Troubleshooting

The control panel and display screen both surface problems as banners rather than failing silently. Here's what each one means and what to do about it.

"Reconnecting audio. The audio link dropped. Captions resume on their own; you don't need to do anything."

Shown on the control panel when the audio channel carrying your microphone to the transcription pipeline drops — a network blip, most often — even though the page itself is still connected. It reconnects automatically and the banner clears on its own; if it stays up for more than a few seconds, check your internet connection. If the whole device loses its connection you will see Connection lost instead, with a retry; the last caption stays on the viewers' screens until the link is back.

"Capture stopped on this device"

"Capture stopped on this device. The browser stopped sending microphone audio. The tab may have gone to sleep or the mic was unplugged."

The meeting is still live but no browser tab is sending it audio: the tab that was capturing was reloaded or closed, the computer went to sleep, or the microphone was unplugged. Click Resume capture on this device on the control panel to pick capture back up here, or stop the meeting. A live meeting with no audio for a long time is stopped automatically, and you get an email when that happens.

"Captions stalled. Audio is coming in but no captions for 20 s. Reconnecting to the caption service."

This is different from the reconnect banner above: audio is still flowing, but no new caption has come back for a while. CaptionCast reconnects to the caption service by itself and the banner clears when captions return. Confirm the speaker is actually talking into the selected mic. If it does not clear, stop and start the recording again.

Viewer sees "Reconnecting transcription…"

Viewers see their own small "Reconnecting transcription…" pill exactly when the operator's "Captions stalled" banner above is showing — it's the same transcription stall, signaled to every viewer's screen. It won't appear for an ordinary pause in speech (end of a talk, a prayer, a page turn); check the operator's control panel for the matching banner.

No microphone signal

If Test mic never reaches "Mic OK," you likely have the wrong input selected, the mic is muted at the OS level, or the browser hasn't been granted microphone permission. See Operator guide for the preflight check that runs when you click Start.

Out of minutes

If Start refuses to go live and mentions your captioning minutes, your organization's balance has run out. See Billing & credit packs to top up.

Playback says the audio was not recorded

"Audio was not recorded"

Recording was off when that session started, so no audio was kept and there is nothing to play. The transcript underneath is complete: captions, translations and exports are not affected by the recording setting. The setting is read once, when you click Start, so switching it while a meeting is live applies from the next Start; the control panel shows "Audio not recorded" for as long as a session runs with recording off. For a recurring meeting each session keeps its own answer, so one week can have audio and the next not.

To record from now on, an owner or admin turns on Record meeting audio under Audio recording in the organization settings, or the Record audio switch on that one meeting. Audio that was never recorded cannot be added afterwards. If a session was recorded but the audio is gone, it was deleted once it reached the retention limit your organization set (or the platform ceiling); the transcript follows its own retention window. See the Operator guide for what recording does and does not change.

PIN-locked panel

If a meeting's control panel asks for a PIN, someone on your team set one for that meeting. Ask them for it — it only protects the control panel, so the display link and QR code work for viewers either way.