Transcribe a long ASF file Windows Media, years on.
A long ASF file from an old Windows Media stream is about 14 to 29 MB per hour when it carries only audio and about 135 to 450 MB per hour with video, so even ten hours of video at 1 Mbps, about 4.5 GB, fits one upload of up to 10 hours or 5 GB. It transcribes at about 2 minutes per audio hour; the first 20 minutes are free and a 4-hour meeting fits the $6 pack of 500 minutes.
ASF, worked out
ASF is the container Windows Media streamed in. WMV and WMA are the same thing with a different name.
What ASF is
Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's container for Windows Media audio and video. Files named .wma and .wmv are ASF inside; the plain .asf extension usually marks a stream captured as it was broadcast, which is how many council meetings, church services and company webcasts were archived in the early 2000s.
Size by bitrate
An audio-only stream at 32 kbps is about 14 MB an hour, and at 64 kbps about 29 MB. Video streams of that era ran around 300 kbps to 1 Mbps, which is 135 to 450 MB an hour. Ten hours at 1 Mbps is about 4.5 GB: over the 2 GB that uploads before a pack, just under 5 GB.
Getting an ASF in
Drop it on the upload page. If the upload refuses the file, convert it to MP3 first; VLC and ffmpeg both read Windows Media and write the MP3 in one step.
A meeting on the record
A long meeting comes back with a brief, chapters for each agenda item, the motions, figures, names and dates spoken, and the questions it settled. Chairs, members and officers are identified and named in the summary, key quotes and chapters.
Why ASF archives are hard to use
Years of streamed meetings, saved in a format few apps still open.
✗ Media from a retired player
An .asf file often needs a dedicated player, and its length rules out most quick tools.
- Players that cannot open the stream
- Pickers that skip the .asf extension
- Four-hour meetings over clip limits
- Minutes written from memory
- Motions hard to find in the recording
- Every meeting a separate listen
✓ Meetings you can search
Upload the ASF whole and get the meeting back in text.
- 10 hours or 5 GB a file
- Near 2 minutes a recorded hour
- The first 20 minutes of a meeting free
- $24 for 5,000 minutes of back meetings
- Agenda items as chapters
- Word and plain text for minutes
Sample
A council meeting, streamed and saved as ASF.
A meeting written for this page as an illustration, not a real council's record. Timestamps show where each item sits in a long ASF 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
- Unlimited AI chat per 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
- Priority queue
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Long ASF files, the common questions.
How long does a long ASF take to transcribe?
About 2 minutes of processing per hour of audio, so a 4-hour meeting takes about 8 minutes. An audio-only ASF uploads in seconds; a video one of a few gigabytes takes longer.
What does a back catalogue of meetings cost?
One 4-hour meeting is 240 minutes on the $6 pack of 500. Twenty 3-hour meetings is 60 hours, or 3,600 minutes, which needs the $24 pack of 5,000. A body that records every week can look at the $19-a-month Workspace.
How big is an ASF file per hour?
About 14 MB at 32 kbps and 29 MB at 64 kbps for audio; about 135 to 450 MB for video at 300 kbps to 1 Mbps. VLC's codec information window shows the bitrate of a file you have.
Is ASF different from WMV or WMA?
Only in name. All three are the same container; WMA usually holds audio only and WMV holds video. If one form of the file is refused, convert it to MP3. A stream longer than 10 hours goes up as two files.
Which languages work?
99, detected automatically, including French, Afrikaans and Korean. A meeting that moves between English and Tagalog is handled. Hymns or recorded music in a service are not transcribed; the speech is.
Which files come back, and who handles the ASF?
Minutes-ready DOCX and TXT, captions as SRT and VTT, and JSON. Windows Media files are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
Other Windows and stream formats
Upload the ASF. Twenty free minutes on your first meeting.
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