How to set up a Floor Director on an iPad

The short answer

1. In the Studio, open Live View and find the Floor Director tile.
2. Click Click to reveal QR. The Local and Remote choices appear under it.
3. Choose Local if the iPad is on the same building network as the Studio computer. Choose Remote if it is not, or if you want talkback without installing anything.
4. Scan the QR code with the iPad's camera. It opens straight into the Floor Director console.
5. For talkback over Local, install and trust the Studio computer's certificate on the iPad once (steps below).

The Floor Director console and IFB talkback are part of the MAX tier and above.

What a Floor Director is

A Floor Director is the person standing in the room, not in the booth. They can see what the cameras cannot: the speaker getting up, the choir about to move, the family walking forward for a dedication.

In Broadcasteer, the Floor Director console on a phone or tablet gives that person two things:

A camera switcher. The cameras appear as tiles. The console's own hint says it best: tap standby to cue, tap cued to go live, hold to reset. One tap never cuts the service by accident.

Talkback. Under IFB, Floor to Cameras, the Floor Director speaks and the camera operators hear it in their earpieces. The congregation and the stream never hear it.

The booth keeps the final say. If the Studio takes control, the console shows Studio has control and pauses until it is handed back.

Local or Remote: which link to scan

The Floor Director tile offers two links, the same way a camera tile does.

Local sends the iPad straight to the Studio computer over the building's own network. It does not touch the internet, which makes it the fastest and most reliable option when the iPad is in the same building. The one catch is talkback, explained below.

Remote goes through your church's internet address. It works from anywhere, including off the building's Wi-Fi, and talkback works on it without any setup. The trade-off is that the previews travel out to the internet and back. If enrolment is set to Required for internet devices, the Remote link includes an invite automatically. There is also a Copy link button to send the Remote link by message.

Rule of thumb: in the building, Local. Anywhere else, or when you need talkback today and have no time for the certificate, Remote.

Why iPads need the certificate for talkback

Browsers only allow a page to use the microphone when the page is secure. That is a browser rule, not a Broadcasteer one, and it is a good rule.

The Remote link is secure already. The Local link is secured by a certificate that lives on the Studio computer. A device that trusts that certificate gets the full console with talkback. A device that does not trust it still joins, over a plain connection, with the camera switcher and previews working... and talkback greyed out with the note Not on this link, use the Remote QR (or install the certificate).

Android phones install the certificate with a short guided step the first time they scan a Local QR. iPhones and iPads can install it too; it just takes a few more taps in Settings.

Installing the certificate on an iPad or iPhone

When an iPad scans a Local QR for the first time, Broadcasteer shows a certificate page with steps written for iOS. They go like this:

1. Allow the download when Safari says the site is trying to download a configuration profile.
2. Open Settings. Near the top there is a Profile Downloaded entry. (If not, look under General › VPN & Device Management.) Tap it and choose Install.
3. Go to Settings › General › About › Certificate Trust Settings.
4. Switch on full trust for the certificate you just installed.
5. Return to the certificate page and tap Done.

You only do this once per iPad, per Studio computer. After that, the iPad is remembered on that network, and later Local scans go straight into the full console with talkback.

If the page cannot confirm the certificate is trusted within a few seconds, it offers to continue without talkback, so the Floor Director is never stuck on a loading screen when the service is about to start.

Setting up for a service

1. Charge the iPad and bring the cable. The console keeps the screen and the network busy for the whole service.
2. Connect it before the cameras go live, so any certificate prompt happens during setup, not during the first song.
3. Give the Floor Director earbuds with a microphone if they will use talkback, and tell the camera operators which word means them.
4. Walk through the switcher once. Tap a standby camera to cue it; tap it again to go live. Hold a tile to reset a camera that has frozen, which disconnects it and lets it reconnect.
5. Agree who has control. The booth can take control at any time. Decide beforehand when the Floor Director drives and when the booth does.

If the previews pulse black

Early versions of the console could show a camera tile going black for a few seconds at intervals. The cause was the connection to that one preview being replaced from scratch whenever it faltered, leaving nothing on screen in between.

The console now sets up the new connection first and keeps showing the old picture until the new one is actually arriving. A brief network hiccup no longer shows as a black pulse. If a tile still goes black and stays black, that camera itself has usually dropped; the guide Why does my phone camera keep dropping off? covers that.

Why the lane choice matters

For a while, a Floor Director who scanned the Local link could quietly end up on the internet route anyway, because an older recovery step on the certificate page sent unknown devices there. That is gone. A Local scan now stays Local, and a Remote scan stays Remote. What you choose is what you get, which is the only way anyone at the back of a hall can reason about what is going on.