Transcribe a 3-hour retreat session and keep the teaching after everyone goes home.
A 3-hour retreat session is 180 minutes of audio and returns as timestamped text in about 6 minutes; a phone or handheld recorder file of that length is typically 80 to 200 MB. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire.
For retreat leaders and participants
The talk, the practice and the questions afterwards, written down while the retreat is still fresh.
Recorded on whatever was at hand
Retreat sessions are usually caught on a phone on the teacher's cushion, a small handheld recorder, or a camera at the back of a hall. Upload the MP3, M4A, WAV or MP4. If the organisers shared the session through Google Drive, YouTube or Vimeo, paste that link instead.
Silence is fine
A session often holds long quiet periods for meditation, walking practice or reflection. Music, bells and room sound are not transcribed; the speech is. Processing stays at about 2 minutes per audio hour, and the quiet parts simply leave short gaps between timestamps.
The teaching, organised
Chapters split the opening talk, each guided practice, the small-group sharing and the questions at the end. The brief gathers the themes, the book titles and dates that came up, and the questions the session answers, ready to share with people who could not attend.
A retreat's worth of minutes
One 180-minute session uses 180 of the 300 minutes in the $4 pack.
Why retreat teachings fade
Three hours of teaching, and by Tuesday only a phrase or two remains.
✗ Notes scribbled in a journal
Writing during a session pulls attention away from it, and the notebook catches fragments.
- Half-remembered phrases from the talk
- Instructions for a practice forgotten
- Questions from others lost
- A phone file nobody plays back
- Absent participants miss everything
- Long silences make scrubbing slow
✓ The session as text
The recording goes in after the retreat and comes back as a document that can be read slowly.
- About 6 minutes for 180 minutes
- Talks and practices as chapters
- Teacher named in the summary
- Themes and book titles listed
- A booklet-ready DOCX
- 1,280 minutes left after a weekend
Sample
Lines from a retreat session.
Illustrative text written for this page; it does not come from a real retreat, centre or teacher. Times run from the first second of the 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 $4 (300 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
$4/300 min
5 hours of audio — $0.80 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 300 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$18/3,000 min
50 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 3,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$32/6,000 min
100 hours of audio — $0.32 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 6,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Retreat recordings: common questions.
How long does a 3-hour retreat session take to transcribe?
About 6 minutes. Processing runs at roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio whether the session is full of talking or mostly quiet.
What does a whole retreat cost?
Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire. A weekend of four sessions, 720 minutes, fits the $18 pack of 3,000 minutes. A week-long retreat with two sessions a day for seven days is 2,520 minutes and fits the $18 pack of 3,000 minutes.
We left the recorder running all day. Is that one file?
It can be. One file may run up to 10 hours or 5 GB. Splitting it per session gives each talk its own brief and chapters, which reads better. A day longer than 10 hours has to go in as two files.
Will the bells and chanting appear in the text?
No. Music, bells and ambient sound are not transcribed; spoken words are. Chanted text may come through partly, so check it before you print it.
Is a retreat recording kept private?
Retreat recordings are transcribed on our own servers and never used to train anything. Participants who shared personal reflections should be asked before a recording that includes them is passed on.
The camera file is too big for this page. Now what?
The box here takes up to 500 MB; a larger file continues on the main upload page, up to 5 GB with or without a pack. A 3-hour audio export is far smaller than the video.
Related
More retreat and talk recordings
Upload the retreat session. The opening minutes are a free preview.
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