Retry a failed transcription

When a recording shows Failed, the audio is safely stored but transcription didn't complete. Open the recording and use Retry transcription — the audio is submitted again without re-recording or re-uploading anything.

When does Failed appear?

Failed means the transcription step itself errored — a temporary service problem, or audio the transcriber couldn't process. It is not a quota state: running out of free minutes shows Locked or Not transcribed instead, and retrying won't change those — see Why is my recording locked or not transcribed?

You'll see "Transcription failed" on the recording, with a Retry transcription button where the transcript would be.

How do I retry?

1. Open the failed recording — it shows the Failed status in your library.
2. Choose Retry transcription.
3. The recording goes back through the normal pipeline (Queued → Transcribing → Preparing AI → Ready). See How does transcription work in Canto?

Your uploaded audio is reused as-is, so a retry costs nothing extra in effort and usually takes a few minutes. Most one-off failures are transient and succeed on the first retry.

What if the recording was too short or too quiet?

If transcription completes but finds nothing to transcribe, the recording opens with "The recording was too short or too quiet to produce a transcript." instead of a transcript. This isn't an error to retry — the audio genuinely contained no usable speech. Common causes:

• The recording is only a second or two long (an accidental tap on record).
• The microphone was muffled, far from the speakers, or capturing only room noise.
• The audio is music or ambience rather than speech.

Play the audio back: if you can barely hear the speech yourself, the transcriber couldn't either. For the next recording, see Get the best audio quality.

Troubleshooting

Retrying fails again

If the same recording fails repeatedly, the audio itself is likely the problem rather than a transient outage. Play it back to confirm it contains audible speech, then see My transcription is stuck or failed — that page covers stuck states, repeated failures, and when to contact support with the recording's details.

The recording is stuck in Transcribing, not Failed

A recording that sits in Transcribing or Queued for a long time without failing is a different situation — Canto also re-checks in-flight transcriptions automatically. See My transcription is stuck or failed.

The recording never uploaded

Retry transcription needs the audio in your library first. If the recording is stuck in Uploading, the problem is the upload, not transcription — keep the device online and the app open, and see My recording is lost or silent if it never completes.