pipeline-quality-audit

Pipeline Quality Audit

Judge the delivered media, not the command exit code. Prefer a recovery-first pipeline that returns a usable artifact and an observable account of repairs over one that rejects recoverable inputs and sends operational work back to the user.

Outcome contract

Define the minimum usable result from project evidence before changing the pipeline:

• media type, dimensions/aspect ratio, duration, frame rate, and required streams;
• content requirements such as a visible subject, intentional motion, continuity, or style anchors;
• consumer path that must be able to open or retrieve the artifact;
• acceptable automatic repairs, retries, fallbacks, and quality degradation.

Do not invent requirements that the caller or product does not have. A static shot, dark frame, missing audio track, or unusual aspect ratio is not a defect unless it violates the actual contract.

Recovery-first workflow

Use this order:

detect
  -> normalize or repair locally
  -> retry the failed stage with bounded changed inputs
  -> use a declared fallback or lower-cost profile
  -> quarantine the unusable attempt and retain diagnostics
  -> terminal non-delivery only when no valid artifact can be produced

For every automatic action, record the attempt, observed defect, repair/fallback chosen, resulting artifact, and final consumer probe. Do not report a repaired failure as a clean first-attempt success.

1. Detect from actual output

• Probe the produced file with stable tools such as ffprobe, decoder reads, or image statistics.
• Black-frame detection may use ffmpeg blackdetect: pix_th is the darkness threshold and pic_th is the proportion of dark pixels. Treat thresholds as project-calibrated signals, not universal truth.
• Motion or duplicate-frame checks must exempt intentionally static content.
• Validate the final delivery contract, not only an intermediate render.
• Use numeric metrics to locate suspicious segments; use the product contract or visual review to decide whether the content is acceptable.