Operator guide
Everything below lives on the meeting's control panel
(/meetings/:id/control) — the screen only you, the operator, see.
Mic setup & preflight
Pick a microphone from the dropdown and click Test mic. The meter cycles through three states: "Checking mic…", then "No signal — speak to test", then a green "Mic OK" once it hears usable audio. You can't switch microphones once you're recording — stop first.
If you click Start before the meter has heard anything, you'll see:
"No microphone signal detected yet. Speak into the mic and watch the meter, or click Start again to go live anyway."
A second click on Start goes live regardless — this is a nudge, not a hard block, for the rare case where the meter is wrong.
Keyboard shortcuts
All shortcuts are ignored while you're typing in a text field, so they never fight with normal typing.
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Start / stop recording (control panel) | Space |
| Pause / resume captions (control panel) | P |
| Open the stop-confirmation dialog (control panel) | Esc |
| New meeting (dashboard) | N |
| Focus search, where a page has one | ⌘K |
| Show the full shortcuts reference, from anywhere | ? |
Press ? on any signed-in page to pop up the same reference sheet without leaving what you're doing.
Pausing captions
Pause captions (or P) stops new captions from reaching viewers without ending the recording session — useful for a musical number, a video clip, or a break. Audio keeps flowing; press it again to resume.
While you're live
- The transcript grid shows a timestamp, the original text, and the translation for every utterance, in order.
- Speaker context is a freeform note (name and topic) that improves transcription accuracy — update it when the speaker changes.
- Display font size is a slider (24–200px) that pushes live to every connected viewer's screen — handy if the room can't read the default size.
- The QR code and display link are both on this panel, so you can re-share them mid-meeting without leaving the page.
If a connection banner appears, see Troubleshooting for what each one means.
Ending a session
Click Stop (or press Esc) to open a confirmation dialog, then confirm to end the recording. Viewers see the meeting end immediately — unless it's a recurring meeting, in which case the display just goes back to idle, ready for next week.
The meeting summary
When a session ends you land on its summary
(/meetings/:id/summary). It shows how long the session ran, the most viewers
watching at once, the credits it used and the balance you have left, plus a link to the
transcript, the export menu and a Start again
button. For a recurring meeting it also says when the next session starts and that the link
and QR code stay the same.
You get the same page when CaptionCast ends a session for you: a meeting with no audio for a long time, one that reaches the maximum session length, or one that runs out of credits. It says plainly why the captions stopped (for example "No audio for 15 minutes, so captions stopped at 11:42 to save credits"), and everything from the meeting is already saved. When your balance is low, owners and admins see Buy more credits and operators see Notify owner, which emails the owner a ready checkout link.
Recording the audio
By default CaptionCast keeps a recording of each session next to its transcript, so the meeting can be replayed with the captions synced. Owners and admins can turn that off for the whole organization (Audio recording in the organization settings), and any one meeting can override the default with the Record audio switch on its form. The page next to the switch says in plain words what it does.
The choice is read once, when you click Start, and holds for that whole session, including after a reconnect. Changing it during a live meeting applies from the next Start. While a session runs with recording off, the control panel shows an Audio not recorded chip.
What turning recording off disables
- Audio playback. The playback page says "Audio was not recorded"; the transcript below it is complete.
- Staff review. No audio is stored, so CaptionCast support cannot listen to a session to investigate transcription quality.
What it does not change: live captions, translation, the saved transcript and its exports, the viewer display, and credit use. Our speech-to-text provider still receives the live audio in order to transcribe it, whether or not a copy is kept. Recordings that were made are deleted automatically at your retention limit, or at the platform ceiling if that is sooner. If playback is missing audio, see Troubleshooting .
Locking the panel with a PIN
Set an operator PIN (4 or more digits, with confirmation) from a meeting's settings to require it before anyone can open that meeting's control panel. It only protects the control panel — the public display link never requires a PIN.