Guide · Remote control
One operator, four cameras: remote iPhone control over LAN.
Small productions run on one person doing five jobs. Remote control turns the camera-op jobs into mouse clicks: ISO, shutter, white balance and zoom on every iPhone — adjusted from the Mac, live.
The solo-operator problem
You're the director, the vision mixer and every camera operator at once. The wide shot is drifting warm, camera 3 is a stop under — and both phones are across the room, one of them on a stage you can't walk onto mid-show. In a cabled broadcast rig this is solved by camera control units. Phones deserve the same.
What you can control
- ISO and shutter — ride exposure without touching the phone.
- White balance — match cameras to each other and to the room.
- Zoom / lens — reframe between cuts.
The ranges are device-accurate: the controls expose what each iPhone's hardware can actually do — real stops, real lens switch points — not a generic slider that pretends every phone is the same.
Remote-control panel for one camera: ISO, shutter, WB, zoom.
The workflow that works
- Before the show: set exposure and white balance on every camera from the Mac; lock the look.
- During: watch the multiview. Fix the cued camera — the one glowing green — and only then cut to it. The audience never sees the adjustment.
- Tally closes the loop: green means "safe to touch", red means "hands off". More on that in the tally post.
Bonus for manual shooters: with ISO compensation, switching lenses holds the same exposure — the camera scales ISO per lens so a 0.5× → 5× jump doesn't blow out the shot.
Setup
It's the standard stack: Airlive Camera on the phones (iPhone 11+, iOS 17+; coming to the App Store — see Downloads), and either Airlive Bridge (macOS 13+) with control in the channel settings, or the OBS plugin (OBS 30+, macOS 14+) with control in the source properties. Connection is automatic on the same network — the multicam guide walks it end to end.
FAQ
Does adjusting settings interrupt the stream? No — control messages ride alongside the video; the feed keeps running while values change.
Can the operator on the phone still override? The phone stays a full camera — whoever holds it keeps its controls. Remote control adds hands; it doesn't take any away.