Why VICIdial recordings stop at one hour and how to extend them

If you have ever pulled a long call and found the recording cut off at exactly sixty minutes, that is not a bug. VICIdial caps a single recording at one hour by default. Most calls never come close, but if you run long support calls or recorded webinars you will hit it. Here is where the limit lives and how to move it.

Where the one hour comes from

The limit is a timeout on the recording itself, set at the server level. The recording extensions that handle your Call recording, such as the default 8309 for WAV or 8310 for GSM, are configured to run for up to one hour on a standard install. The extension number does not set the cap; the recording timeout does. That is why switching between WAV and GSM changes the format but not the maximum length.

The one-hour default is a guardrail. A stuck channel or a forgotten open line could otherwise record indefinitely and quietly eat a disk. Capping it keeps a single runaway recording from filling storage on its own, regardless of the Recording format (WAV/MP3) in use.

How the cap is applied

flowchart TD
  A[Recording starts] --> B[Server recording timeout running]
  B --> C{Call reaches one hour}
  C -->|No| D[Recording continues]
  C -->|Yes| E[Recording stops at the cap]
  E --> F[Call may keep going untracked]
  D --> G[Recording ends with the call]

When a call crosses the hour mark, the recording stops even though the conversation may continue. The agent and customer keep talking; the file just ends. If you do not know the limit is there, it looks like recordings are randomly truncating on your longest, often most important, calls.

The first thing to do is confirm the hour mark is really the cause. Pull a few of the truncated files and check their length. If they all stop at almost exactly sixty minutes, the timeout is your answer. If they cut off at varying lengths, you are likely chasing a different problem such as a dropped channel or a network issue, not the recording limit at all. It is worth ruling that out before anyone touches a server setting, because the fix for a genuine cap is very different from the fix for flaky audio.

Extending the limit

To record past an hour, your System Administrator needs to raise the timeout on recordings to a higher number. This is a server-side change, not something you set on the campaign screen, so it touches every recording on the box once it is done. Decide on a realistic ceiling first; setting it absurdly high reopens the runaway-recording risk the cap was protecting you from. The setting that governs this is covered in our note on the server Recording Limit setting.

Before you raise it, do the disk math. Longer recordings on a busy floor add up fast, and if you record a lot of calls you should pair a higher limit with a tighter retention policy or a compressed Codec such as GSM. If most of your long calls are rare, it may be cheaper to leave the cap alone and accept that the occasional marathon call gets trimmed. The full set of length and size controls is in our call recording guide.

If wrangling server timeouts is not how you want to spend your week, our hosted dialers handle the recording limits and storage planning for you. Have a look at our pricing to see what is included.