How do you transcribe a recording longer than 10 hours? Cut it into parts of 10 hours or less.
Split it into files of up to 10 hours each (and under 5 GB each), cut at a natural break, and upload the parts one after another: a 14-hour recording becomes two 7-hour files, and at about 2 minutes per audio hour the pair is done in roughly 28 minutes. The first 20 minutes are free, and 840 minutes runs on the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes with 1,160 minutes left.
One very long recording
Splitting it so nothing is lost.
Find the break before you cut
Every recording that long has a pause: a lunch break, a session change, a stream intermission, a night. Cut there and each part starts on a clean sentence. Equal halves are not required; a 14-hour day can be 6 hours and 8 hours if that is where the break fell.
Cut without touching the audio
ffmpeg -i day.m4a -t 07:00:00 -c copy part1.m4a makes the first seven hours, and ffmpeg -i day.m4a -ss 07:00:00 -c copy part2.m4a makes the rest. The -c copy flag means no re-encoding, so it takes seconds and the sound is unchanged. A video file can be cut the same way and then sent through the upload page.
Keep track of the second clock
Part two starts at 00:00:00, so a line at 01:15:00 in it really happened at 08:15:00 of the full recording. Name the files with their offset, for example day-part2-from-07h00, and add that offset when you quote a time from the second part.
Each part comes back complete
Every part gets its own transcript, brief, chapters with timestamps, the names, numbers and dates mentioned, and a chat over its text. The people speaking are named in the summary, the key quotes and the chapters. Download each in TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT or JSON and join the text files if you want one document.
The wrong way to split
What goes wrong with a 14-hour file.
✗ Cut blindly
Splitting by size or into many tiny pieces creates more problems than the length ever did.
- A cut in the middle of a sentence
- Twenty one-hour pieces to track
- Re-encoding that takes an hour
- Parts named part1, part2, final, final2
- No note of where each part started
- Waiting on a tool that caps at one hour
✓ Cut once or twice
As few parts as the 10-hour limit allows, each starting at a pause.
- Two parts for anything up to 20 hours
- Cuts placed at a real break
- Stream copy, done in seconds
- Offsets written into the file names
- About 28 minutes for 14 hours
- Each part with its own brief and chapters
Sample output
The start of part two of a 14-hour hearing day.
Illustrative, not a real proceeding. Part two restarts at zero; add seven hours for the time in the full recording.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Recordings over 10 hours, answered.
Why is one file limited to 10 hours?
One file can run up to 10 hours or 5 GB, whichever comes first. Longer than that has to go in as two or more files. Two parts cover anything up to 20 hours, three parts anything up to 30.
How do I split a recording without an editor?
ffmpeg handles it with a stream copy, which takes seconds and leaves the audio untouched. Audacity can also cut and export each half, though it re-encodes. On a phone, most recorder apps can trim a copy; trim the copy twice, once for each half, and keep the original.
How long does a 14-hour recording take, and what does it cost?
About 28 minutes of processing in total, 14 for each 7-hour part. Fourteen hours is 840 minutes: the first 20 are free for a first-time visitor and the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes covers the whole recording, leaving 1,160 minutes. Credits never expire, and there is no subscription.
It's a 24-hour livestream. Can I paste the link?
Twitch, Kick and YouTube live replays can be sent as a link, and stream recordings over 6 hours start once a pack is on the account. A full 24 hours is over the 10-hour limit, so download it and cut it into three 8-hour files. That is 1,440 minutes on the $12 pack, with 560 left.
What about a part over 2 GB?
Before the first pack, uploads go up to 2 GB; with a pack on the account, each file can go to 5 GB. A 7-hour video part can pass 2 GB easily, so either buy the pack first or extract the audio, which makes even ten hours a few hundred megabytes.
Can a legal or overnight recording be split this way?
Yes. For legal material this is an AI transcript to work from, not a certified or official transcript, and not legal advice. Music and background noise are not transcribed; the speech is. Each part is transcribed on our own servers and never used for training.
Related
Related answers about very long files.
Past ten hours? Two files, one afternoon of reading.
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