Every router-aware connection exposes its own mix of routing behavior to Buttons: how many independently-routable Levels it has, whether Buttons can lock its destinations, and whether any channels can break away across Levels. Buttons can help you confirm exactly what a specific router module supports before you build a position around it, instead of finding out the hard way that a control you expected (a lock button, a second audio Level) isn't actually there for that device.
This page explains the concepts that apply across router integrations and points to a page for each supported module's real differences. Read
Understand physical routing first if you haven't already: it covers sources, destinations, ports, and bundles, which this page builds on.
Before you begin#
- A router-aware connection already added, running a compatible module version. See Update a connection's module safely if you're unsure which version is installed.
- Access to Connect → Connection to check a connection's configuration, and to Routing to verify the result.
A router-aware connection can expose more than one
Level: an independently-routable layer of a signal, such as video, left audio, right audio, or a data channel. When a connection has only one Level, its sources and destinations move as a single unit: routing a source always changes everything at once. When a connection has more than one Level, each one is its own routing matrix, and
routing only one part of a bundle (sending Camera 2's video to Program while leaving its existing audio in place, for example) becomes possible. The Level's role (Video, Audio, or Data) is what the
Ports view's Role filter matches against.
A router-aware connection can also expose destination locking. Where it does, Buttons shows lock and unlock controls for the affected destinations and reports the lock as a
user lock or a
hard lock: see
Understand route status for what each means and how they appear in the Routing view. Not every module reports locks the same way, and some don't support locking at all.
A few modules go further than ordinary Level-to-Level routing with a device-specific breakaway feature that lets individual channels cross Levels. Where that exists, it's called out on the module's own page, along with its experimental status if it has one.
What differs by module#
Module | Levels | Locking | Notable behavior |
|---|
| Single Level (video, audio, and data move together) | Yes | VideoHub can designate one input as a black/silent "None" source; AJA KUMO can't. |
| Configurable, matching the panel's own Level setup | Yes, per destination across all its Levels at once | Levels can auto-fill from the panel's own configured Level count. |
| Configurable, up to 256 Levels | No | Optional experimental Breakaway Audio and MADI breakaway let specific channels cross Levels. |
| Not Level-based: routes independently by resource type (Junction, Vertex, Group, and others) | No | Every resource type has a built-in Disconnect option; nothing to configure. |
| Fixed at two Levels (Video, Audio) | No | Audio shufflers let individual channels route independently of the video they originated with. |
Verify a module's actual capabilities#
- Open Connect → Connection and select the connection. If it exposes a Levels field, that's your confirmation it supports more than a single Level: check the module's own page for what to put in it.
- Open Routing, filter to the connection, and switch between Bundles and Ports. If more than one Level exists, you'll see separate Video, Audio, and Data ports rather than one combined port per source or destination.
- Select a destination and check whether lock and unlock controls appear. Their absence for a specific destination means either the module doesn't support locking at all, or this particular resource type on it doesn't.
Where to go next#
