The Setup Window
Every card in the PreviewMonitor plugin window — QR code, device name, discoverability, trusted iPhones, and the read-only Advanced info panel.
The Setup window is the plugin's only user interface on the desktop. It shows the QR code you pair with, the device name your iPhone sees, the list of iPhones this host trusts, and a collapsed panel of read-only diagnostics.
Open it from Adobe Premiere Pro's Preferences → Playback pane — the same place you enable the device, described in Enable it in Premiere Pro:
The Setup… button belongs to the selected device row — select PreviewMonitor first, or you will open another device's dialog.
The window is drawn by the plugin, not by Adobe, so it looks the same whether or not you are streaming. It refreshes twice a second. On Windows, choosing Setup… again while it is already open brings the existing window forward instead of opening a second one.
Nothing in this window changes how the picture is encoded. Resolution Limit, GOP Mode, Codec and Encoder Engine are all chosen on the iPhone — see Encoding settings. The one exception is the Windows-only hardware-encoder toggle described below, which decides which encoders are eligible, not which one is used.
Window layout
Top to bottom: the title PreviewMonitor, the subtitle Scan the QR code with the PreviewMonitor iOS app to connect., the QR card, the DEVICE and TRUSTED IPHONES cards, the Instance ID, the Advanced info disclosure, and a two-line footer.
The macOS window carries the same cards in the same order, but the Name row and the status line use different controls — see the platform differences below.
The footer on both platforms reads:
Streaming starts automatically when you play back in Premiere. Enable or disable this device from Preferences → Playback → Video Device.
The QR code
The QR code is the fastest way to pair. Point the iPhone's Camera app at it and tap the banner, or scan it from inside the PreviewMonitor app.
It encodes a premierelive://pair deep link carrying three things: this host's
Instance ID, its display name, and the plugin's build version. It does not
contain an IP address, a port, or a pairing code. The address is resolved over
Bonjour from the Instance ID, the ports are fixed, and the pairing code is
generated fresh for each connection attempt.
The code is regenerated whenever you change the device name. It never expires.
There is no IP address printed under the QR code on either platform. On macOS a caption was built for that spot but never added to the window, so it does not render. Read the host's address from Advanced info → NETWORK → IP instead — that is the address you type into the app's manual IP entry when discovery fails.
DEVICE card
The Windows DEVICE card packs the status line, the name editor, both toggles, and the active-encoder readout into one card.
Status dot and status line
The dot is green only when an iPhone is connected and the Transmit device is enabled in Premiere Pro. Otherwise it is gray. The text beside it is one of four strings:
| Status text | What it means |
|---|---|
| Streaming | An iPhone is connected and the device is enabled. Frames are on the wire. |
| Ready · waiting for iPhone | The device is enabled in Preferences → Playback, but no iPhone is connected. |
| Transmit disabled | No Transmit instance is active — the PreviewMonitor checkbox is off, or no sequence is open. |
| Idle | The value the label is created with. The first refresh runs before the window appears, so you will not normally see it. |
A fifth form, Streaming · 12.4 Mbps, exists in the code but never appears — the live bitrate feed it reads was removed with the automatic controller. See Rows that are permanently blank.
Name
The name is what your iPhone shows in its device list, and it is what the QR code and the Bonjour advertisement carry. It defaults to the computer's hostname.
On Windows the Name row is a text field with a Save button. Type a new name and click Save. The window refreshes and the QR code is rebuilt immediately.
On macOS the Name row is a label with a pencil button. Click the pencil to switch to an editable field with a green checkmark and a gray cross; Return saves, Escape cancels. The field's placeholder reads Letters and numbers only, and macOS enforces exactly that — anything else you type is stripped as you type it.
Windows applies no such filter. Spaces, punctuation and emoji are accepted and saved, then percent-encoded into the QR link and into the Bonjour TXT record. Both survive it, but the two platforms disagree — stick to letters and digits on Windows too.
The name is stored once per machine, not once per host application. Renaming it in Premiere Pro also renames it in After Effects, which appends its own suffix — see Two hosts on one machine.
Discoverable on network
On by default. When it is on, the plugin advertises itself over mDNS as
_premierelive._tcp so the app finds it under "on this network".
Turning it off stops the advertisement only. The control port keeps listening, so an iPhone that has already paired and knows the address can still connect.
On Windows the toggle does not apply while Premiere Pro is running. The handler saves the new value but never tells the running listener, so the machine stays visible on your phone until the transport restarts — in practice, until you relaunch Premiere Pro. macOS applies the change immediately.
Use NVIDIA / Intel HW HEVC encoder
Windows only, and off by default. macOS has no equivalent — VideoToolbox is used directly there.
NVIDIA and Intel expose hardware HEVC encoding exclusively as an asynchronous Media Foundation Transform. With this toggle off, every asynchronous MFT is skipped, so those encoders are unavailable and HEVC falls back to Media Foundation's software HEVC encoder.
The software HEVC encoder refuses any frame above 6 megapixels, because at 4K it blocked Premiere Pro's video thread long enough for the host watchdog to kill the application. When it refuses, the plugin logs a failure once per frame and sends nothing: the iPhone stays connected and paired, and the screen stays black, with no message on either side.
You hit this only with Codec = HEVC, this toggle off, and an encoded size above 6 MPx — that is, Resolution Limit set to Source or 2160p on a 4K sequence. The default 720p limit never reaches it, and the free tier's 360p cap cannot reach it at all.
If you are grading 4K at full resolution over HEVC, either turn this toggle on or switch the phone's Codec to H.264, which has no such ceiling.
The flag is read each time the encoder is configured, so a change takes effect on the next encoder rebuild. Reconnect the iPhone — or restart Premiere Pro — to be sure it has been picked up.
Active encoder
A read-only line reading Active encoder: — until an encoder is built, then
the concrete backend and its configuration in the form
<name> [<mode>, <width>x<height> <codec> @ <fps> fps, <N> Mbps], where <mode>
is HW-async, HW or SW. This is the single most useful line to quote in a
support request: it says exactly which encoder your machine chose and how it was
configured.
Instance ID
Below the two cards, Windows prints Instance ID: followed by a UUID. That is
this machine's stable identity: the id inside the QR link, the key in the
Bonjour TXT record, and the key your iPhone stores its pairing token against.
macOS does not display it. Read it from
~/Library/Application Support/PremiereLive/install.json if support asks.
TRUSTED IPHONES card
Lists every iPhone that has completed pairing with this host on this machine. Empty, it reads No iPhones paired yet. Each row shows the iPhone's name, the UTC timestamp it first paired, and a red Forget button.
Pairing, the trust store's location, and what Forget actually does are covered in Trusted iPhones.
The Windows card is a fixed height, so from roughly the fourth paired iPhone onward the rows draw past its bottom edge. They still work — the button is clickable where it is drawn — but the layout is wrong. Rendering also stops at 30 peers. The macOS card grows to fit.
Advanced info
Collapsed by default. The Advanced info button expands two side-by-side cards, LIVE STREAM and NETWORK, and grows the window to fit.
Every row in both cards is a label. There is nothing to click, drag or type — the settings these rows describe are all set on the phone.
LIVE STREAM
| Row | Shows |
|---|---|
| Status | Streaming, Idle · waiting for iPhone, or Transmit disabled. |
| iPhone | The connected iPhone's IP address, or —. |
| Codec | HEVC (H.265) or H.264, as chosen on the phone. |
| Bitrate | Always —. See below. |
| Resolution | The short-side cap the phone requested — Auto (native) or e.g. 720p (short-side cap). |
| GOP | The GOP the phone requested. |
| FEC parity | Always —. Forward error correction is fixed at 10%. |
Then a REQUESTED BY IPHONE sub-section:
| Row | Shows |
|---|---|
| Bitrate ceiling | Always —. The app has no bitrate slider; the encoder runs at a per-resolution default. |
| Max resolution | The same short-side cap, phrased as the phone sent it. |
Then a MANUAL STATE sub-section, which mirrors what the encoder is actually built with:
| Row | Shows |
|---|---|
| Engine | The active encoder's description — the same string as Active encoder above. |
| Codec | H.265 (HEVC) or H.264. |
| GOP | All-Intra, Short-GOP or Long-GOP. |
When you pick Long-GOP on the phone, the LIVE STREAM → GOP row labels it Short-GOP (600) — it prints the GOP length through the short-GOP branch. The MANUAL STATE → GOP row below it reports Long-GOP correctly. Read that one.
NETWORK
| Row | Shows |
|---|---|
| IP | The primary local IPv4 address, or (no network). Windows prefers an adapter named "Ethernet", then "Wi-Fi"; macOS prefers en0, then en1. |
| Interfaces | Every non-loopback IPv4 interface that is up, as name: address. |
| Ports | The fixed string 47100 control · 47101 video · 47102 audio. |
The IP row is not only a diagnostic. It is the exact value you type into the app when Bonjour discovery fails: on the phone, tap Connect a Device, then Connect via IP address instead at the bottom of the scanner, enter this address and pick which Adobe application the host is running. The app chooses the port from that (Premiere Pro 47100, After Effects 47110), so you never type a port number. Pairing then completes exactly as it does from a QR scan. Full procedure: Connect the app.
If the machine's address is handed out by DHCP, note that a manually-entered host carries no Bonjour id and will not follow the machine to a new address — you re-enter it, or set a reservation.
Then an ADAPTATION sub-section — Controller, Last reason, Phase, Loss, Backlog, OWD trend, Rate mode.
The Ports row is hard-coded to Premiere Pro's control port. After Effects listens on 47110, and the row still says 47100 there. The UDP video and audio ports are shared and correct on both.
Rows that are permanently blank
PreviewMonitor once had an automatic bitrate and resolution controller. It was removed in favor of manual control, and nothing publishes into the live-decision snapshot any more. Six rows read from that snapshot and therefore never populate:
- LIVE STREAM → Bitrate — always —
- LIVE STREAM → FEC parity — always — (the real value is a fixed 10%)
- NETWORK → Controller — always —
- NETWORK → Last reason — always —
- NETWORK → Phase — always n/a (v1)
- NETWORK → Loss, Backlog, OWD trend — always —
They are dead rows in the current build, not a symptom of a broken stream. The rows that do carry real information are Status, iPhone, Codec, Resolution, GOP, Max resolution, the whole MANUAL STATE section, and IP / Interfaces / Ports.
For the numbers these rows used to show, use the app's own stats HUD, which measures at the receiver.
macOS-only: Restart networking
The macOS status line ends in a small circular-arrow button. Clicking it tears the listener and the Bonjour advertisement down and immediately brings both back up. It drops the connected iPhone, which reconnects on its own within a couple of seconds. There is no confirmation prompt, and the icon flashes green so you know the click registered.
Use it after switching Wi-Fi networks, or when discovery is stuck and you would otherwise restart Premiere Pro. Windows has no equivalent — restart Premiere Pro instead.
Windows and macOS at a glance
| Windows | macOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Name editing | Text field + Save | Pencil → field + checkmark / cross (Return / Escape) |
| Name validation | None | Letters and digits only, enforced live |
| Use NVIDIA / Intel HW HEVC encoder | Present | Not present |
| Discoverable on network applies | After the transport restarts | Immediately |
| Restart networking button | Not present | Present |
| Instance ID shown | Yes | No |
| Close button | Yes | No — use the window's close button |
| Trusted list capacity | Fixed-height card; overflows past ~4 rows, capped at 30 | Grows to fit |
Last updated on
Privacy and data
The Usage Analytics opt-out, what is and is not collected, the legal links and acknowledgements, and what Reset App can and cannot erase.
Trusted iPhones
How pairing works — the 6-digit code on first connection, silent token reconnects afterwards, where the trust store lives, and how to reset it.