Transcribe a recording made in a podcast studio the long episode, as one file.
A podcast studio recording of two to four hours comes back as text at about 2 minutes per audio hour, so a three-hour episode is ready in roughly 6 minutes. The first 20 minutes are free, the $6 pack of 500 minutes covers the rest of the episode, and a WAV of up to 5 GB uploads as it is.
Studio sound, studio file sizes
Close microphones make clean text. The file size is what trips people up.
Treated rooms transcribe well
Foam panels, dynamic microphones a hand's width from each mouth, and a quiet room give about the cleanest speech a transcriber ever hears. The usual faults are hosts talking over each other in the best bits, and a remote guest on a weaker connection.
Send the mix, not every track
A multitrack session exports one WAV per microphone. Upload the stereo or mono mix-down: each track sent separately would cost its own minutes and come back as separate transcripts. A three-hour 24-bit 48 kHz stereo WAV is about 3.1 GB, which goes through the upload page once a pack is on the account.
Music beds drop out
The intro theme, transition stings and any music under an ad read are not transcribed. The conversation is, along with the host-read ads, so the text lines up with what a listener hears spoken.
A quarter of long episodes
Thirteen weekly episodes of three hours make 39 hours, 2,340 minutes. The $12 pack holds 2,000, so a full quarter sits on the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes, with 2,660 minutes carried into the next season.
Where long episodes get stuck
The recording is great. The tools give up at the file size.
✗ The usual workarounds
Export a smaller file, split it into parts, or pay a monthly plan for a weekly upload.
- The OpenAI Whisper API's 25 MB upload limit
- Splitting a WAV into four parts
- Re-joining the text by hand
- Music lyrics leaking into the captions
- Show notes written from memory
- A subscription for one show
✓ One episode, one upload
The whole conversation comes back with chapters and quotes ready for show notes.
- About 6 minutes for three hours
- Files up to 5 GB or 10 hours
- Hosts and guests named in quotes
- Chapters timed for the episode page
- $24 for 5,000 minutes per quarter
- SRT and VTT for the video cut
Sample
A long-form episode, as text.
This excerpt is illustrative and was made up for this page; it comes from no real show, host or guest. Roles stand in for names.
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
Podcast studio recordings, answered.
How long does a three-hour episode take?
Roughly 6 minutes, at about 2 minutes per audio hour. Public runs on /proof/long-files include 2.48 hours finished in 200 seconds.
What does a three-hour episode cost?
If this is your first upload, the first 20 minutes are free. The remaining 160 minutes fit the $6 pack of 500 minutes, which leaves 340 for the next episode. A weekly long show for a quarter fits the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes.
My WAV is over 2 GB. What happens?
A new account uploads up to 2 GB before buying a pack; a file between 2 GB and 5 GB starts once a pack is on the account. Exporting the mix as MP3 brings a three-hour episode to a few hundred megabytes if you would rather not wait.
Should I upload each microphone track?
No. Upload the mixed episode. Separate tracks each count their own minutes and come back as separate transcripts, while the mix gives one document with one clock.
Do episodes in other languages work?
Yes, 99 languages are detected automatically, including Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean. An episode is detected on its main language, and a show that mixes English with Tagalog is handled.
What do I get to download, and is the unreleased episode private?
Downloads come as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Unreleased episodes stay with us: recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More long podcast pages
Send the episode. Hear it back as text, the first 20 minutes free.
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