If a project that was uploading successfully and had started transcribing disappears from your project list while processing, it usually means something went wrong during transcription and the upload failed.
When this happens, the system normally does not deduct your transcription minutes, and you can create a new transcription request for the content. If you find that minutes were deducted by mistake, contact us and we will help sort it out.
Retry or delete in the "Failed projects" list
Projects that failed to process are gathered in the Failed projects list, where you can retry or delete them:
Find the affected content in the failed projects list. The list shows the reason for each failure (for example "Upload failed", "Transcription failed", "Media processing failed", "No audio detected", or "Restricted YouTube content").
Click the project's [Retry] button, and the system will generate the text for your file again.
If you no longer need the request, click [Delete] to remove it; if you have many failed projects, you can also use "One-click cleanup" to clear all of them at once.
In some cases the retry option is disabled — for example, when the file itself has no audio (please re-upload a version that is not muted and has clear speech), or when a YouTube link cannot be imported directly because of membership-only content, copyright, or publishing restrictions (please download the video first, then upload it as a file).
Still failing after several retries, or shown as "Completed" but with no (or almost no) transcribed content
In some cases, a project shows "Completed" — you may even receive a completion notification — but when you open it there is no transcribed content to view or download, or only a very short segment was generated (for example, less than 1 minute of content from a 50-minute video), and retrying several times does not help.
This usually means the audio in the uploaded file itself is faulty — the file may have been corrupted during recording or export, or its audio track cannot be extracted properly. So although the system completed the workflow, there was no valid audio to transcribe. This has nothing to do with the file extension (mp4, mov, m4a, mp3), and re-uploading in a different format may fail again.
If this happens, we recommend the following:
First confirm that the original file plays normally and that you can hear clear speech. If the original file no longer plays or has no sound, use a file with working audio instead.
Convert the file into a clean audio file (mp3 is recommended), then upload it and transcribe again. Re-encoding usually fixes the audio problems in the original file so the system can extract the audio track properly.
If it still fails, contact us (hello@subanana.com or the in-app chat) with the details of the affected project, and we will check it for you.
Because the transcription was never completed successfully, these failures normally do not use up your transcription minutes; if any minutes were deducted by mistake, contact us and we will help sort it out.
Content stops at a certain point — this is not a processing failure
If your content is not missing entirely but only the first part was generated (for example, only the first 15 minutes were processed), this is usually not a failed upload — the Free plan only generates the first 15 minutes of each file. After upgrading to a paid plan, use "Continue generating transcript" / "Continue generating subtitles" in the editor to fill in the rest of the same file. There is no need to re-upload, and only the remaining duration is deducted from your minutes.
Uploads via a YouTube link keep failing
If you uploaded via a YouTube link but transcription still fails after several attempts, the video may be affected by membership-only content, copyright, or publishing restrictions, so the platform temporarily cannot import it directly from the link. In that case, you can try downloading the YouTube content as a video file, then upload it and transcribe.