Multiview prototype

Experimental development build. Multicamera validation is still in progress. Multiview is available on iPhone, iPad and Android phones. See Android differences for what changes on Android.

From Your cameras, tap the grid icon at the top-right of the camera list. The shared-network wizard confirms the phone’s network, then Center stage opens with space for four cameras. Exit sits at the top-left with Live View Lock styling. The Wi-Fi icon uses the Live View Settings position; there is no session title or connected-camera count. LUT, Fit/Fill, Layout and Camera settings share the toolbar. Record and DISP stay in their normal Live View positions: Record is bottom-right with DISP above it in landscape, and centered in the bottom row with DISP to its left in portrait. The picker lists discovered Osmo devices. Pocket 3, Pocket 4, Pocket 4 Pro and Nano can attempt shared-network setup; Pocket 3 is recognized even when its Bluetooth advertisement omits the model ID. Action, 360 and older/unprofiled Osmo devices offer “Try experimental shared Wi-Fi”; preview remains unavailable until their preview commands are implemented. Discovery visibility does not mean working preview support. Pocket 3, Pocket 4 Pro and Nano have been monitored together on an iPhone, with recording start/stop confirmed on all three. Nano uses its existing AVC preview decoder and model-specific preview start commands. The station-Wi-Fi provisioning commands have been accepted by Pocket 4 Pro and by Nano on a WPA2 network. For Nano, use WPA2: the tested network returned join failures on WPA3 and a successful join reply after switching to WPA2 with the same credentials. Cameras join your shared Wi-Fi while remaining in normal Video mode. This path needs no RTMP stream or external server.

1. Each time you open Multiview, choose Wi-Fi (Local Wi-Fi on Android) for a router or another device’s hotspot, or choose this phone’s Hotspot. Select or enter the network name, then enter its password; a saved password can fill it in.
2. Tap Connect over Wi-Fi for a local network. Approve the phone’s network-join prompt if shown. Then add cameras to the empty tiles.
3. Set each camera to Video mode, stop recording and close other camera apps.
4. Tap Add camera, choose a nearby camera and approve pairing if asked. The app provisions the selected network and verifies the camera’s identity before showing its preview.
5. Repeat for other cameras; no repeated network setup is needed.

For Personal Hotspot, enable Allow Others to Join and Maximize Compatibility in Settings → Personal Hotspot first. Confirm the hotspot name on the hotspot details page and supply its password once. The hosting phone does not join its own hotspot; discovery uses its local hotspot interface after the camera joins. Hotspot availability depends on the device and mobile plan. iOS does not supply the hotspot password to the app. This path remains experimental pending physical validation. See Apple’s hotspot setup.

Discovery checks the phone’s actual IPv4 subnet, with up to 24 simultaneous connection probes and two search passes. It excludes cameras already assigned to other tiles. A responding address is accepted only if its camera identity matches the identity read over Bluetooth. Search is limited to networks with at most 1,022 usable addresses and at most eight service candidates per pass. Client isolation or separate VLANs can prevent discovery. If a camera cannot be found, tap Reconnect after checking the network.

Allow ten seconds for the Wi-Fi role change and up to 45 seconds per join attempt. Only the observed transient rejection is retried, at most three attempts with five seconds between attempts. A missing join reply first triggers verified LAN discovery before a bounded retry. Other explicit rejections stop setup.

Each tile has its own normal camera datalink, decoder and acknowledgement loop. Open a tile’s camera options to start or stop recording for that camera. It uses fresh camera status to choose the action, shows progress while awaiting confirmation and is disabled when status is stale. The icon also follows recording changes made on the camera itself. Commands use the existing connection; rejected or unconfirmed commands are not resent.

The shared record lamp starts all assigned cameras concurrently. If any camera is recording, the lamp stops recording on the assigned cameras. Its accessible name describes the group action; there is no separate Record all caption. It is disabled while any assigned camera has unavailable recording status. Each camera must confirm its own result; partial failures remain visible. This is a shared command, not frame-accurate synchronized recording.

Both the shared lamp and a camera’s recording action follow the Record confirmation preference in Settings.

Removing a tile closes monitoring for that tile. Its camera stays on shared Wi-Fi and any recording continues. Use the tile’s recording action before closing when you want to end a recording. Closing Multiview attempts to return assigned cameras to their own Wi-Fi; see Saved stages and concurrent setup below.

For continuous viewing, keep Multiview in the foreground. Brief app switches retain sessions. The network must allow cameras to reach the phone; guest-network client isolation can prevent a picture. The phone-hotspot path is experimental. Network credentials are saved in the device-only Keychain; the in-memory password is cleared on close. Audio is muted.

This prototype sends the normal preview enable once per connection; subsequent enables follow the watchdog and decoder-handoff policies. Interrupted previews recover automatically with bounded retries. For shooting controls, double-tap a connected tile to open Live View. Layout choices are saved locally; frame-accurate synchronization is not implemented. Four-camera frame rate, latency, battery and thermal behavior are unverified.

A Mac hardware probe confirmed a normal HEVC preview and 4K25/D-Log2 settings on a Pocket 4 Pro in station mode without RTMP. That proves the protocol path; a single Pocket 4 Pro iPhone session also confirmed preview and recording start/stop. Subsequent iPhone checks confirmed simultaneous Pocket 4 Pro, Pocket 3 and Nano preview and recording. Reduced camera heat or power use has not been measured.

See BLE provisioning for the observed camera commands.

Layout and per-camera monitoring

The Layout button switches between Grid and Center stage. Grid uses four equal portrait rows or a 2×2 landscape arrangement, filling the available area without a fixed aspect ratio. Portrait Center stage keeps its full-width 16:9 main feed above the other cameras. On short resized windows, the main feed fits smaller at 16:9 to keep the remaining cameras and controls reachable.

Landscape Center stage has a larger 16:9 main picture, with camera readouts over its shaded bottom edge. Wi-Fi sits beneath Exit on the left. The three other camera tiles scroll in a strip at the far right, above DISP and Record. Content fades softly at the edges where more cameras remain; tap a camera to promote it.

Multiview uses the same collapsible toolbar as View Assist. Tap its arrow to show Layout, Camera settings, FIT/FILL and LUT; scroll short toolbars to reach every control. In landscape Center stage it sits on the left, below any cutout. Grid aligns it with the right controls, or the left for a right-side cutout. Portrait keeps it on the right, below the main picture in Center stage. DISP and Record retain their Live View positions. FIT contains the source; FILL crops to cover the tile. Layout, selection and scrolling retain the camera sessions and video hosts.

Camera names, models, reported timecode, battery/storage and recording state appear inside each feed, including the smaller portrait views. No information box occupies the side of a feed. Selected-camera ISO, shutter, white balance and focus readouts form a compact group at the bottom. Camera settings in the toolbar opens a floating popup. Select a connected camera’s tab to change its settings using the same controls as Live View. Changes apply to that camera while the other feeds stay visible; available controls follow that camera’s capabilities and recording state. Camera and setting tabs use a single bottom line with a highlighted segment for the selected tab, matching navigation elsewhere in the app.

Timecode uses HH:MM:SS, without a frame field. Each tile uses Live View’s camera battery gauge. iOS includes charge state and low-battery colors; Android uses its native amber gauge. Unknown values remain absent or show a dash; Nano has no reported timecode. Preview dimensions can differ from the recording format. Tap to select a camera without changing Grid; in Center stage, selecting a smaller camera promotes it to the main feed. Very short feeds show a compact identity and battery row; open camera options for the remaining details.

Auto LUT starts on for each newly added camera. The toolbar toggles it for all cameras; a tile’s camera options toggle it independently. Reconnecting or changing layout preserves that camera’s choice. Auto LUT follows the tile’s reported color mode, including Nano D-Log M and Pocket D-Log/D-Log2. Normal/HDR have no automatic cube conversion; unknown color waits for camera status. The LUT affects monitoring only.

Every occupied tile’s … button opens a compact floating camera menu for Live View, recording, LUT, reconnect and removal as available, including the smaller feeds. Tap outside the popup or close it to return to the stage.

Network setup and recovery

Exit returns cameras to their own Wi-Fi. A temporary pairing refusal gets a bounded automatic retry before an error is shown, so the operator does not need to press Exit again for that transition. Successfully restored cameras are left alone; cameras that still cannot be reached remain in the device’s cleanup record for a later retry. Recording continues.

Switching apps keeps the camera assignments. After returning, each feed checks for fresh pictures and attempts bounded recovery if needed. The iOS decoder-loss path now matches Live View’s recovery signals. An iPhone with Pocket 4 Pro and Nano restored fresh pictures after 5-second and 35-second app switches.

Center stage is the default. The record lamp matches Live View and applies to all assigned cameras whose status is current. The toolbar uses Live View glass styling. DISP hides optional chrome and restores it without moving the system controls or stopping a recording.

Choose Wi-Fi (Local Wi-Fi on Android) or this phone’s Hotspot. Wi-Fi shows the current network, networks saved by OpenPocketCine and nearby networks found by a camera. Opening it starts a bounded scan automatically. You can choose a current/saved network or use Other network… immediately; a camera is not required to enter the host’s network. If the scan cannot finish, turn on a nearby camera and tap Scan again.

The password screen remembers app-saved passwords, provides Show password, and explains WPA2 compatibility and guest-network isolation. Connect over Wi-Fi waits for any scan to return its camera to its own Wi-Fi and release Bluetooth, then joins and verifies the phone’s network before opening the stage. A failed join stays on the same screen so you can correct the password or retry. On iOS this is the same wizard as a saved camera’s Add setup.

Passwords stay in this device’s Keychain on iOS or encrypted with Android Keystore. The app cannot extract passwords saved by the system Settings app; enter each new network’s password once. Hotspot setup includes Settings help, remembered name/password fields and interface detection. Enable the phone’s hotspot in Settings; the app cannot turn it on or read its password. An undetected interface is not proof the hotspot is off: it may appear only once a camera joins. Use WPA2 and 2.4 GHz for compatibility. Both forms adapt to portrait and landscape.

Adding a camera now uses the selected network directly. Camera Wi-Fi role changes wait for confirmation. A missing join reply triggers identity-verified LAN discovery before another join attempt; a lost reply is not treated as proof that the camera failed to associate. Join attempts remain bounded and never log credentials. The reported intermittent join failure still needs a captured physical reproduction; these safeguards do not establish its root cause.

Each preview uses the existing feed watchdog: respect camera-command and keyframe grace, recover the transport in stages, then try at most two full reconnects. The last picture remains visible. Thirty seconds of healthy video resets the reconnect budget. If recovery fails, the affected tile offers Reconnect and Remove through its camera options, including in smaller feeds. Removing a preview does not stop recording on the camera.

In the recorded three-camera iPhone app-switch check, all feeds resumed, but Pocket 3 required a full session rejoin and took roughly a minute. This proves recovery in that test, not seamless foreground return. Keep Multiview in the foreground for continuous monitoring.

Brief app switches retain camera assignments and sockets, with limited background execution time requested from iOS. The app does not disconnect merely because it loses focus. On return it checks decoder health and resumes bounded transport recovery as needed. iOS may suspend the app after its background allowance expires; continuous background monitoring is not guaranteed.

Open a camera in Live View

Double-tap a connected tile to open the normal Live View screen for that camera. The lock control is replaced with a Multiview grid icon that returns to the stage. Other camera sessions stay connected. Live View borrows the selected camera’s existing decoder and verified transport; Multiview remains the repair owner. If discovery replaces the transport, controls stay detached until the replacement has passed camera identity verification. The tile’s video host is recreated on return without disconnecting its camera. Media browsing is hidden in this borrowed station-mode view because its file-transfer path is not yet adapted to shared Wi-Fi. Sharing is unavailable in a Multiview tile. Connect to one camera from Your cameras to share its feed with watchers. Returning to the stage stops any programmed motion or head tracking started in the tile’s Live View. Hardware validation of full Live View controls and return-to-tile continuity is still required.

Password entry uses a scrollable setup screen that accommodates the keyboard. Preview gestures are attached behind tile controls so Add, LUT, Record and Remove keep their normal button behavior.

Cancelling setup waits for any active camera scan to restore its Wi-Fi and release Bluetooth. Personal Hotspot setup refreshes the active hotspot-interface status every second and when returning from Settings. An undetected interface is not proof that the Settings switch is off: it may appear only when a camera joins. Close remains in the header; DISP and group recording retain their normal Live View positions.

The stage uses the same dark glass, typefaces, accent and control-bar sizing as Live View. Setup navigation, network rows and tile controls have at least 44-point touch targets; the entire empty tile opens Add camera. Portrait keeps the focused preview wide enough to expose its controls.

Controls follow the current window’s safe areas and display cutout. Native Live View geometry owns DISP and Record, independently of the stage and toolbar.

Add camera opens a centered, width-limited picker with a scrollable nearby-camera list, including in landscape.

Grid keeps four stable slots. The first empty slot offers Add camera; other unused slots stay quiet. Selecting, rotating or changing layouts moves existing feed views without opening an extra camera connection.

Pocket preview orientation follows the same gimbal pose and Selfie Flip compensation as Live View, including with Auto LUT enabled.

In an expanded camera feed, tap the Multiview grid icon to return to the stage. It replaces the lock button in both orientations.

Experimental shared Wi-Fi fallback

For an unprofiled Osmo, select Try experimental shared Wi-Fi in the camera picker. For a profiled camera whose setup fails before joining, the same action appears in its tile. Keep the camera awake in the shooting mode you want first. This path does not select a shooting mode or start a livestream.

The attempt uses documented commands, not a command sweep. An exact unsupported Wi-Fi role query permits one station setter attempt; rejected or malformed responses stop setup. Nano alone retains its known wake prerequisite. Join retries remain capped at three, followed by bounded discovery and exact camera identity verification. Incorrect credentials and network security incompatibility are not reasons to send different opcodes.

A camera without a preview profile stops at Wi-Fi connected · Preview not supported yet. It receives no preview or recording commands. That result confirms connectivity at setup time, not continuous monitoring or recording support. Removing the tile leaves the camera’s network choice unchanged. A network-only tile disables Record all/Stop all, which requires confirmation from every assigned camera; remove that tile to use group recording with the other cameras.

The local diagnostic journal records the selected fallback, failed step and join result without network credentials. Use Operator Setup → System → Share Diagnostics to share a redacted report; nothing is uploaded automatically. Physical testing on unprofiled models remains pending.

Session setup and saved preferences

Each new Multiview session asks for its network and starts with empty camera slots. A saved network or an old stage cannot skip that choice or lock the app to Personal Hotspot. Passwords remain in this device’s Keychain and are loaded only after you select a network. Layout, selected main slot and Fit/Fill are remembered. Brief app switches and returning from a tile’s Live View keep the current session; they do not restart setup.

After Connect, each added camera joins the selected network independently. Remove all assigned cameras before changing the network using WI-FI below FIT/FILL.

Closing Multiview attempts to return cameras to their own Wi-Fi after closing monitor connections. Approve a camera connection if prompted. Unfinished cleanup remains saved for another close attempt, including cleanup from older builds; opening setup does not reconnect old cameras or change their networks. Force quitting cannot reliably run cleanup. No stop-recording command is sent. A camera used for a Wi-Fi scan is also tracked before its role changes; finishing or cancelling the scan attempts to restore its own Wi-Fi. Physical checks of this revised setup, provisioning and AP return remain pending.

Reconnecting a camera

After returning from another app, Multiview checks for new camera pictures even when a LUT is enabled. It attempts recovery automatically. If recovery fails, tap Reconnect in that tile: the app tries the saved connection first, then repeats network setup if needed. Your LUT choice is retained. Remove clears the tile when you no longer want that camera.

Multiview shows reported camera timecode below each tile name, including compact side tiles; Nano has no timecode readout. It follows the existing 5 Hz settings updates. Tap the dedicated WI-FI button directly below FIT/FILL to reopen network setup in either orientation. Layout switches Grid/Center stage; network setup does not require holding it. Add camera remains in the tiles. Enlarged one/two-camera grids put Add in a tile header so adding the next camera remains available without the bottom-bar shortcut.

In portrait, Center stage keeps the main camera tile at 16:9 above the other tiles. The labeled FIT/FILL button stays in the bottom bar in either orientation. It shows the full image or center crops it to fill the tile. This changes monitoring only, not the recorded framing. The choice is remembered when you reopen Multiview.

Every recording camera has a red border around its tile, including the smaller Center stage tiles. Each border follows that camera’s recording report, whether recording was started in Multiview or on the camera. It clears when the camera reports recording has stopped.

Android differences

Android follows the same stage, network wizard, camera picker, tile controls, recording, recovery and cleanup behavior described above. The differences:

• Phone hotspot replaces Personal Hotspot. Turn on this phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot in Settings with a WPA2 password (Samsung: Mobile Hotspot), then enter its name and password. Android does not give apps the hotspot password. Detection looks for the tethering interface (for example swlan0).
• Local Wi-Fi uses the phone’s current Wi-Fi when its name matches. Otherwise Android shows its own join prompt for the selected network (WPA2). Sockets are bound to that Wi-Fi so LAN traffic does not leave over mobile data.
• Saved network passwords are sealed with a device-only Android Keystore key.
• If a Pocket does not answer its Wi-Fi identity query right after pairing, Android sends the Wi-Fi wake command once and asks again. This was observed on a Pocket 4 Pro that had just returned to its own Wi-Fi.
• Returning from a tile’s Live View rebuilds each tile’s decoder and requests a keyframe, because every tile gets a new video surface.

Physically checked on a Galaxy S25 (2026-09-23) with a Pocket 4 Pro and a Nano on the phone’s hotspot: setup, provisioning, identity-verified discovery, preview, Auto LUT, record start/stop (tile and Stop all), tile promotion, Grid, Fill, DISP clean, Live View round trip, watchdog repair after a lost reference and closing with camera Wi-Fi return (a failed reset succeeded on the next close). Local Wi-Fi joining, landscape and tablet layouts, four cameras and a Pocket 3 remain to be checked on Android.