Bitfocus Companion and StreamDeck for Church Production: Take Control of Your Whole System

If your church production volunteer has to juggle a mouse, a tablet, and three different pieces of software just to run a Sunday service — there’s a better way. Bitfocus Companion combined with a StreamDeck gives you a single, physical control surface that can trigger actions across nearly every piece of software and hardware in your production system simultaneously. At Crazy Amazing Designs, it’s one of the tools we’re most excited to help churches implement, because the difference it makes for your volunteers is DRAMATIC.

What Is Bitfocus Companion?

Bitfocus Companion is free, open-source software that acts as a bridge between your StreamDeck (or other button controllers) and your production gear. Out of the box, a StreamDeck is just buttons. Bitfocus Companion is what makes those buttons DO things — triggering cues in ProPresenter 7, cutting to a camera on your ATEM Mini, changing scenes in OBS, firing cues in your lighting console, muting channels on your X32, and more.

Here’s what makes Companion genuinely powerful: it’s not just one-to-one button mapping. A single StreamDeck button press can trigger a chain of actions across multiple systems simultaneously. Press “Worship Set Start” and Companion can: advance to the first slide in ProPresenter, cut to camera 1 on your ATEM, bring up the worship channels on your X32, and trigger your lighting scene — all at once. That’s the kind of integration that used to require a $50,000 system. Now churches can do it with a $150 StreamDeck and free software.

I made a comprehensive beginner’s guide specifically for the current version of the software: Beginner’s Guide to BitFocus Companion 4.0 (in 2025). If you’re new to Companion, start there — it will walk you through installation, setup, and building your first buttons.

StreamDeck: The Hardware That Makes It Tactile

Elgato’s StreamDeck is the most popular hardware controller for Bitfocus Companion. The buttons have small LCD screens that you can customize with icons and labels — so your volunteers aren’t memorizing button positions, they’re reading labels. This makes it genuinely accessible to volunteers who aren’t technical.

For church production setups, the StreamDeck XL (32 buttons) is usually the right choice — big enough to have dedicated buttons for every major system without needing to page around. I also carry a custom StreamDeck XL Controller for Bitfocus Companion in the Crazy Amazing Designs shop — it’s a PoE+ Raspberry Pi 5 powered unit that runs Companion natively, meaning you don’t even need a separate computer running. It’s a clean, dedicated solution that runs your entire production control system.

What Can Companion Control in a Church Setup?

Here’s a practical rundown of what churches are doing with Bitfocus Companion and StreamDeck:

ProPresenter 7: Advance slides, trigger presentations, switch stage display layouts, fire countdown timers, go to black, switch playlists.

ATEM Mini / ATEM Switchers: Cut between cameras, trigger macros, change audio routing, go to program, switch picture-in-picture.

OBS / vMix: Switch scenes, start/stop recording, start/stop stream, trigger transitions.

Behringer X32: Mute channels, change bus sends, recall scenes, adjust monitor mixes.

Lighting Consoles (via OSC or sACN): Trigger lighting cues or scenes timed to service moments.

Custom HTTP/API triggers: Basically anything that has a web API can be controlled through Companion.

I walked through a real-world example of this kind of multi-system control in my video Using StreamDeck to Control ProPresenter 7, LightKey, OBS for Streaming — it shows exactly how these tools layer together in a real production workflow.

Real-World Example: The ATEM Control Page

One of the most requested things churches want is a clean, dedicated control page just for their ATEM video switcher — something that lets a volunteer cut between cameras, fire lower thirds, and manage the stream without touching a mouse.

My Bitfocus Companion Template — ATEM Control Page is a pre-built Companion configuration specifically for ATEM control. It’s $16.99 and it gives you a ready-to-go ATEM control page with buttons for camera cuts, transitions, recording, and streaming. Drop it into your Companion setup and start using it the same day.

For larger, more complex environments — conference rooms, multi-purpose spaces, or churches that want a full integrated control system — my Conference Room Control System Template for Bitfocus Companion & StreamDeck ($475) is a full-production template that handles AV control across an entire space. This is what a systems integrator would typically build from scratch and charge thousands for. It’s pre-built and ready to customize.

Where It Gets Complicated

Bitfocus Companion is free and incredibly capable, but it does require some technical patience to get set up correctly — especially when you’re integrating multiple systems. Each integration (called a “connection” in Companion) needs to be configured with IP addresses, authentication, and module settings. If your gear and your Companion machine aren’t on the same network, or if your ATEM firmware is out of date, things won’t connect. And when you start chaining multi-system actions, troubleshooting which part of the chain is failing takes some methodical thinking.

The other variable is network architecture. Companion works over your local network, which means your church’s network setup matters. A church that has separate VLANs for production gear, or a firewall blocking local traffic, can create connectivity problems that need to be diagnosed before Companion will work reliably.

Every church’s gear inventory is also different. A setup with a StreamDeck, ATEM Mini Pro, ProPresenter, and OBS has different integration needs than a setup with multiple ATEMs, a Yamaha QL console, and a full lighting rig. What buttons you need, how you lay them out, and what actions you chain together has to be designed around your specific workflow.

Get Companion Working in YOUR Church

If you’ve been thinking about implementing Bitfocus Companion and StreamDeck control in your church but don’t know where to start — or you’ve started but can’t get it connected — this is exactly what I do at Crazy Amazing Designs.

I’m Nathan Robb, and in a single Zoom session we can build out your Companion configuration together, get all your integrations connected, and design a button layout that actually fits the way your team runs service. Most churches leave a Zoom training session with a working system — not just a plan for a working system.

Book a single Zoom session at CrazyAmazingDesigns.com/training

See Companion in action on my YouTube channel: Youtube.com/@CrazyAmazingDesigns

In Christ, Nathan Robb