 TB free (5.0 GB writable now)"). If a backup does hit a full disk mid-copy, BIP asks macOS to free purgeable space and resumes automatically when it can.
Card readers are slow under the heavy parallel access BIP uses, so when backup is disabled BIP offers to cache the card to your internal drive first, then ingest from that fast local copy (and delete it when the ingest finishes). You'll see:
Ingesting directly from the card limits parallel performance… Cache & ingest (faster) / Ingest from card / Cancel
Caching is recommended whenever the internal drive has room. Tick Don't ask again to remember your choice — BIP stores it and stops prompting. When backup is enabled you already get this speed-up for free: the backup copy is local, and BIP ingests from it.
This applies to regular, guided, and remote ingest.
The Disk usage dock (right side, on by default; toggle from View → Show disk usage) shows a used/total bar for every attached volume, coloured green when there's plenty of room, amber as it fills, and red when it's nearly full. It refreshes every few seconds, after every ingest, and on demand via its Refresh button — handy for spotting a backup drive that's about to run out mid-event.
Set up your watermark via Tools → Configure watermark…. You can have separate presets for stills and videos — each with its own on/off toggle — and disable watermarking entirely from the Settings panel checkbox. Clicking OK saves exactly what the dialog shows, including edits made after your last "Save preset" click.
Three protections keep a bad watermark path from silently producing unwatermarked output:
.bip. Every save embeds
the preset's images into the event file; opening the sheet on
another machine restores them automatically. Your event files are
fully portable — no more "the watermark lived on the other
laptop".Ratings let you pull specific files out of the normal gallery flow based on a star rating you've already applied in-camera (or in Lightroom / Photo Mechanic / any culler that writes ratings into EXIF).
Configure once in Tools → Configure ratings…:
Then on every ingest, BIP scans incoming files for ratings as it walks them; anything matching your rule is routed to the configured folder and processed under its own rules. The original row's gallery output is unaffected for non-matching files.
Two common uses:
keepers/ folder
for Lightroom, leaving everything else in the normal gallery.rejects/ folder so they never reach the
customer-facing gallery.The Ingest summary dialog has a Cull this pass… button that opens a fast, keyboard-driven viewer over the photos you just ingested — one big preview at a time so you can weed out the misses before anything uploads.
Bip_trash/culled_… folder inside your
output (nothing is deleted — you can always drag it back).Spot a photo in the wrong competitor's folder while culling a guided pass? Press R (or click ⇄ Reassign row…) to open a searchable row picker. BIP moves the raw + proof into the chosen row's folders, renames them to that row's filename pattern, and updates both rows' records — videos retarget to the video folders automatically. Undoable with U (or ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z) like any other cull decision.
Press 1–5 in the cull viewer to set a star rating on the current photo (written to both the raw and the JPEG), or 0 to clear it. If you've set up Tools → Configure ratings…, rating a photo also copies or moves it into the matching rated folder right then — the same routing a rating gets at ingest time (see Ratings). Rating doesn't advance the viewer, so you can rate, look closer, then keep or cull.
If you reconfigure foldering after rows have already been ingested (added a folder level, switched which column names the galleries), you don't have to re-ingest. Tools → Re-folder ingested files… moves the already-delivered output — Originals, Proofs, Videos, and Video Thumbnails — into the folders your current configuration calls for, and updates every row's records to match.
.bip is
saved — with a one-click Undo on the completion dialog that
puts every file back.After ingest, the View → Show ingest counters panel breaks down what landed where. Combined with the activity log (Save activity log…), it's the fastest way to audit a session.
The panel's sections (by ingest type, by day, and — when Auto-FTP is on — FTP upload progress) are individually collapsible and resizable: click a section's header arrow to collapse it, drag the dividers to give the breakdown you use the most room. BIP remembers your arrangement across events.
Three of BIP's "get out of your way" timings are adjustable under
Tools → Dialog timeouts… (global — they apply to every event,
not per-.bip):
Set any value to 0 ("Immediately") to skip the wait entirely, or raise it (up to 600s) if you like more time to read the result.
Related: - Uploads (Auto-FTP) → - Troubleshooting →
BIP can deliver proofs automatically after each ingest by pushing them to your gallery host's FTP server — and then watch the server to confirm your site has actually processed every file into its galleries. Configure the server once per machine, toggle it on per event, and the whole chain runs itself: ingest → upload → row-by-row "online" confirmation.
Requires the Pro tier, plus two settings in your foldering configuration: Use sets must be on and folder depth must be at least 1. That's because the upload sends each set folder's contents (your gallery tree for that pass) to the server — without set boundaries there's nothing sensible to scope the upload to. When either setting blocks the feature, the Auto-FTP toggle is disabled with a tooltip telling you exactly what to change.
Tools → Post-ingest upload settings… (or the Configure post-ingest… button on the run-control panel) covers:
These settings are per-machine, not per-event. They're stored once on your Mac/PC and every event uses them — so switching
.bipfiles does not switch servers. What is per-event is the Auto-FTP on/off toggle in the run-control panel.Auto-upload delay. Each event has an
auto_upload_delay_secondssetting. After the ingest summary closes, BIP waits N seconds before kicking off uploads, giving you a chance to abort. Set it to 0 for instant uploads, or higher (e.g. 10) if you regularly change your mind.
For every ingest pass, BIP uploads the contents of that pass's set folder — the gallery tree of watermarked proofs and video thumbnails — directly into your remote directory, mirroring the same folder structure your site expects. Raw originals are never uploaded.
With the Auto-FTP toggle on, every ingest ends with a non-modal FTP upload progress dialog. You can keep working in BIP — even start the next ingest — while the transfer runs in the background.
If some files fail (network drop, server connection limits), the dialog's Retry failed button re-uploads just the failed files at a gentler pace. BIP also automatically retries individual files several times with increasing back-off before declaring them failed, so a momentary server hiccup usually heals itself.
To re-send a row's files later without re-ingesting, right-click the row(s) in the drawsheet and choose Re-upload … to FTP.
Most gallery hosts (Sytist, for example) run a watch-folder process: it picks each uploaded file out of the FTP folder, adds it to your gallery, and deletes it from the folder. BIP uses that as a confirmation signal — once a file disappears from the watch folder, your site has processed it.
After each upload, BIP checks the server about once a minute and shows progress everywhere you'd want it:
This tracking is saved in your .bip, so it survives closing BIP —
reopen the event tomorrow and it picks up whatever the site processed
while you were away. Re-uploading a file simply puts it back in the
"awaiting" state until the site consumes it again.
If files are waiting but the site hasn't processed anything for a couple of minutes, BIP pops a warning — "No FTP files have been processed in the last N minutes… check your watch-folder process" — and repeats it about once a minute until processing resumes. If you trigger your site's processing manually rather than running a watch-folder process, tick Don't remind me again on the warning; BIP will stay quiet and just note stalls once in the activity log.
Leftovers on the server — from a previous event, or a stalled processing run — can be cleared from inside BIP:
If the configured watch folder doesn't exist on the server yet, BIP creates it for you during the check — a freshly set-up machine needs no manual server preparation.
Related: - Troubleshooting →
Order Retrieval is a companion app that comes with BIP. Once you've delivered an event's galleries and customers start placing orders, Order Retrieval pulls the exact delivered files for each order back out of your output — organised and ready to edit and hand off — in seconds.
BIP and Order Retrieval share a single master index of everything BIP has delivered, so retrieval is instant and you never have to point it at folders by hand.
Tools → Open Order Retrieval launches the app. It installs alongside BIP (one download, one installer), so there's nothing extra to set up.
Order Retrieval is included free with your BIP licence. It checks for an active BIP licence when it starts — if your BIP licence has lapsed, activate or renew it in BIP (Help → Activate license…) and Order Retrieval will open.
Order Retrieval searches a master index — a running list of every delivered file and where it lives on disk. BIP keeps that index fed for you:
Either way the index lives in the shared ~/.bip config folder, so BIP and
Order Retrieval always see the same data. Only deliverables are
indexed — proofs, originals, video thumbnails — so retrieval results
never surface stray system files or working copies.
Inside the app:
* / ?
wildcards) to pull specific frames.The first time you retrieve orders from a given CSV layout, Order Retrieval asks how you want the per-order folders organised — and remembers it for next time. Re-open it any time with Configure CSV.
In the configuration window:
Region, then Customer).John Smith).Retrieved files keep their original names — the structure only controls the folders they land in.
Tip. Because BIP indexes your output automatically, the usual flow is: ingest in BIP → deliver galleries → when orders come in, open Order Retrieval and run Retrieve Orders against the order list. No manual indexing in between.
BIP-4.0 has two licence tiers. Pro includes everything in Basic plus the multi-photographer ingest modes.
| Tier | Who it's for |
|---|---|
| Basic | Solo photographers shooting smaller events on one machine |
| Pro | Photographers who shoot multi-photographer events (guided + remote ingest) |
| Feature | Basic | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Seats (computers per licence) | 4 | 4 |
| Foldered (regular) ingest | ✅ | ✅ |
| Watermarking, foldering, ratings, EXIF tags | ✅ | ✅ |
| Backup-on-ingest | ✅ | ✅ |
| Draw lookup (master-list auto-fill) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Re-folder ingested files | ✅ | ✅ |
| Order Retrieval | ✅ | ✅ |
Per-.bip window layout, autocomplete DB |
✅ | ✅ |
| Crash reports, autosave recovery | ✅ | ✅ |
| Auto-FTP after ingest | — | ✅ |
| Gallery upload tracking (row ✓ marks, watch-folder monitor) | — | ✅ |
| Guided ingest | — | ✅ |
| Remote ingest | — | ✅ |
| Ingest counters panel | Regular counts only | Regular + Guided + Remote counts |
Trials. A free 14-day trial gives you the full Pro feature set — guided and remote ingest, Auto-FTP, gallery tracking, all of it — so you can evaluate everything before buying (on one computer). Visit mybip.org or click Start trial in Help → Activate license….
Help → About BIP-4.0 shows tier, key, and expiration. The Help → Activate license… dialog shows the same info in more detail (machine reference, last-validation timestamp).
Email BIP-Support@mybip.org or visit mybip.org to upgrade. After
purchase, paste the new key into Help → Activate license… —
the activation call refreshes tier info from the server and
unlocks the higher-tier features immediately, no restart needed.
Every shortcut, on both platforms. Where the rest of this guide shows a ⌘ shortcut inline, the Windows equivalent is the same key with Ctrl.
| Action | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|
| New blank draw sheet | ⌘N | Ctrl+N |
Open .bip |
⌘O | Ctrl+O |
| Save | ⌘S | Ctrl+S |
| Save As | ⌘⇧S | Ctrl+Shift+S |
| Close window | ⌘W | Alt+F4 |
| Quit | ⌘Q | Alt+F4 |
| Action | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Undo | ⌘Z | Ctrl+Z |
| Redo | ⌘⇧Z | Ctrl+Shift+Z |
| Restore selection (recover a lost multi-row highlight) | ⌘⇧R | Ctrl+Shift+R |
| Find | ⌘F | Ctrl+F |
| Select all in current widget | ⌘A | Ctrl+A |
| Start editing the selected cell | Enter / Return | Enter |
| Move horizontally in the sheet | Tab / ⇧Tab | Tab / Shift+Tab |
| Cancel current edit | Esc | Esc |
| Action | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Copy selected rectangle as TSV | ⌘C | Ctrl+C |
| Cut — full row(s): remove rows and shift below up; cells: asks "Leave blank" or "Shift cells up" | ⌘X | Ctrl+X |
| Paste TSV at active cell, overwrite | ⌘V | Ctrl+V |
| Paste TSV, insert rows at active row | ⌘⇧V | Ctrl+Shift+V |
| Paste TSV, shift cells down in pasted columns | ⌘⌥V | Ctrl+Alt+V |
| Fill the top selected row's values down through the selection | ⌘D | Ctrl+D |
TSV (tab-separated) is the same format Excel and Google Sheets use, so you can copy between BIP and any spreadsheet freely.
| Action | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Move selection one cell | Arrow keys | Arrow keys |
| First / last cell in row | Home / End | Home / End |
| Scroll the table by a page | Page Up / Page Down | Page Up / Page Down |
| Top / bottom of column | ⌘↑ / ⌘↓ | Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End |
Ingest has no direct keyboard shortcuts — use the run-control panel buttons. But while the Guided Ingest browser is open (same keys on both platforms):
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ← / → | Previous / next thumbnail |
| Space | Play / pause video preview |
| Number keys | Assign current file to row N |
| Enter | Confirm assignment and advance |
| Delete | Mark current file as Skip |
(See the Guided Ingest dialog for the full list — they're shown inline next to each button.)
While Cull this pass… (or right-click → Cull row(s)…) is open (same keys on both platforms; ⌘Z is Ctrl+Z on Windows):
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| → / Space | Keep, advance |
| D / Delete | Cull (move proof to trash folder) |
| ← / U / ⌘Z | Undo the last decision |
| 1–5 | Set a star rating (0 clears) |
| R | Reassign to another row (guided passes) |
| O | Open full-size externally |
| Esc | Close |
While the per-file conflict viewer is open (same keys on both platforms):
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ← | Assign to previous-in-time row |
| → | Assign to next-in-time row |
| T | Move to trash |
| S | Skip (leave in conflicts/) |
| O | Open externally |
When something goes wrong, BIP gives you four recovery surfaces: autosave, crash reports, conflict resolver, and the nuclear factory reset. This page covers all of them plus the common pitfalls.
On the next launch, BIP detects that the previous session ended unexpectedly and offers to send a crash report:
~/.BIP/crash_reports/ containing the
session log, recent error logs, and basic system info.BIP-Support@mybip.org.(BIP can't attach the zip automatically — mailto: links don't support attachments reliably. The mail body includes the zip's path so you can find it if Finder doesn't auto-reveal.)
You can also trigger this manually any time via Help → Report a problem….
BIP autosaves every few minutes to ~/.BIP/autosave/. If your
sheet went sideways:
File → Recover from autosave… opens a browser of recent
snapshots, sorted newest-first, with timestamps and the original
.bip name. Pick one and click Restore.
Normal — remote ingest can't always place every file. The
unmatched files sit in output_folder/Remote/conflicts/ waiting
for you.
Resolve them via:
See Ingest → Resolving remote-ingest conflicts for the per-file viewer walkthrough.
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| "Expired" on launch, can't get in | The dialog has Activate + Start trial + Quit. Paste a fresh key, or start a trial if eligible. |
| Switched machines, old machine still using a seat | On the old machine: Help → Activate license… → Clear stored license — from BIP 4.4.2 this also releases the seat on the server (needs the machine online). Old machine dead, offline, or on an older BIP? Free the seat from your Customer Portal → Installations tab instead — that works from anywhere. |
| Tier is wrong (e.g. Pro showing as Basic) | Activate again — the activation call refreshes tier info from the server. |
| Pasted a new key, BIP still says expired | This was a known bug pre-4.0.0 — the new licence dialog wipes stale expiration rows on activation. If it persists, Clear stored license then re-activate. |
| Offline at an event | BIP has a 7-day offline grace. After that, get online to revalidate. |
If a Tools-menu item like Configure ratings… seems to be gone on macOS, check the application menu (BIP-4.0 ▸ at the top-left): older builds sometimes pulled items there. This is fixed in current builds — if you see it on an older build, update. (Windows menus are unaffected.)
View → Reset layout restores default dock positions.
If a dock got "lost" (floating off-screen, etc.), this fixes it.
BIP virtual columns (folder paths, output locations, checksums, ingest state) are hidden by default. Turn them on via View → Show BIP columns when:
If BIP is in a state you can't recover from any other way:
Help → Clear all BIP-4.0 settings…
~/.BIP/ on macOS,
C:\Users\<you>\.BIP on Windows (autosaves, autocomplete DB,
crash reports, settings).~/Library/Preferences/com.BIPCustomers.BIP-Qt.plist on macOS,
the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\BIPCustomers on
Windows (recent files, window layout, first-run flag).Strong confirmation gate inside the handler — you'll be asked to confirm before anything is deleted.
Your event files are safe.
.bipfiles live wherever you saved them (your Documents folder, for example) — they aren't in~/.BIP/and the factory reset doesn't touch them.
/Volumes/… path on
macOS, a drive letter like E:\ on Windows). Eject and re-insert
if the system hasn't mounted it..bip.start_times / end_times (turn on Show BIP columns
to inspect).Help → Report a problem… is the fastest path — it bundles
the right diagnostic info automatically. Otherwise email
BIP-Support@mybip.org directly with: