How long a transcript takes
A rough rule for the wait, what changes it, and why you do not have to sit and watch.
The usual figure is about a quarter of the recording length. A 40-minute interview lands in roughly ten minutes; a 5-minute voice note is usually done before you have finished reading this sentence.
What makes it slower
- Speaker labels. Working out who is talking is a second pass over the audio, so expect it to take noticeably longer.
- Video files. The audio has to be pulled out before anything else starts.
- Very large uploads on a slow connection — the upload itself is often most of the wait.
- Busy periods. It queues, briefly.
Pro Tip
You can close the tab. Processing happens on our side and the finished transcript will be waiting in your dashboard.
What the statuses mean
- Uploading — the file is still travelling from your device. This one depends on your connection.
- Processing — we have the file and are working on it.
- Completed — ready to read, edit and download.
- Failed — something went wrong; the file is kept so you can retry.
If a job has been sitting in the same state far longer than the estimate above, go to a transcript is stuck or failed.
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How long is too long, what to do about a failed job, and when to just retry.
Who said what: speaker labels
Turn on speaker separation, rename the speakers, and know when it struggles.
What you can upload
The file types we accept, the size and length limits per plan, and what to do about the rest.