Why long recordings hit walls everywhere
Free transcription tiers are sized around a voice memo, not a conference session. Three hours of audio is a substantial amount of processing, so the usual approaches are a hard cap on length, a monthly minute allowance that a single file exhausts, or a queue that quietly deprioritises anything large.
The workaround people reach for is splitting the recording into chunks and transcribing each one. It works, and it is genuinely annoying: you have to cut the file, keep the pieces in order, transcribe each separately, then stitch the text back together and repair the timestamps, which no longer run continuously.
What to do before uploading three hours of anything
Trim the ends first. Long recordings almost always open with setup and microphone checks and close with people saying goodbye, and cutting those in any basic editor can remove a surprising amount without touching content. It also means your timestamps start where the material does.
Then decide honestly whether you need the whole thing. Plenty of three hour recordings contain forty minutes anyone will ever read. If you know the section that matters, transcribing that portion is faster, cheaper and produces a document someone might actually finish.
Frequently asked questions
Can I do this on the free tier?
No. The free first file covers ten minutes, and a free account raises that to thirty minutes and one hundred megabytes. A three hour recording needs Pro, which covers five hours and two gigabytes per file.
How long will a three hour file take to transcribe?
Considerably less than three hours. Processing runs much faster than real time on our hardware, though the exact wait depends on file size and how busy the queue is when you upload.
What if my recording is longer than five hours?
Split it at a natural break, such as a session boundary or a lunch interval, and transcribe each part separately. Choosing where to cut yourself keeps the pieces meaningful rather than arbitrary.