Explainer · Tally
A tally light on a phone: the broadcast feature mobile never got.
Every studio camera has a little red light that says "you're live". Phone cameras never got one — until the phone became part of a real switcher. Here's why tally matters and how it works across an iPhone multicam.
What tally is, and why crews swear by it
Tally is the on-air indicator: red means this camera is live, green means it's cued next. It sounds trivial and changes everything. Operators reframe and refocus only when their camera is off air. Talent knows which lens to look into. Nobody shouts "am I on?" across the room. It's the cheapest coordination tool broadcast ever invented.
Why phones never had it
Tally only exists where a switcher exists — the light is the switcher telling the camera its state. Phone camera apps grew up in a single-camera world: selfies, vlogs, one lens at a time. No switcher, nothing to signal. The moment phones joined multicam productions, the gap became obvious: four iPhones on tripods and no one knows which one is live.
How it works in Airlive
The switcher — Airlive Bridge on your Mac, or OBS with the Airlive plugin — pushes each phone its state over the local network the instant you cut: green when cued, red on air, right on the phone's screen. Tally messages travel with priority alongside the video and control channels, so the light flips when the cut happens, not a beat later.
Try it
This is what the operator sees.
CAM 1 is the iPhone. Cue and cut on the switcher below — the tally flips green when it's next, red when it's on air.
Setup
There isn't one — that's the point. Connect the phones as in the multicam guide and tally is simply on: the switcher knows the program state, so every camera does too. It also works over Screen Mirroring channels when the same phone runs the Airlive control channel.
Where it earns its keep
- Volunteer crews — church and community productions where operators aren't professionals: the light does the training.
- Events — noisy rooms where headsets fail; a glance replaces a radio call.
- Small studios — the host self-operating three angles sees which camera to talk to.
Pair it with remote camera control and one person can genuinely run the whole floor.
FAQ
Does tally add lag to the video? No — it's a tiny control message, independent of the video pipeline.
Does it work with OBS instead of Bridge? Yes — the OBS plugin drives tally the same way from your scenes.