IP and software-defined production has given broadcasters and post houses near-limitless configurability. It also handed every operator a networking problem. Bitfocus thinks it has the fix, and it's showcasing it at IBC2026.
The transition to IP has brought numerous benefits to the broadcast industry, not the least of which is that everything is now more open. Industry-specific connections to black boxes and siloed dedicated hardware and proprietary systems have been replaced by flexible infrastructure that can be adapted to a multitude of tasks.
However, that seems to have brought its own problem. When you have a system that can do pretty much anything you throw at it, how do you optimize it and tailor it to your needs? How do you get it to work as smoothly as the previous generation's dedicated black boxes did? The Paradox of Choice says that the more options we are given, the more difficult it is to choose one from among them. We are used to facing this when buying, for example, consumer electronics products online. To come across it in our jobs is less welcome, and the upshot is that skilled creatives who got into this industry to make pictures now have to dedicate a significant proportion of their time thinking like network engineers instead.
This is endemic across the industry: from OB to post, from production galleries to live events. Bitfocus, though, reckons it has the solution. The Norwegian developer cut its teeth in this area with Companion, a tool that let thousands of operators trigger scenes, decks, and switchers from an Elgato Stream Deck and was a big hit in the pro AV community. It's taken that thinking and the understanding it's developed over how people want to control their software, and rolled it into Buttons, an enterprise platform for broadcast routing with an avowedly user-centric design.
First thing to note is that Buttons keeps the openness that is the hallmark of modern IP systems. It is vendor-neutral and easily reconfigurable so that it can be used in a massive variety of broadcast and post workflows. Buttons keeps that flexibility intact and adds a control layer on top, one that sits above the network and all its associated complexity. You sit in front of it, you press a button, and you get control of everything you need to work with, precisely tailored to your needs. And the next person to use it gets the same, a control surface tailored to their individual needs and tasks. The infrastructure beneath it remains invisible while Buttons controls the connections and orchestrates the way that the network operates.
Bitfocus is co-exhibiting with Elgato at IBC2026, and you can very much think of it as a more powerful Stream Deck for broadcast and AV systems: one that lets you shape the workflow and provide precise operational control. Its tagline is Control Anything, Route Everything, and at IBC2026 it has a new version that doubles down on those promises.
Tieline Management goes a step further still, automatically finding a path through multiple routers without the operator ever touching a router configuration. And Projects ties it together operationally: everything a production has claimed is grouped, so closing out a show releases the routes and tielines in one action rather than leaving them tied up and a jumble to untangle for the next crew.
It's important to remember that this isn't only about networks, it’s about people too. Live production leans heavily on freelance and touring crew, and they always need to be able to hit the ground running even with hardware they have never touched before. No one has time to be reading a user manual on a live broadcast. Buttons addresses that head-on: controls load automatically for each authenticated user's role. That means by scanning an NFC card on a shared Stream Deck, each operator loads up their own individual feature set, and several people can use the same physical surface; each operator gets in front of them what their job actually requires. Robust sign-on protocols mean that the right access follows the right person across a facility rather than having to be rebuilt panel by panel.
There's more under the hood too with a range of broadcast-grade improvements designed to make discovery and interoperability easier. There is even a Control API that allows external systems to trigger routing presets and drive Buttons over a versioned HTTP interface.
As ever, it’s all about being open and building upon Buttons’ vendor-neutral position that has been part of its roots since Companion. v1.8 is even extending this position across a whole range of other kit, including Blackmagic's Videohub and ATEM ranges, AJA KUMO, Utah Scientific BPS, Riedel MediorNet, VideoIPath, SWP08, and TSL UMD, alongside the full NMOS IS-04/IS-05/IS-09 stack.
The upshot is that the choice of what underlying kit should be used, and where, always stays with the facility and is never dictated.
No one is pretending the new era of IP production is simple. It has its complexities, and those aren't going away as the industry keeps evolving. What Buttons aims to do is make that complexity usable. It fits in anywhere from a single event to a multi-site operation, and means that anyone can sit down with it and understand immediately how the workflow in front of them works, because it feels familiar.
It leaves teams free to choose their own equipment without worrying that they are adding to the network complexity, enabling them to focus on the show rather than the system running underneath it. That's where we had got to after many decades of evolution in the SDI era. And that's where we can be after only a handful of years in the IP era, if we use the right kit.
Bitfocus will be showing Buttons v1.8 at IBC2026, 11-14 September, at Stand 8.D31 alongside Elgato. More details are available at bitfocus.io.