# Failing to record more than appr. 30 seconds

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/failing-to-record-more-than-appr-30-seconds/46542>\
**Category:** Online experiments\
**Tags:** sound\
**Created:** [February 6, 2026, 11:10am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/failing-to-record-more-than-appr-30-seconds/46542 "2026-02-06T11:10:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![LeaElias](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/leaelias/32/46145_2.png) [@LeaElias](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/LeaElias)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 11:10am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/failing-to-record-more-than-appr-30-seconds/46542/1 "2026-02-06T11:10:41Z")

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Long time reader, first time writer!

**OS** (e.g. Win10): Win11  
**PsychoPy version** (e.g. 2024.2.4 Py 3.8): 2025.2.3  
**What are you trying to achieve?**

I am using a microphone component to record my participants describing the content of an image. They are supposed to do this 9 times for 20 seconds each. However, when I run the experiment online, pavlovia only saves the first 30-40 seconds properly, the rest is ‘saved’ as empty .webm files. I am a linguist and the recordings are the central data I need to collect, transcriptions will not do. The experiment works fine offline.

**What did you try to make it work?:**

- specify that files should be saved as .mp3
- use different browsers and computers to run the experiment

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**Author:** ![wakecarter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/wakecarter/32/5753_2.png) [@wakecarter](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/wakecarter)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 9:10pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/failing-to-record-more-than-appr-30-seconds/46542/2 "2026-02-06T21:10:37Z")

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I have microphone recordings which I’m pretty sure work in loops online with no additional code. Does your mc component have a duration (mine are blank)? Is there an ITI?