time-lapse-artifacts

A 14-Year Longitudinal Archive of Analog Drawing Process (2012–Present)

Status: Active construction release. The canonical standardized collection is indexed and usable; pre-standard and legacy holdings remain under incremental review and ingestion.

Overview

time-lapse-artifacts is a longitudinal video dataset documenting analog drawing process across multiple recording periods and acquisition conditions.

The repository contains standardized time-lapse recordings, earlier pre-standard time-lapses, and historical livestream material. Raw video is the primary record; metadata is used to identify, organize, compare, and document the recordings without imposing aesthetic classifications on the drawings.

The project scope is 2012–Present. This describes the span of the underlying recording practice and archive; it should not be interpreted to mean that material from every year in that span has already been published here.

Repository Structure

Standard_Time_Lapses/

The canonical standardized records are the MP4 files stored directly in Standard_Time_Lapses/. The nested Provenance/ subtree contains supporting records and retained historical exceptions and is not part of the canonical record set.

Files use a structured filename convention encoding documented session information such as date, finish time when known, tools, media, support, and dimensions.

metadata.csv is the machine-readable index for the published canonical records.

Historical source relationships should not be inferred from filenames alone.

Standard_Time_Lapses/Provenance/

Supporting records documenting the reconstruction and verification of historical source relationships.

2026-07-31/ preserves the completed provenance release, including the consolidated mapping between historical Series_9x12 filenames and canonical standardized records.

The former full Series_9x12 video snapshot is not retained as a second copy of the canonical dataset. Its verified relationships are preserved through mapping records, hashes, metadata, and repository history.

Unresolved_Series_9x12/ contains a very small number of distinct historical recordings retained because they are not duplicates of canonical files but currently lack sufficient documentation for promotion into the standardized collection. They should not be treated as canonical Standard_Time_Lapses records.

Pre_Standard_Time_Lapses/

Earlier time-lapse recordings that predate the standard acquisition specifications.

These recordings are kept separate from Standard_Time_Lapses/ because their capture conditions and available documentation may differ from the later standardized records.

Where metadata is incomplete, uncertainty is preserved rather than reconstructed from unsupported assumptions.

Legacy_Livestreams_2012_2016/

Historical real-time/livestream material from the earlier recording period.

This material is maintained as a distinct historical layer rather than being mixed invisibly with the standardized time-lapse collection. Organization and ingestion of this material may remain incomplete while the repository is under construction.

Metadata and Provenance

The metadata is intended to distinguish between information directly documented by the recording, information established through historical source comparison, and information that remains unresolved.

Depending on the record, provenance evidence may include:

• exact file/blob identity
• original filenames
• historical repository paths
• file sizes and hashes
• duration comparison
• visual continuity across recordings
• documented physical references
• repository commit history

Uncertain relationships are not promoted to verified relationships solely because filenames or dates appear similar.

Historical filenames are preserved in metadata where relevant even when the canonical filename has been standardized.

The canonical metadata also includes automatically extracted technical properties such as:

• playback duration
• encoded width and height
• orientation
• encoded frame rate
• video codec
• pixel format
• container
• audio presence
• repository content hash

encoded_frame_rate describes the encoded video playback rate. It should not be interpreted as the original temporal sampling rate of the drawing process.

Standard Acquisition Specifications

Effective: July 15, 2025

Beginning July 15, 2025, recordings and drawings follow the standard acquisition specifications documented in Archive_Specifications.md, unless otherwise noted in the metadata.

Individual metadata records document variables specific to each recording and any known deviations from those standard specifications.

The date and time encoded in standardized filenames represent the documented finish date and finish time of the drawing session, not the recording start time.

Where no reliable finish time is available, the time remains explicitly unknown rather than being inferred.

Canonical Status

The MP4 files stored directly in Standard_Time_Lapses/ constitute the canonical standardized collection. Files within Standard_Time_Lapses/Provenance/ are supporting provenance material and are not canonical records.

Historical source files, provenance releases, unresolved historical recordings, and pre-standard recordings are retained for documentation and comparison but are not interchangeable with canonical standardized records.

Repository organization may continue to evolve as historical material is reviewed. Reorganization does not alter the underlying video evidence, and provenance records are retained where they are necessary to explain earlier repository states.

Ownership

The creator has manually reviewed the published collection and confirms ownership of all files and depicted drawings. A previously identified exception was removed from the repository and is not part of the published collection.

Annotation State

The video collection is primarily raw and unannotated.

There are no frame-level bounding boxes, segmentation masks, pose labels, aesthetic scores, or imposed stylistic classifications. Researchers may derive such annotations independently for their own applications.

The archive does not select recordings on the basis of perceived drawing quality. Recording integrity and documentation are treated separately from aesthetic evaluation.

Potential Uses

The dataset may support research involving, among other areas:

• computer vision
• temporal and longitudinal analysis
• self-supervised video learning
• motion and motor-control analysis
• drawing-process analysis
• optical flow and trajectory extraction
• representation learning
• change over long time spans
• comparison of acquisition conditions and recording eras

These are possible uses rather than claims that the dataset has been optimized or validated for any particular downstream task.

Documentation

See:

• metadata.csv — machine-readable dataset index
• SCHEMA.md — filename and metadata conventions
• Archive_Specifications.md — standard acquisition specifications
• Standard_Time_Lapses/Provenance/ — historical mapping and provenance records

License

This dataset is released under CC BY-NC 4.0.

See the repository license metadata for the applicable terms.