Transcribe a long WAV file as it came off the recorder.
WAV is uncompressed, so a long one is large: 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo audio takes about 635 MB per hour. One WAV can therefore hold about 7.9 hours before it reaches the 5 GB ceiling, and three hours comes to about 1.9 GB. Upload it unchanged, and convert it to MP3 only if the upload would be slow or the file is over the ceiling.
WAV by the numbers
Big files, simple arithmetic.
635 MB for every hour
A stereo WAV at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz grows by about 635 MB each hour. Three hours is about 1.9 GB, five hours about 3.2 GB and seven and a half hours about 4.8 GB. A mono recording is half as large, and a 24-bit or 48 kHz file is larger.
The 2 GB line
Before your first pack, uploads go up to 2 GB, which is roughly three hours of CD-quality WAV. A longer WAV still uploads, and it starts once a pack is on your account. A WAV of that size is easiest to send from the upload page.
Convert only for speed
Saving the WAV as a 128 kbps MP3 cuts it to about 58 MB per hour, under a tenth of the size, which helps on a slow connection. Below the ceiling there is no need to do it, because the WAV is accepted as it is.
Longer than 7.9 hours
An all-day WAV that passes 5 GB can go in as two files cut at a pause, or be saved as MP3 or M4A, which brings even ten hours far under the ceiling. Ten hours remains the most one file can hold, whatever the format.
Before / after
The WAV that other upload boxes reject.
✗ Treated like a problem file
Uncompressed audio is what good recorders make, yet it is the format most tools refuse first.
- A 1 GB WAV refused at a 500 MB cap
- A converter installed just to make an MP3
- Quality settings guessed at in an export dialog
- An evening recording split into hour-long parts
- Separate jobs, separate timelines
- No sense of the cost until after the upload
✓ Accepted as recorded
The WAV goes up unchanged and comes back as one document with chapters and a brief.
- About 7.9 hours of CD-quality WAV per file
- Mono recordings reach the 10-hour limit at about 3.2 GB
- Processing at about 2 minutes per audio hour
- A three-hour WAV costs 180 minutes of a $6 pack
- Names, numbers and dates pulled out for you
- Ninety-nine languages, no language menu
Sample output
A field recording, read in order.
Illustrative sample, not a real WAV. It shows how a long uncompressed recording returns as one transcript with times measured from the start of the file.
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 WAV questions.
How long does a long WAV take to transcribe?
The transcription itself runs at about 2 minutes per hour of audio, so a four-hour WAV is ready in about eight minutes. With a WAV the upload usually takes longer than that, because the file is about ten times the size of the same audio as MP3.
What does a four-hour WAV cost?
Four hours is 240 minutes, so it fits on the $6 pack (500 minutes) with at least 260 left over. File size has no effect on the price, and a 2.5 GB WAV and a 230 MB MP3 of the same recording use the same minutes.
How many hours of WAV fit under 5 GB?
About 7.9 hours at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo. A mono WAV fits about twice that by size, so the 10-hour length limit is reached first. At 24-bit or 48 kHz the hours per file go down.
Should I convert or split the WAV before uploading?
Below 5 GB, neither is needed. Above it, a 128 kbps MP3 of the same recording is about a tenth of the size and transcribes the same way, or the WAV can be cut into two files at a quiet moment.
Which languages are supported?
Speech in 99 languages, detected automatically. You do not need to tag the WAV or pick a language first.
What exports do I get, and where is the audio processed?
You can download TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Long WAV recordings are transcribed on our own servers and never go into training data.
Related
Related pages.
Keep the WAV uncompressed. Up to about eight hours per file.
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