VALIDATION.md

Validation Report

Scope

The current post-v0.3 active-construction candidate validates locally and against an immutable pull-request revision:

• all 404 canonical Standard rows and candidate direct Standard MP4 paths
• all 128 active Pre-Standard rows and direct Pre-Standard MP4 paths
• persistent record identity and cross-tier uniqueness
• locally audited byte sizes and technical metadata for the 19 new fragments
• container-header technical metadata for every active or candidate MP4
• candidate filename rules, field types, numeric ranges, and stored-orientation consistency
• a new 19-row, 15-field relationship sidecar covering canonical fragments across four complete sequences, plus regression validation of the frozen 27-row August 27 sidecar

One 6,587,685,497-byte provenance object is promoted to the canonical root, and the distinct 496,296,535-byte object previously occupying its corrected name is moved to its curator-confirmed April 4 path. No video bytes are transcoded, replaced, downloaded in full, or newly uploaded. The promoted object's properties were read from its public MP4 header using HTTP range requests. Sizes and content identities were read from the Hub repository inventory.

The later Standard ingestion adds 17 creator-verified media objects totaling 9,289,459,921 bytes. Every addition was fully decoded before upload, all 17 local SHA-256 identities are unique, and none matches an existing Hub media object. The batch is indexed without changing the 29-field schema.

The July 13 tier promotion moves one existing 141,221,810-byte object from Pre-Standard to Standard without changing its payload, Xet identity, or stable record ID. All 1,205 video frames and the audio stream decode successfully. The clip begins after drawing has started and reaches a completed, signed endpoint. The promotion moves the protocol identifier coherently to standard-2025-07-13 and preserves the 485-record total.

The August 2026 Standard ingestion adds three creator-verified media objects totaling 50,478,909,746 bytes. All 231,383 video frames and every audio stream decode successfully. The batch includes the first 14 × 17 in Standard record, retains Rec01 because Rec02 is expected, and preserves the existing 29-field schema and protocol identifier.

The August 22–23 recording-sequence ingestion adds three creator-verified media objects totaling 51,022,796,325 bytes. All 233,723 video frames and every audio stream decode. Rec03 produced one end-of-stream non-monotonic DTS warning from FFmpeg's null output during combined-stream validation; direct inspection found strictly increasing source packet and decoded-frame timestamps at the tail. The batch retains literal Rec01 through Rec03 sequence suffixes and documents a creator-confirmed Rec03 change from Pelikan black to unmarked, unknown-brand black ink at approximately 00:04:59.

The August 24–27 fragment-sequence ingestion adds 22 creator-confirmed, unchanged Framelapse source objects totaling 17,389,875,055 bytes and 3,391.699091 seconds of encoded playback. They represent five complete sequences and are stored as landscape video without audio. Five unchanged InShot outputs remain nested noncanonical provenance derivatives and are excluded from active row, byte, duration, orientation, and audio totals. The relationship sidecar records all 27 media objects without changing the 29-field video schema, standard-2025-07-13, or historical rows, and without introducing a global work_id.

The August 28–29 fragment-sequence ingestion adds 19 creator-confirmed, unchanged Framelapse source objects totaling 10,661,404,849 bytes and 2,089.745536 seconds of encoded playback. They represent four complete sequences containing 10, 4, 2, and 3 contiguous recordings. Full packet-stream demux passed for 19/19 files and decoded start/middle/end checks passed for 57/57 samples. All 19 ordinary SHA-256 values are unique. The files are stored as landscape HEVC without audio; their literal com.android.capture.fps=5.000000 header value is not used to infer real drawing time. No derivative is included.

Result

LOCAL STRUCTURAL AND IMMUTABLE-PR PASS — zero validation errors

Check	Result
Active indexed rows	532
Canonical Standard rows	404
Pre-Standard rows	128
Metadata columns per index	29
Unique persistent record_id values	532
Complete encoded-video metadata with remote Xet binding	532/532
Stored-orientation conflicts	0
Duplicate local SHA-256 values among the 19 new media objects	0
New media objects remotely bound by SHA-256, size, and Xet identity	19/19
New fragment-sequence relationship rows	19
Relationship fields	15
New canonical fragments / noncanonical derivatives	19 / 0
New owner-confirmed complete sequences	4
Inventory-binding regression tests	5/5

AUGUST 28–29 REMOTE PR INVENTORY AND RELATIONSHIP VALIDATION — PASS

The media-only PR head 0c421b555a2558887b65b0b25380b35c642fa7e1 contained exactly the 19 planned MP4 additions relative to pinned base c5c4da8fa880e39a56a2cfd032c5c87072442fe1, with zero deletions and zero changed existing paths. From that head to metadata-bearing commit 429541ae7f93c869056df956873f3441d580914c, only the root metadata.csv changed. Its remote receipt matches the local 227,478-byte file at SHA-256 0c2994092365566142ed49d41d63ac8083aa2b611709a779ac72106650283d4b.

Validation at the metadata-bearing commit confirmed 404/404 direct Standard paths, 128/128 direct Pre-Standard paths, all 19 new relationship paths, ordinary SHA-256 values, byte sizes, Xet identities, and all 19 canonical record_id joins. The relationship validator reported 19 canonical-fragment rows, no derivatives, four owner-confirmed complete sequences, and zero errors. The dated sidecar pins that immutable commit and is committed afterward to avoid a circular self-reference. Viewer settlement and merge are separate gates and are not asserted by this PASS.

PRIOR AUGUST 24–27 REMOTE PR INVENTORY AND RELATIONSHIP VALIDATION — PASS

The sidecar's source_hub_revision pins the immutable metadata-bearing PR commit 8a21015210c19936d3b18175ae3f4061ae1e5d8d. At that revision, validation confirmed 385/385 direct Standard paths, 128/128 direct Pre-Standard paths, all 27 relationship paths, ordinary SHA-256 values, byte sizes, Xet identities, and all 22 canonical record_id joins. The remote root metadata.csv receipt matches the local 208,651-byte file at SHA-256 0de0b9111effa84cd41b13f93e6627b9b94f33f648dd29ded5d4eb8a85c5bfad. The relationship validator reported 27 rows, 22 canonical fragments, five noncanonical derivatives, five complete sets, and zero errors.

The media-only PR head bb4160045cae21a71bf360278549398dc9d2a028 contained exactly the 27 planned additions relative to the pinned base, with zero deletions or changed existing paths. The metadata-bearing revision has exactly the expected 39-path cumulative diff and zero deletions. Viewer settlement and merge are separate gates and are not asserted by this PASS.

Both Hub builder configurations explicitly declare the same 29 features. This prevents per-CSV inference from representing an integer-only canonical encoded_frame_rate column as int64 while representing historical fractional rates as float64 in the Pre-Standard configuration.

Audited statistics

• Total indexed playback duration: 54.170 hours
• Canonical playback duration: 44.574 hours
• Pre-Standard playback duration: 9.596 hours
• Exact median active-record playback duration: 303.7175 seconds
• Total indexed video size: 2,030,832,764,048 bytes (2.031 TB decimal)
• Stored orientation: 479 portrait, 53 landscape
• Audio streams: 485 present, 47 absent
• Unknown finish dates: 9
• Unknown finish times: 62

Outstanding warnings

1. Fifteen canonical 30×40 records use support = Paper, while Archive_Specifications.md describes the 30×40 support as Illustration Board. The curator must determine whether the rows or the specification are wrong; this release candidate does not manufacture a correction.
2. Three creator-confirmed Standard records are shortened derivatives rather than full-duration masters. Their start/end limitations remain explicit in notes; none is represented as a complete capture lineage. The promoted July 13 record starts mid-process and reaches a completed, signed endpoint.
3. The 2026-01-11 and 2026-02-08 additions each produced one non-monotonic duplicate video-timestamp warning during validation but decoded completely. Rec03 from 2026-08-23 produced one end-of-stream non-monotonic DTS warning from FFmpeg's null output during combined-stream validation, while source packet and decoded-frame timestamps at the tail remained strictly increasing. The 2026-01-11 recording also has pronounced lighting variation.
4. Five Pre-Standard records retain time = 00:00 while their finish date is unknown. Confirm whether those are documented midnight times or historical placeholders before normalizing them.
5. Two Pre-Standard records retain incomplete material fields because the filename evidence is insufficient or ambiguous.
6. Most masters retain an audio stream. Stream presence does not establish meaningful signal, and rights/privacy review remains necessary.
7. Encoded frame rate is playback rate and cannot be used as original drawing-time sampling.
8. The 2012–2016 layer has no public video payload at this snapshot.
9. Separate Hub configurations prevent tier mixing, but no leakage-safe train/validation/test partition has been defined. The dated fragment_set_label is not a global work_id, so no work-level split is currently possible.

Reproduction

Validate both active indexes:

python tools/validate_metadata.py metadata.csv \
  --pre-standard-metadata Pre_Standard_Time_Lapses/metadata.csv

For the strongest repository-inventory check, first augment the pinned Hub API JSON with the Xet file IDs returned by the same revision's resolve headers:

curl --fail --location \
  --output repo_api_blobs.json \
  "https://huggingface.co/api/datasets/maxwellinked/time-lapse-artifacts/revision/<40-hex-commit>?blobs=true"

python tools/capture_hub_inventory.py \
  --repo-json repo_api_blobs.json \
  --repo-id maxwellinked/time-lapse-artifacts \
  --revision "<40-hex-commit>" \
  --output repo_inventory_xet.json

The helper also fetches the small root metadata.csv at that immutable revision and records its exact SHA-256, byte size, and X-Repo-Commit receipt under validationFiles. The relationship validator rejects a local metadata file whose bytes do not match that receipt.

Then validate paths, Xet identities, and exact byte sizes together:

python tools/validate_metadata.py metadata.csv \
  --pre-standard-metadata Pre_Standard_Time_Lapses/metadata.csv \
  --repo-inventory-json repo_inventory_xet.json

Validate each dated relationship sidecar against the immutable metadata-bearing revision recorded in its source_hub_revision. The reusable validator checks unique paths and identities, exact sizes, canonical record_id joins, contiguous RecNN positions, set-local derivative sources when present, and exclusion of nested derivatives from both active indexes and Viewer configurations. The frozen August 27 sidecar and the canonical-only August 29 sidecar are validated separately against their own pinned inventories.

python tools/validate_fragment_relationships.py \
  --relationships Standard_Time_Lapses/Provenance/2026-08-27/fragment_sequence_relationships.csv \
  --metadata metadata.csv \
  --repo-inventory-json repo_inventory_xet.json

The inventory-binding regression suite is self-contained and performs no Hub writes:

python tools/test_inventory_binding.py

A plain JSON list of repository paths is also accepted through the legacy --repo-files-json spelling, but that checks membership only; it cannot independently verify hashes or byte sizes.

Use --viewer-json only with a Viewer snapshot produced from the same repository revision and configuration under review.

The Pre-Standard technical enrichment is reproducible from a pinned Hub API response containing siblings with LFS metadata and an FFmpeg executable:

python tools/enrich_prestandard.py \
  --metadata Pre_Standard_Time_Lapses/metadata.csv \
  --repo-json repo_inventory_xet.json \
  --revision "<revision-under-review>" \
  --ffmpeg /path/to/ffmpeg \
  --cache prestandard_probe_cache.json \
  --output Pre_Standard_Time_Lapses/metadata.csv

The revision is intentionally explicit: reproducing against a moving branch would weaken both identity and technical-metadata claims.

The canonical v0.2 index remains reproducible from its pinned 335-row source plus the three audited additions:

python tools/repair_metadata.py source_metadata.csv metadata.csv \
  --additions tools/metadata_additions_v0.2.csv