The #1 reason church production systems fail on Sunday morning isn't bad equipment — it's bad networking. A DHCP lease expires, an IP address changes, and suddenly your ATEM disappears. This guide walks you through setting up a reliable network for your church AV gear so connections stay solid week after week.
Why Your AV Gear Needs Its Own Network
Your church probably has one network for everything: staff laptops, guest Wi-Fi, the office printer, and all your production equipment. That works fine until Sunday morning, when 200 phones connect to Wi-Fi and your ATEM starts dropping packets.
Production equipment needs predictable, low-latency connections. A dedicated AV network — even if it's just a separate switch — isolates your production traffic from everything else. No more competing with Instagram for bandwidth.
The Golden Rule: Static IPs Everywhere
If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: assign a static IP to every piece of AV equipment. No exceptions.
Here's what happens with DHCP: your ATEM gets assigned 192.168.1.47 on Tuesday. On Sunday, the DHCP lease expires, the router hands out 192.168.1.112 instead, and now your Tally app, ATEM Software Control, and everything else that talks to the ATEM can't find it. Mid-service. With 500 people watching online.
A typical static IP plan looks like this:
- ATEM Switcher — 192.168.1.10
- PTZ Camera 1 — 192.168.1.21
- PTZ Camera 2 — 192.168.1.22
- PTZ Camera 3 — 192.168.1.23
- OBS / Encoder — 192.168.1.30
- Audio Console — 192.168.1.40
- Companion — 192.168.1.50
- Tally Computer — 192.168.1.100
Write these down. Tape them inside your rack. Put them in a shared doc. You will need this list again — probably at the worst possible time.
Wiring: Keep It Simple, Keep It Wired
Plug every piece of AV gear into the same physical network switch. A basic 16-port gigabit switch costs under $50 and eliminates an entire category of problems.
- Never use Wi-Fi for production gear. Wi-Fi is shared, half-duplex, and subject to interference from every microwave and Bluetooth device in the building. It will fail during service.
- Use Cat6 cable for any run longer than 10 feet. Cat5e is fine for short patch cables between nearby devices.
- Label every cable. Both ends. With a label maker, not masking tape. When something disconnects at 10:55am on Sunday, you don't want to play cable detective.
- Uplink the AV switch to your router so the Tally computer can reach the internet for relay connections. The relay uses standard HTTPS — no special firewall rules.
Setting Static IPs on Common Church Gear
Every device handles network settings differently. Here's where to find them:
ATEM Switcher
Open ATEM Software Control → Switcher Settings → Network. Set a static IP, subnet mask (255.255.255.0), and gateway (your router's IP). Click Apply. The ATEM will restart its network interface — wait about 10 seconds.
PTZ Cameras
Open the camera's web interface (browse to its current IP address). Navigate to Network settings and assign your planned static IP. Most PTZ cameras require a reboot after changing network settings.
Audio Console (X32, A&H, Yamaha)
On the console itself, go to Setup → Network (or Global → Network on some models). Assign the static IP directly. Some consoles require you to confirm and reboot.
The Tally Computer
On Mac: System Settings → Network → Ethernet → Details → TCP/IP → Configure IPv4: Manually. On Windows: Network and Internet → Ethernet → IP assignment → Edit.
Verifying Everything Works
After assigning static IPs and wiring everything to the switch, verify connectivity from the Tally computer:
- Ping every device — Open a terminal and ping each IP. Every device should respond in under 5ms on a local switch. If a device doesn't respond, check the cable and confirm the IP was saved.
- Check Tally — Open the Tally app. Every connected device should show a green status dot. If something's red, the IP in Tally's config doesn't match the device, or the device isn't reachable.
- Test the relay — Confirm Tally shows "Connected" to the relay. If not, the AV network doesn't have a route to the internet — check the uplink from your AV switch to the router.
Advanced: VLANs and Managed Switches
If your church has a managed network (or an IT person who uses words like "VLAN"), you can go further:
- VLAN 10 — AV Production — ATEM, cameras, Tally, encoders. Isolated from office and guest traffic.
- VLAN 20 — Church Office — Staff computers, printers.
- VLAN 30 — Guest Wi-Fi — Congregation devices. No access to production equipment.
Enable IGMP snooping on the switch if you use ATEM discovery or NDI — these protocols use multicast, and IGMP snooping prevents multicast traffic from flooding every port.
If you're running NDI video streams (100–150 Mbps each), make sure your switch is gigabit and avoid daisy-chaining consumer switches. Everything else — ATEM control, PTZ commands, Tally status — uses less than 1 Mbps.
The Network Problems That Ruin Sundays
Here are the network issues we see most often at churches — and how to prevent them:
- ATEM drops randomly — Almost always a DHCP issue. Assign a static IP and it stops.
- Camera unreachable after power cycle — The camera reverted to DHCP or a factory-default IP. Re-assign the static IP in the camera's web interface.
- Everything worked last week — Something changed and nobody noticed. A firmware update ran overnight, a cable got kicked, or the router rebooted and assigned new DHCP addresses to anything without a static IP.
- High latency on a local network — Usually a bad cable, a dying switch port, or a broadcast storm. Swap cables, try a different port, and check if any device is flooding the network.
- IP conflicts — Two devices sharing the same IP address. Both behave erratically. Audit your IP table and confirm no overlaps.
How Tally Helps You Catch Network Problems Early
Tally monitors the network health of every connected device in real time:
- Per-device latency tracking — See round-trip times for your ATEM, cameras, audio console, and relay connection. If latency spikes, you know before it affects production.
- Connection health scores — Each device gets a green/yellow/red health indicator based on latency, command success rate, and reconnection frequency. A device that keeps reconnecting is a device about to fail.
- Reconnection alerts — If a device drops and reconnects, Tally logs it. A device that reconnects 5 times in an hour is telling you something — probably a bad cable or a flaky switch port.
- Pre-service network check — 30 minutes before service, Tally verifies every device is reachable and responding normally. If your ATEM's IP changed overnight, you find out before service — not during.
Start a free trial and see your network health dashboard within 10 minutes of connecting your first device.
Checklist: Is Your Network Sunday-Ready?
- Every AV device has a static IP (not DHCP)
- All devices are wired to the same switch — no Wi-Fi
- Every device responds to ping in under 5ms
- IP assignments are documented and accessible
- Cables are labeled at both ends
- The AV switch has an uplink to the internet
- Tally shows green status dots for all equipment
Get these right and you'll eliminate the most common category of Sunday morning failures. Your volunteers will thank you.