What the server Recording Limit setting controls

Recording Limit is a server-level setting, not a campaign one. It governs how long recordings are allowed to run across the whole system, and it quietly affects one other thing most people never connect to it: how long a parked call hears hold music. If you administer a VICIdial box, this is the setting behind the one-hour cap everyone runs into.

The main job: capping recording length

Its primary role is to set the maximum length of a recording. On a standard install this works out to one hour, which is why a single Call recording stops at sixty minutes by default no matter how long the call keeps going. Because it lives at the server level, it applies to every campaign on the box at once, regardless of which recording extension or Recording format (WAV/MP3) a given campaign uses. Raise it and longer calls record in full; lower it and recordings get trimmed sooner everywhere.

This is the knob a System Administrator turns when someone asks why long calls keep getting cut off. It is a single number, but it has system-wide reach, so changing it is not something to do casually on a live floor.

Keep in mind what the limit is protecting against. Without a ceiling, a channel that never properly tears down could keep a recording open for hours, and a single stuck call could quietly consume an enormous amount of disk before anyone noticed. The cap turns that worst case into a bounded one. So the goal when you change it is not to remove the protection but to set it where your genuinely long calls fit while a runaway call still gets stopped.

The second job: parked call hold music

The same setting also limits how long a parked call will hear the defined Park hold music. When a customer is on Call park, the Music on hold they hear is bounded by the same Recording Limit value. So this one setting touches two seemingly unrelated behaviors, and that is worth knowing before you change it.

flowchart TD
  A[Server Recording Limit] --> B[Caps recording length system wide]
  A --> C[Caps parked call hold music time]
  B --> D[Recordings stop at the limit]
  C --> E[Parked caller music stops at the limit]
  D --> F[Applies to every campaign]
  E --> F

Setting it without surprises

Because the value is shared, think through both effects before you move it. If you raise the limit so that long calls record in full, you are also extending how long parked callers will keep hearing hold music, which may be longer than you want them sitting there. If you lower it to keep parked callers from waiting too long, you also shorten the maximum recording length for everyone. There is no per-feature split here; it is one number for both.

A safe way to change it is to pick the smallest value that covers your real needs. Look at how long your longest legitimate calls and your longest expected parks actually run, add some headroom, and set the limit there rather than to some round maximum. That keeps recordings and parked-call music both bounded close to reality, which protects your disk and your callers' patience at the same time. Make the change off-peak if you can, and spot-check a long test call and a long park afterward to confirm both behave the way you intended.

Pair any increase with a plan for disk. A higher limit means your longest calls produce bigger files, so weigh it against your retention window and your chosen format. If your real goal is just to record past an hour, the practical steps are in our note on the one-hour recording limit, and the broader recording strategy is in our call recording guide.

If you would rather not own server-level tuning at all, our hosted dialers set these limits sensibly and handle the storage behind them. See our pricing for the details.