Media View lets you open any individual image in your project and work with it directly — drone stills, 360s, panoramas, videos and geo-referenced ground-based imagery. Full screen media view now leads with Annotations, so you can label objects on the image itself and keep everything else about that image alongside it.
Full screen media view is organised into four tabs:
Annotations — draw bounding boxes around objects and label them, or use AI Detect to find them for you. Annotations sit on the image itself.
Tags — image-level tags such as a site, location or asset name. These apply to the whole image, not a specific object in it.
Notes — written context and observations for the image.
Info — the image metadata, including camera make and settings, file size and dimensions.
When to use Media View
You need to inspect close detail that isn't readable on the orthomosaic.
You want to mark up a defect, a piece of equipment or a point of interest on the image itself.
You're counting or recording objects across a set of images — vehicles, poles, stockpiles, rubbish.
You want to record where an image was taken or what it shows, so your team can find it later.
You're checking whether an image has the metadata Birdi needs to render or process it.
1. Open the media thumbnail
Select the image from the Layers panel, or click its media icon on the map.
The media thumbnail opens, and the selected image turns blue on the map so you can see where it sits.
Use your arrow keys to scroll through the images in the folder.
2. Open full screen media view
Click the expand icon on the thumbnail to open full screen media view.
The image fills the viewer, with the four tabs — Annotations, Tags, Notes and Info — in the panel beside it.
Annotations is the default tab.
3. Move around your image
Zoom and pan with your mouse.
Scroll through media with your arrow keys or mouse.
Your annotations stay pinned to the objects as you zoom.
4. Label objects in the Annotations tab
The Annotations tab is where you mark up what's in the image. You have two ways to do it, and you can mix them freely on the same image:
AI Detect — click an object or type what you're looking for, and Birdi finds and boxes it for you.
Draw box — pick a label, then drag boxes around each object yourself.
To draw and label manually:
Pick an existing label or create a new one — for example,
vehicle.Select the + (draw box) tool in the toolbar.
Click and drag a box over each object you want to label. Every box you draw takes the label you picked, so you can work through all the vehicles in an image without relabelling each one.
Move to the next image and keep tagging the same object type.
Tip: Annotations created by AI Detect and annotations you draw by hand behave the same way — you can edit, relabel or delete either.
For the full detail on detection methods, editing and table view, see How to use Birdi's AI Detect tool.
5. Add image-level tags
Select the Tags tab.
Tags are single words or short phrases that describe the whole image — a site, a location, a work area, a condition.
Examples:
office,carpark,damage,stockpile.If a tag doesn't exist yet, Birdi will prompt you to create it.
Tagged imagery displays on the map with a small yellow icon. The number on the icon is the number of tags on that image.
Tip: Use Tags for anything that describes the image as a whole, and Annotations for anything you want to point at inside the image.
6. Add notes
Select the Notes tab.
Notes let you add detailed written context about a photo — what you saw, what needs following up, what a contractor should know.
Notes are visible to everyone with access to the map.
7. Check the image info
Select the Info tab to see the image metadata: camera make and settings, file size, dimensions and other capture information.
If any of this information is missing, you may see issues with image rendering or processing. Get in touch with support if you need a hand.
8. Move through your imagery
Use your arrow keys or the on-screen controls to move to the next image without leaving full screen view.
Your selected label stays active, so you can keep tagging the same object type across a run of images.
Viewing 360s and panoramas
Open 360 images the same way — select the image, then expand to full screen.
The 360 viewer opens, and you can use your mouse or the icon tools to move around the image.
Best practice tips
Agree your label names with your team before you start — consistent labels make the table view and CSV export far more useful.
Keep labels short and singular (
vehicle,bolt,crack) rather than descriptive sentences.Use Annotations for objects, Tags for the image as a whole, and Notes for anything that needs explaining.
Work through one object type at a time across a set of images. It's faster than switching labels image by image.
Zoom in before drawing boxes on small objects — tighter boxes make review and future model training more reliable.
Check the Info tab first if an image looks wrong on the map; missing metadata is usually the cause.