Why voice commentary matters
When you run an inspection, most of the insight lives in the operator's head. You notice the hairline crack on the weld seam, the unusual biofouling on the pipeline, the anode that is starting to look worn. In the moment, you know exactly what you are looking at — but by the time you sit down to write the report, half of that context has faded, and matching your observations to the correct frame of video can be surprisingly tedious.
Voice Recording closes that gap. By speaking your observations out loud as you pilot the drone, you anchor them to the exact second of footage where the finding appears. The narration becomes part of the same .mp4 file that holds the video, so everything stays in sync — no external notes, no timestamps to reconcile, no memory gaps between the dive and the report.
Introducing Voice Recording
In Blueye App v5.4, we have added a new Voice Recording option to the Video Overlay menu. Alongside the existing data overlay toggle, you will now find a dedicated switch that enables microphone forwarding from your phone or tablet to the drone. When enabled, the audio captured by your device is streamed to the drone and included as the audio track of the .mp4 recording stored on board.
Because the feature hooks into the standard iOS and Android audio input chain, it works with whatever microphone your device is already using. That means Bluetooth headsets — AirPods, over-ear headphones, or rugged field headsets — all work out of the box. You can talk naturally while keeping both hands on the controller, and your voice is captured at the same quality you are used to from a phone call on that same headset. The first time you enable Voice Recording, the Blueye App will ask for microphone permission. After that, the toggle is ready to use on every dive.
Stay in control of what gets recorded
In practice, few operators record the entire dive — video recordings are usually started and stopped around the moments that matter for the job. Within those recordings, you still want to stay in control of what ends up in the audio track. Maybe you are having a side conversation with a colleague on the boat, coordinating with a third party on site, or simply do not want ambient chatter mixed into the file.
Voice Recording is enabled once from the Video Overlay menu, but within each recording you can still mute on the fly. Tap the recording indicator to toggle your voice on and off without starting or stopping the video recording. The underlying .mp4 keeps running; only your voice is toggled. You stay fully in control of what gets captured in the audio track — narrate when it is useful, mute when it is not.
Part of the standard Blueye workflow
The beauty of Voice Recording is that it fits seamlessly into everything else we have built. Because the audio is embedded directly in the .mp4 recording on the drone, it flows naturally through the rest of the Blueye toolchain:
- When you transfer dives using the Blunux Web App, your narration comes with the file.
- When you review the footage weeks later with a colleague, the context is still there — in your own voice.
No new file formats, no separate audio tracks to manage, no extra tooling on the receiving end. If you can play a standard .mp4, you can hear the voice commentary.
Voice Recording turns the Blueye App into a proper field notebook — one where your findings are already in the video file the moment you lift the drone out of the water.
Where Voice Recording shines
Voice commentary opens up a number of workflows that used to be cumbersome:
- Inspection reports. Narrate findings as you see them, then use the recording as a memory aid when writing the final report — or hand the video directly to a colleague who can write it for you.
- Remote collaboration. Record a self-contained walkthrough of a site or asset that a remote expert can review asynchronously, without needing to be on the call.
- Training and onboarding. Experienced operators can narrate dives to create a library of training material showing what to look for, where to position the drone, and how to interpret what is on screen.
- Documentation and hand-over. For long-running monitoring projects, a narrated baseline dive makes it much easier for a new operator to pick up where someone else left off.
- Search-and-recovery and incident investigation. The narration provides a first-person account tied directly to the video timeline — invaluable when the footage becomes evidence.
Getting started
Voice Recording is available today as a free software update to every existing Blueye customer. It requires Blueye App v5.4 and Blunux v4.6 or later, and works with every drone in our lineup — the Blueye Pioneer, Blueye Pro, Blueye X1, and Blueye X3. It is another example of how we continue to deliver value to Blueye customers through continuous improvements to the Blueye App and the Blunux operating system — no new hardware required.
To get started:
- Update the Blueye App from the App Store or Google Play.
- Connect to your drone and let the app update Blunux to v4.6 if needed.
- Open the Video Overlay menu in the Blueye App and enable Voice Recording.
That's it. The next time you start a video recording, your narration will be part of the file.
Looking ahead
Voice Recording is a small feature that unlocks a surprisingly large amount of value on its own — but we are also excited about where it leads. Once spoken commentary is a first-class part of every dive recording, a number of follow-up workflows become possible:
- Automatic transcripts. Speech-to-text models can turn every dive into a searchable transcript, aligned with the exact timestamps in the video.
- AI-assisted reports. Combined with our existing inspection report generation, a language model could draft a first version of the report based on what the operator actually said during the dive.
- Indexed video archives. Fleets of drones generate hours of footage every week. Transcripts make that footage searchable — imagine asking "show me every clip where someone mentioned corrosion on an anode" and getting the relevant segments back in seconds.
- Multimodal AI. Looking further ahead, models that reason over both the spoken narration and the visual content of the video open up entirely new ways of interpreting inspection data — not just finding what was said, but connecting it to what was seen alongside it.
We are working on new products and services that will build on top of voice recordings — turning the kind of AI transcription you see in the clip above into structured, searchable insight across an entire fleet of dives. We are not quite ready to share the details yet, so stay tuned. By making voice commentary a first-class part of the dive recording, Voice Recording lays the foundation for everything above. As with every new feature in the Blueye App, we will be listening closely to how customers use it — and we look forward to hearing (literally) what you discover.
Contact our sales team if you would like to learn more about the Blueye App, Voice Recording, or how the complete Blueye workflow can support your underwater inspections.