Questions

Everything here describes what the service actually does today. Where a question is about money or your recordings, the page that governs it is linked.

Before you start

What can I upload?

Audio or video: mp3, m4a, wav, ogg, opus, flac, aac, mp4, mkv, mov, avi, webm. If you already have a transcript, send that instead — srt, txt or md — and skip the transcription entirely.

Up to 2 GB in one upload — around seventy hours as audio — and up to three hours per file.

Can I upload video?

Yes. Only the sound is used: the picture is discarded before a word is transcribed, and no book has pictures in it.

That matters for the size. An hour of audio is somewhere between 30 and 60 MB depending on how it was recorded; an hour of video is a gigabyte or more. So where 2 GB is seventy hours of audio, it is roughly one lesson as video. If you have the audio, send that: it uploads in seconds rather than twenty minutes, and nothing is lost.

Can I try it before paying?

Yes. One hour of recording, free, with no card. It is one hour once rather than one hour a month, and it runs straight through instead of waiting in the queue, so you see the result quickly.

How long does a book take?

A single lesson is usually ready in about ten minutes. Longer recordings take longer — most of the time is transcription, and that follows the length of the audio. Several lessons in one go are transcribed one after another, so a series takes roughly the sum of its parts.

A lesson over twenty minutes waits about six minutes in a queue, and that queue is what makes the hours on each plan as generous as they are. Anything shorter runs straight through — and so does your free trial hour, so the trial is quicker still.

You do not have to keep the page open. An email arrives with a link when the book is ready, and another if anything goes wrong.

Which languages?

Arabic and English. A lesson taught in English that recites in Arabic keeps the Arabic in Arabic script — the transcriber is told about both languages on every recording, not only the one the lesson is in.

Several lessons at once

If I upload ten files, do I get one book or ten?

One book, bound in the order shown on the screen, with one contents page. A series of lessons is one volume, and that is what almost everybody means.

If you want ten separate books instead, there is a checkbox under the file list that says so. It appears as soon as there is more than one file.

What decides the order they are bound in?

You do. The files are listed and numbered as you add them, and each row can be moved up or down before you start — the order on the screen is the order of the book.

When the names carry an order — lesson1 to lesson12, «الدرس ١» to «الدرس ١٠», or a date — they are put in that order for you. lesson10 goes after lesson2, not between lesson1 and lesson2. When the names carry no order, they are left exactly as you picked them, and nothing is rearranged once you have moved a row yourself.

What if I give ten separate books one title?

The title you type becomes the series, and each book is named after its own file. Ten books are not ten things with one name between them.

What if I run out of hours half-way through a batch?

Nothing is sent. The hours needed are added up and checked before the first file goes, so a batch that does not fit is refused whole, with a message saying how much is needed and how much is left.

If one is still refused part-way — hours used elsewhere in the meantime — sending stops there and you are told how many were accepted. Those are already in your library, and they come off the list, so pressing Start again sends only the rest. You cannot end up paying for the same lesson twice.

What if my series is more than 2 GB?

Send it in batches. Each batch becomes its own book, and then your library joins them into one volume: tick the books, give the volume a title, and press Join into one book. It costs you nothing — no lesson is transcribed twice and no page is re-made, so no hours come off your balance.

For a single contents page across the whole volume, set the contents page to «no» on each batch. Join them, then put the joined PDF through the free contents-page maker, which builds one contents page for the finished volume.

This is also the answer for a دورة that runs weekly. Upload each lesson the day it is taught, and join the whole term into one book at the end — you do not have to wait and send twenty-four lessons at once.

The book

Does it change what the shaykh said?

That is the question this product exists to answer, so it is worth being exact.

Verbatim sends no text to any model at all. Every word as recorded, paragraphed at the pauses. Nothing can be reworded because nothing is read by anything that could reword it.

Clean transcript punctuates and paragraphs, and sets verses and hadith apart. Nothing is summarised and nothing is reworded.

Study edition also divides the lesson into named sections with a contents page. The headings are the only words in the book that are not the speaker's.

How do I know it is faithful?

Every book comes with a report, and it is the part worth reading. It tells you how much of the recording is traced to the audio second by second, which verses were checked against the mushaf and which were not, where the audio was unclear and at what minute, and any place where the meaning may have shifted — with the recording's words beside the book's, so you can judge.

It reports what it could not do as plainly as what it could. A report that only ever said «fine» would be worth nothing.

How are Qur'anic verses handled?

Every verse is matched against the mushaf and set in ﴿ ﴾ with its sura and ayah number. A verse is identified by the mushaf rather than by how the speaker introduced it — so a verse introduced as though it were a hadith is still checked as a verse.

A verse that does not match is flagged, never silently corrected. And a rendering of the meaning in another language is never put inside the brackets: only the mushaf's own words go there.

What if the recording is poor?

Unclear stretches are marked in the report with the minute and second, so you can go back and listen. They are not guessed at and not quietly smoothed over.

What do I get at the end?

Both a typeset, print-ready PDF and an editable Word file. Not one or the other — both, every time, on every plan.

Your recordings, and your money

What happens to my recording?

It is deleted seven days after you send it, whether or not you ask. Your book stays until you delete it, and deleting it really deletes it.

Your recordings and your books are never used to train any model, ours or anyone else's. The privacy page has the detail.

Who owns the book?

You do. We claim nothing in it.

What happens if a book fails?

The hours come back automatically — you are not charged for a book you did not get — and an email tells you, rather than leaving you refreshing a page.

This is automatic for up to three failed books in a month. Past that, please write to us and we will sort it out by hand: repeated failures mean something is wrong that a refund does not fix.

What if I record more than my plan covers?

Unused hours roll over into the next month, up to one month's worth. Past that you can add credits, which are bought by the hour and never expire.

Credits are not an alternative to a plan — they sit beside one. They are spent after your plan's hours, so they cover the month you go over, and they work on their own if you would rather not have a plan at all.

If you run out of everything, uploads stop. Going over your plan never charges you by itself: credits are something you buy deliberately, and nothing is bought because you uploaded too much.

Can I get my money back?

Thirty days from your first payment, less the hours you actually used, charged at the price you paid and rounded in your favour. The sum starts at your first payment, so the free trial hour — which comes before it — is never part of it. The refunds page has the worked examples.

Can I cancel?

Payments are not open yet, so there is nothing to cancel — nobody has been charged anything. The day they open, cancelling stops the renewal at once and you keep the hours you have paid for.

Closing your account entirely is a separate thing, and that button is there now. It waits seven days before anything is deleted, and signing in during those seven days calls it off.

Something here not answered? info@lessonscriber.com