Audio storage, the bitrate policy, and automatic downgrading

Capture quality. New in-browser recordings are captured at 32 kbps mono Opus (48 kbps AAC on iOS). This is a deliberate choice: speech is transparent at that rate in Opus, and the transcription engines downsample to 16 kHz mono anyway. It keeps storage (which is metered and billable) roughly four times smaller than the browser default.

Automatic ageing. A nightly job steps stored audio down to an archival floor. Two triggers:

1. Age: audio older than 12 months.
2. Lapse: audio belonging to an organisation whose paid subscription ended, but only once the day-60 email has warned that its recording audio and video are over the Free plan's 2 GB (see After cancellation: the 90-day clock). An account that reactivates within 60 days, or fits within 2 GB, is never re-encoded for having cancelled.

The floor is 16 kbps mono 16 kHz for Opus (.webm/.ogg) and 32 kbps mono 16 kHz for AAC (.mp4/.m4a): AAC gets more headroom because it degrades much worse at low rates.

What is and isn't touched.

• Only audio is downgraded. Video files are never re-encoded, so bot meetings and uploaded videos keep their original quality (and their original storage footprint) forever.
• Only files in myScribe's own storage. Anything still pointing at an external provider is left alone.
• .wav and .mp3 are skipped rather than guessed at.
• Each file is only ever downgraded once: there's no compounding generational loss.
• If the re-encode would come out bigger than the original (which happens on very short clips), it's abandoned and the original is kept.
• At most 200 files are processed per night; the rest roll over.

Why it isn't punitive. When a cancelled account over 2 GB reaches its removal date, the audio and video of its newest recordings that fit within the free tier's included storage are kept; older recordings keep their transcripts, summaries and tasks but lose their media. Halving file size first means roughly twice as many recordings keep their audio.

Limits and gotchas.

• There is no opt-out and no UI for any of this. Nothing tells the user their year-old audio has been re-encoded. Transcripts, summaries, tasks and highlights are completely unaffected: only playback fidelity changes.
• Uploaded files do not record a capture bitrate, so they are treated as unknown and become candidates for the 12-month age sweep regardless of how they were encoded.
• Storage counts against the plan's included GB. Over the pool with a card on file, you're simply billed for the overage (whatever you used beyond what your plan includes). Over the pool without one, new captures are gated (Recording audio in the browser).