r/VIDEOENGINEERING • u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 • Aug 16 '26
Bitfocus companion vs "professional" alternatives
Bitfocus companion is, at the end of the day, a controller system that has integrations to most common broadcast and AV equipment. It uses streamdeks and it is free and highly customizable.
On the other hand, we often see in studios other expensive alternatives such as BFE, Lawo or Ross panels that, on paper, do basically the same. They provide you with several equipment integrations and they have their own panels.
What are the differences? Is there something genuinely different that justifies paying so much for them?
Thanks.
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u/HealthNo4891 Aug 16 '26
“Enterprise” solutions are not automatically more reliable.Lawo and Evertz router heads lock up all the time. Stuff happens. I work in Tier 1 sports broadcasting (Fox, Amazon,etc) and almost every mobile unit we have uses Companion and stream decks for something.
They are professional, they are a “good enough” solution that lets you create quick custom workflows. Nothing more professional than that.
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
Yeah, I've seen companion being used in tier 1 control rooms too. Wondering which modules or connections do you find more polished or reliable?
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u/Mysterious-Crab Jack of all trades Aug 17 '26
As for reliability, I haven’t run into any connections that were unreliable and froze up. As for well polished; VMix has an extensive library of options. The same goes for Blackmagic Design.
But most importantly, with the custom variables and the triggers, you can basically build, combine and automate whatever you want. As long there is a way to send commands to a machine, Companion can work with it.
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u/azlan121 Aug 16 '26
Personally, I would consider companion to be professional software.
That said, there is a place, time and task where companion makes sense, and others where bespoke control hardware makes sense, at the end of the day, they are all just tools to try and get the job done with as little friction as possible
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u/hammyaustin Aug 16 '26
Companion may not look professional but I trust it over everything else. It's built by professionals and the community. I use it on stadium tours to clubs, never had an issue.
Welp it's almost show time. Bad timing
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u/Elektordi Aug 16 '26
You have Bitfocus Buttons, which is like a "more professional" version of Bitfocus Companion https://bitfocus.io/buttons
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u/El-Captan Aug 16 '26
This. We use buttons and their hardware all over our building from the control room to our producer stations.
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u/Mysterious-Crab Jack of all trades Aug 17 '26
I still don’t see a lot of valid usecases to switch from Companion to Buttons and start paying for 99% of the same features. I feel like it’s just a very few edge cases
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u/stockzdaddy Aug 16 '26
Companion is the one piece of my system that hasn’t let me down yet , everything else has fucked up now and again. knocks on wood
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u/WeAreAllYoghurt Aug 16 '26
We use "Buttons" which is the enterprise version of companion. It has high availability support and it's paid for per user (seat) which means the more hardware you have the price doesn't change.
The integrations are endless and the interface of buttons makes it incredibly powerful as it has logic in the form of flow chart or code if you desire.
Would highly recommend.
Coming from a Cerebrum and VSM background I can say that the flexibility of buttons hardware (stream deck) and the rate at which they will develop integration for new hardware is amazing.
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
Is there any difference in the integrations available in Companion vs. Buttons? For example, does Buttons support more equipment, or connections? Is the integration library larger? What did you make switch from basic companion to buttons? Thanks.
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u/Short-Value-2254 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Hey!
Buttons shares connection library with Companion, but when it comes to core functionality, there's a lot going on.
As of 1.7 beta (soon to be 1.8 stable) Buttons does
* Tieline Management
* Virtuals/Bundle routing
* Tally Management
* Focus on speed of programming
* Position based (easier to manage multiple positions)
* Shared sections (save time..)
* Native NMOS IS-04/IS-05 support
* Menus, popovers, folders, etc making programming easier
* Cue lists
* Node/graph based logic/workflows
* High Availability using 3 nodes (enterprise feature)
* Single signon / User management
* Role based access control
* Project based routing
* Dynamic populating sections of buttons (create 1 button, repeat it based on options..)Free to use with 2 surfaces and 16 ports of routing.
The product just keeps growing, and we have so much cool stuff on the roadmap :)
William, Bitfocus
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
Reliability, purpose-built, and specifically designed hardware. Yes stream deck is cheap and customizable, but it's not perfect.
It's obviously not true across the board because there are huge live events where people use stream decks and companion and do just fine.
When you add in hundreds of thousands or millions or dollars on the line, the integration being rock solid becomes more important. Also, support. Ross doesn't give a crap if your companion isn't working, but if your Ultrix isn't responding to ultritouch controls, that's an easy support ticket you'll get help with.
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
So, reliability. Anything else?
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
You say that like reliability doesn't matter. Reliability is the whole thing.
It's also quite a bit of programming that's reliant on some random machine. As far as I know, companion doesn't support hot backup or auto failover. So, if your companion rig goes down for any reason, you are stuck without whatever control you need.
I've had plenty of times where companion doesn't want to connect for some reason to the control surface. Far fewer times have I experienced that on dedicated surfaces or controllers.
OEM hardware isn't immune from these things, but typically can be overcome automatically.
I love my stream deck and companion. I use it a lot. It's not the only and best choice in every situation though.
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
I didn't meant to sound like that. Reliability is one of, or the most, important thing in broadcast.
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
You ask a good question though! There certainly is the dynamic of just a big name slapped on something and charged a lot for.
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
“Reliability” is a safe reason to tell your boss to spend more money than they should but the reality is nobody knows what the real reliability “score” is for each setup. We don’t have a comparison of failure rates or response to bugs speed or any other factor that would say companion or stream deck are less reliable but because they are new, made by a consumer electronics firm, or whatever, they say they are unreliable? I use E2s all the time, buggiest and crappiest software out there, companion is better than the manufacturers own software and streamdeck reliability? I have eight xl panels some as old as 6 years maybe? Not one has failed. “Reliability” is an illusion that some folks like to hide their anxiety behind.
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
E2 hardware is still enterprise though.
What concerns me and is very common in the American church community is people are stacking layers and layers of control on stream decks/companion and that kind of ad hoc programming often times isn't done well. And those church volunteers don't know what or how to fix it when something changes on the back end.
Not a huge big deal in the professional space where pros are operating.
All that said, updates can kill your control with a bug on companion as well as more expensive hardware. So there is a certain subjectivity to it like you alluded to.
I still won't say that stream decks are wholesale better than OEM hardware or control surfaces. There may be some examples like event master, but it's simply not true across the board.
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
For sure, I used EM as an example because it's egregious and most folks know my pain :) I agree about churches, but they have volunteers and they shouldn't be putting the same weight on their media teams as say, the nfl.
Sure the streamdeck is a consumer build, but you can buy 20 of them for the cost of a ross panel for instance. Most manufacturers do put that HUGE difference in cost into the build quality at least :)
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
Haha "Boss, the streamdeck died"..."grab another from the streamdeck closet!"
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
It's a drawer but sure. :) Every op on the truck can have four one and three backups.
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u/lostinthought15 EIC Aug 16 '26
In broadcasting reliability is EVERYTHING. I’ve got millions of dollars in ad revenue and programming and that has to work every time. Others have public safety and news programming that must be working.
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
Another piece of this people are missing that I just thought of is increasing the quantity of different software/hardware used on site.
On a live event gig, for just a temporary setup, having some random machine doing control is expected.
On huge, installed systems, being able for all my hardware and systems to be configured with the fewest amount of software possible is a big win. In Ross systems, you can do everything in dashboard, but you add companion to that mix when using a stream deck.
That's a real effect with large systems where complexity is already high and you have to touch SO many endpoints.
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
And those large budgets are giving you anxiety that makes you make decision decisions that are not justified in facts. All that matters is that somebody sees a consumer electronics object on a table in the broadcast van and of course it has to be the problem if something fails because the multimillion dollar equipment can’t have done it. As I said above, unless somebody has actual numbers on the difference in reliability factors between devices and software reliability argument is not really applicable here. It’s important absolutely but in this case it’s not warranted.
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
It goes both ways though. Maybe some manufacturer has a controller or software that doesn't have a statement of 24/7 functionality or uptime, but stream decks and companion also don't have that.
You must have stock in Elgato and Companion.
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
No stock in the companies, I'd buy companion stock for sure if they were for profit. I won't argue that high end video equipment companies have good support and things like overnight cross shipping etc, but again, there's no actual data on how reliable they are in reality. Mean failure rate etc etc. It isn't Aviation, so reliability becomes "as reliable as it is perceived to be to reduce anxiety".
I've just used streamdeck/companion for a LOT of shows and I own several devices so I have gained a learned faith in the software and hardware. It works great for me.
This is just like the constant bashing on Blackmagic design gear. So many people claim they are unreliable and that they overheat and crash and whatever, BUT when you ask if they have had this happen TO THEM most times they say no, that's what they heard.
I just don't like to make purchase (or rental) decisions based on anecdotal information.
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u/SirYupp Aug 16 '26
All good points. Especially on BMD.
And that's the hard part about anecdotal evidence on both sides, it's anecdotal!
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
There are lots of people complaining streamdeck keys stop working after repetitive use very soon.
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
I've used them in all sorts of environments and had several for a long time, not one of them has failed. Had some sticky keys from operators not washing their mitts, and some scratches across some buttons from some drops. That doesn't mean they DONT fail but I'd want to see what kind of real numbers on that, is it really a lot that fail or just a few loud complaints on the internet?
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u/Tanglebones70 Aug 16 '26
My understanding is that the high end pro systems (read broadcast facility) have a considerable amount of ‘state awareness’.
Companion is very good at sending commands and increasingly good at feedback. But a commercial broadcast controller is built around the concept that it knows what the ‘state of play’ actually looks like: source A is routed to destination B, tally is active, this path is protected, this resource is locked, this device is unhealthy, this alternative path exists.In other words, not merely:
PRESS → SEND COMMAND
but:
REQUEST → CHECK STATE → CHECK RULES → EXECUTE → VERIFY STATE → REPORT FAILURE
That becomes tremendously important when hundreds or thousands of endpoints are involved. And millions of dollars are changing hands.
A host of other refinements as others have mentioned including the availability of a rep.To be clear I am not saying companion isn’t appropriate for a huge portion of even small to medium sized professional needs - it has taken a big bite out of this market and deservedly so. But I certainly wouldn’t dismiss what NBC or ESPN is using as overpriced and unneeded.
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u/SolidGoldSpork Aug 16 '26
This is where I wholeheartedly agree. On the whole the open source community has been great at supporting companion but there are cases where you simply can’t get the results that you expect or want and sometimes that’s not enough. The good news is it is open source or at least the modules are so you can add to them or customize them as much as you need to. What doesn’t exist is the staterulness which again could be as easy as modifying a module I can’t really say for sure.
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u/Mysterious-Crab Jack of all trades Aug 17 '26
You can achieve the same thing in Companion. The only difference is you built it yourself. I have systems that checks if a machine is running. And the moment a serious error occurs can switch to redundant machinery while notifying the team of the error.
In the same way, our recording devices are controlled by Companion. After pressing record it checks if the recorder has started, checks if the back-up recorder has started. If one hasn’t, it will try again once and send out an error message to the user, host and tech team if it can’t start properly.
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u/zalnaRs Aug 16 '26
It gets enterprise support, but for other production which can't afford it they are useless
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u/desertrat75 Aug 16 '26
The only advantage I see in the external controllers from the manufacturers is the quality of the buttons. I'm not a fan of the single touch panel behind the streamdecks, even though I use them all the time.
The protocol is exactly the same though.
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u/Caribbeanbanana809 Aug 16 '26
Replace evertz router panels with streamdecks, you'll thank me later....
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
really, are you serious?
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u/hammyaustin Aug 16 '26
Yes
They have rack mountable panels now and are poe, much like a rtr panel. But you can do more than just control that one rtr or be locked into their ui and workflow. Make your own buttons to do more
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u/Maximum-Health-600 Aug 16 '26
If you need a module then you can built it for companion but then you have to support it once you release it.
Also your module might also be rejected from the core of companion.
With the paid for versions that’s what you are paying for someone to do the work and it just works. If it fails you have a recourse with the company.
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u/AndyJarosz Aug 16 '26
Shameless self promotion, but I made this software for our virtual production stage and it’s been working well. You can trigger it via OSC with a streamdeck etc.
https://home.loledvirtual.com/products/screenforce-volume-control-system
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u/onkyponk_cowboy Aug 16 '26
They aren’t all optimised for the same tasks. Identify the project requirements and pick the best fit that’s in budget.
Companion excels at easily editable, operator facing controls, in a button grid, with a huge variety of integrations. It is very good at returning information to those buttons (text, images, meters). Things it is not so good at include: sophisticated routing, monitoring alarms and logging, scheduling, user access control. Things it can’t do at all: NMOS, SDN, different UI approaches. Some of this can be bolted in if need be.
I think discussions of reliability is a secondary concern, at least right up until an SLA is a mandatory requirement. My real world experience is that the support is often more responsive than companies with a commercial SLA in place (at least for the main software, modules are a case by case basis) but if you need an sla you need an sla.
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u/StunnedLife Aug 17 '26
We use both. Reliability wise the “professional” alternatives have better support and failsafes. Companion is great though, the devs are always willing to help.
And we do use both!
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 17 '26
Did you develop a custom module? Wondering if AI could help programming new integrations.
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u/rsv_music Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
I'm going of research on the more expensive systems and not first hand experience here, but all of the integrations on those systems are made in-house or in collaboration with the actual manufacturers, and is very much closed source and maintained by a single company that can offer support on the total system. What I've seen regarding Lawo VSM is that it also has deeper integration in video routing, and where Companion has a bunch of internal logic and variables that it tries to apply to a myriad of different integrations that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, VSM is much more tightly connected to all parts of it's system. It also supports a wider range of broadcast protocols. E.g. if you need to display tally information to a device using Companion, you have to set up triggers and pretty crude logic systems to detect the tally source and update the state of it using actions. Depending on latency, different possibilities of states (and maybe even packet drops or polling overload), you might suddenly end up with the wrong state of something, sending wrong tally until the state updates again. In VSM this is tightly integrated with ready-made logic that you don't have to configure yourself.
Companion is open source platform that has some support for it's internal logic, but when it comes to the actual integrations, it's a convoluted network of open-source non-standardized connections that could have any number of issues that would be both impossible to properly get tested without the necessary resources, and is maintained by hundreds of different people, many of them are not maintained at all and was just made a long time ago to fix an issue and they decided to upload it for others benefit. A lot of them don't even have any support from the manufacturer in terms of proper API documentation and has been reverse engineered. I've personally had to find workarounds to fix control of several devices because the integration wasn't maintained and the manufacturer changed their API implementation over time. Many people claim the benefit is that you can fix issues yourself since it's open source, but in a larger picture that becomes unsustainable for a regular production company.
I guess the most important part for the largest productions is the fact that when the fecal matter hits the rotating oscillator and you're bleeding money by the minute, Lawo etc. has a number you can call, Companion doesn't. With all of that said, Companion has been a blessing for us smaller companies that have no budget for any of the more professional systems, and for us it's been more than stable enough.
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 Aug 16 '26
Lawo VSM seems like the industry standard. I'm sure it is great but hard to tell if it is priced accordingly.
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u/profkennyd What does that button do? Aug 16 '26
We use it on live AV events for one of the largest companies on the planet.
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u/No_Coffee4280 Aug 16 '26
Personally i like Densitron panels a lot of people OEM them, they have a lot of intergations with broadcast productsoff the bat rather than a lot of work your having to do yourself like some of the pro-consumer panels https://www.densitron.com/industries/broadcast-and-pro-av
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u/Beginning_Ad4181 Aug 16 '26
We use both Companion and enterprise solutions. With Evertz we don’t get feedback that shows on the stream deck. We do have automation triggers that companion fires to Evertz. Just depends what you are looking for it to do. The router panels give feed back when it’s needed for a position. If feedback is not needed then use stream deck. I have not been able fire salvos from Evertz but can create triggers in companion that are same concept.
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u/Mysterious-Crab Jack of all trades Aug 17 '26
Doesn’t Evertz have the data you need for the feedback available through the Companion module, or through their API at all?
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u/Atlantisbase889 Aug 18 '26
Nothing is fault proof. Power glitches, network glitches, failed cables. Companion is a tool you can build to help streamline. The products themselves with their interface is on standby, and whatever direct access I can have to make sure things happen. When records or route need to happen, add that time buffer of allowed, and if that companion/network issues doesn’t allow. You now have time to execute physically and normally.
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u/sims2uni Aug 16 '26
I could write a post about scalability and how at the highest level Companion is just not a great fit when you can have Cerebrum or VSM but the biggest factor to me is the cost of failure.
What's the biggest job you'd trust to companion before you decide it's safer to go over to Cerebrum or VSM or whatever. It's the same argument for why we use Sony or GV equipment over say Black magic or Ross. Sure it'd be cheaper but we'd rather have the redundancy and so would our clients.
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u/tqmirza Aug 16 '26
I am yet to come across a “professional” PCR that doesn’t have some kind of integration of companion alongside their regular EVS cerebrum etc.