Datasets:

RuthBiney
/

Ampe-DB

It explains the verified movement labels, deterministic derived annotations, pseudonymous participant information, technical quality indicators, and historical annotation products that were audited but not accepted as canonical ground truth.

The guiding principle is:

Only labels whose provenance and meaning have been verified are included as canonical V1 ground truth.

Automatically generated annotations must not be presented as human-verified measurements unless their provenance and validation support that claim.

2. Canonical Interaction Records

Each canonical V1 record represents one segmented dyadic interaction clip derived from the Ghanaian game Ampe.

The canonical record identifier is clip_id.

Characteristic	Count
Canonical interaction records	637
Unique complete-file RGB/audio SHA-256 hashes	557

The canonical annotation file is:

annotations/ampe_db_v1_labels.csv

It contains one row for each of the 637 canonical interaction records.

Exact duplicate records are retained as separate canonical records for provenance. However, all records with identical underlying RGB/audio content must remain within the same benchmark partition.

Some historical benchmark files use clip_id_canonical rather than clip_id.

These fields refer to the same canonical record concept and should be reconciled carefully when joining the benchmark files with the release manifest.

3. Primary Annotation: Movement Class

The primary verified semantic annotation is:

movement_class

It contains four allowed values:

Class	Canonical records
`left_left`	200
`left_right`	134
`right_left`	114
`right_right`	189
Total	637

The labels describe the stored two-token movement configuration observed in each interaction clip.

3.1 Interpretation

The safest verified interpretation is relational.

Class	Verified interpretation
`left_left`	Both movement tokens have the value left
`right_right`	Both movement tokens have the value right
`left_right`	The movement tokens differ, with the stored order left then right
`right_left`	The movement tokens differ, with the stored order right then left

These labels are computational descriptors of movement configurations. They do not encode the complete rules or cultural meaning of Ampe.

3.2 Critical Token-Ordering Limitation

The V1 audit did not independently establish that the first and second movement tokens correspond to the canonical player_1 and player_2 identities.

Consequently, the following interpretation is not independently verified:

left_right = player_1 left and player_2 right.

Similarly, the following is not independently verified:

right_left = player_1 right and player_2 left.

The four-class movement label itself is verified. Its token-to-participant role mapping is not.

Models may use the four-class target, but publications and software should not assign unsupported participant-specific meanings to the token positions.

4. Derived Annotation: Movement Relation

The binary movement-relation target is:

movement_relation

It is deterministically derived from the verified four-class movement configuration.

Movement class	Derived movement relation
`left_left`	`same_leg_configuration`
`right_right`	`same_leg_configuration`
`left_right`	`different_leg_configuration`
`right_left`	`different_leg_configuration`

The derived class distribution is:

Movement relation	Records
`same_leg_configuration`	389
`different_leg_configuration`	248
Total	637

The binary movement relation is not an independently annotated label.

It is a deterministic transformation of movement_class.

This distinction must be preserved in research papers, model descriptions, and dataset documentation.

5. Pseudonymous Participant Identity

Ampe-DB V1 contains 15 pseudonymously represented participants:

P01–P15

Canonical participant assignments were recovered and manually reviewed during the identity-recovery stage.

All 637 interaction records have canonical participant assignments in the release metadata.

These participant identifiers support reproducible participant-aware and pair-aware evaluation.

Real-world participant names and the internal identity-recovery mapping are excluded from the intended release.

Pseudonymous participant identity is a verified record-level annotation, but it remains participant-linked information and is subject to applicable privacy and distribution requirements.

6. Participant-Pair Annotations

Each canonical record includes participant-pair information.

The V1 collection contains:

Pair representation	Count
Ordered participant-pair configurations	14
Unordered participant pairs	11

The difference arises because some pairs appear in both Player 1 / Player 2 orders.

Participant-pair membership is important for scientific evaluation because pair composition and movement-class distribution are strongly associated.

Several participant pairs do not contain examples from every movement class.

Researchers should therefore account for participant-pair structure when constructing and interpreting benchmarks.

7. Participant Metadata Files

The canonical release includes three dedicated participant-metadata files.

File	Content
`metadata/participants.csv`	One record for each of the 15 pseudonymous participants
`metadata/participant_pairs.csv`	One record for each of the 11 unordered participant pairs
`metadata/clip_participant_mapping.csv`	Clip-level participant and pair assignments for all 637 interaction records

7.1 Clip-to-Participant Mapping

The clip-to-participant mapping includes:

clip_id
video_filename
player_1_id
player_2_id
pair_id_ordered
pair_id_unordered
movement_class
movement_relation

The canonical master manifest also includes participant and pair identifiers for the interaction records.

7.2 Internal Identity Confidence

Historical audit materials include identity-confidence and review-status fields.

These describe the identity-recovery process rather than the semantics of the Ampe interaction.

They remain internal quality-control information and are not included in the clean release metadata.

They must not be treated as supervised prediction targets.

8. Exact-Duplicate Provenance

Canonical metadata include information about exact duplicate RGB/audio media.

Relevant attributes include:

Media SHA-256
Exact-duplicate indicator
Duplicate-group identifier
Duplicate-group size

The V1 audit identified:

Metric	Count
Exact-duplicate groups	78
Records in duplicate groups	158
Redundant records beyond one representative per unique hash	80

No exact-duplicate group contained conflicting verified movement classes.

Duplicate membership is a provenance and benchmark-splitting attribute, not a semantic activity label.

Complete-file RGB/audio SHA-256 is the canonical exact-duplicate grouping unit.

Pose-file equality must not be used as a substitute because independently generated pose files for byte-identical videos may differ numerically.

9. Technical Pose-Quality Annotations

Ampe-DB V1 includes technical information describing the quality and coverage of canonical normalized pose representations.

Relevant quality indicators include:

Pose availability
Structural validation status
Frame coverage
Row coverage
Frame-player-group coverage
Missing frame-player groups
Partial landmark groups
Landmark visibility summaries

These are technical quality-control measurements, not semantic ground-truth labels.

The original canonical pose audit found 93 clips with at least one missing frame-player group relative to the source videos.

Researchers applying quality filters must report the criteria, exclusions, and resulting class and participant-pair distributions.

Further information is provided in docs/POSE_FORMAT.md.

10. Technical Audio-Quality Annotations

Technical audio metadata describe recorded stream characteristics.

These may include:

Audio-stream availability
Audio decoding status
Codec
Sample rate
Channel count
Channel layout
Audio/video duration difference
Signal level
Digital-silence flag
Low-level review flag

These fields describe technical audio properties.

They do not establish ground truth for acoustic events such as speech, clapping, footsteps, landing sounds, or rhythm.

11. Pose-Derived Skeleton Outputs

The intended release includes three skeleton collections:

skeleton/csv/
skeleton/json/
skeleton/videos/

These contain derived two-person keypoint data and rendered skeleton animations.

Skeleton representations originate from the RGB pose-extraction process and, for selected clips, subsequent quality-control corrections.

They are not independent human annotations and must not be treated as a separate semantic ground-truth modality.

The original canonical normalized pose files in pose/ remain the reference representation for the original V1 pose benchmark.

Subsequent Skeleton Corrections

Some skeleton representations were reviewed and corrected after the original processing and audit.

These corrections addressed problems such as limb positioning, tracking inconsistencies, and disagreement between rendered skeleton movements and the corresponding RGB recordings.

A corrected skeleton representation does not automatically establish independently observed anatomical ground truth.

Likewise, correction of a skeleton CSV, JSON, or animation does not imply that the original canonical normalized pose CSV was modified.

The final publication collection should retain one selected skeleton representation per canonical clip identifier and document applicable corrections and validation status.

12. Historical Automatic Movement Annotations

The historical research workspace contains automatically generated movement annotations.

These annotations were compared with the verified movement classes during the V1 audit.

Overall agreement was approximately:

23.86%

The historical automatic movement labels are therefore not accepted as canonical V1 semantic ground truth.

They should not be used as authoritative classification labels.

A separate methodological study may examine the historical annotation algorithm, but it must clearly distinguish those automatic outputs from the verified movement labels.

13. Historical Frame-Level Labels

Historical annotation files contain frame-level outputs generated using an automatic ankle-comparison procedure.

The audit identified:

35,004 historical frame-level rows.

These values represent algorithmic estimates.

They are not human-verified frame-level semantic annotations and must not be presented as canonical temporal ground truth.

14. Historical Landing-Frame Predictions

Historical annotation files also include landing-frame predictions.

The V1 audit found:

402 clips with a non-null historical landing-frame value
Every non-null value was frame 2

This distribution is degenerate and does not provide credible landing-event ground truth.

The historical landing-frame annotations were therefore rejected.

They must not be used as verified landing labels in V1 benchmark experiments.

15. Temporal Annotation Status

Canonical V1 does not include verified ground truth for:

Landing frame
Take-off frame
Movement-decision frame
Temporal lag
Synchronization timing
Foot-contact timing
Clap timing

Any future event-level temporal benchmark requires a validated annotation layer with clearly defined events, annotation procedures, and quality checks.

Where appropriate, manual temporal annotation should first be performed at the unique RGB/audio-content level.

Annotations may then be propagated to byte-identical canonical records, provided the event timing and associated provenance remain applicable.

16. Synchronization and Temporal-Lag Labels

Historical project descriptions referenced synchronization and temporal-lag annotations.

The V1 audit did not identify independently verified annotations suitable for canonical ground truth for either task.

Accordingly:

Synchronization classification is not a currently supported canonical labeled task.
Temporal-lag estimation does not have verified V1 target values.
Historical millisecond-level lag claims should not be carried into the publication unless independently validated.

The existence of synchronized video and embedded audio is not equivalent to having human-verified synchronization-event labels.

17. Winner and Round-Outcome Labels

Some benchmark artifacts include the field:

winner_participant_id

This variable is an auxiliary rule-derived outcome.

It is not an independently observed or manually verified winner label.

It is not part of the canonical file:

annotations/ampe_db_v1_labels.csv

Researchers must not describe it as primary V1 ground truth.

Outcome interpretation also depends on rule and role semantics, including movement-token ordering that has not been independently mapped to canonical participant identity ordering.

Claims about actual gameplay winners therefore require separate validation.

18. Recording-Session Provenance

Canonical V1 does not contain a verified session_id.

Historical file timestamps were investigated but rejected as a reliable proxy for capture-session provenance.

Researchers must not infer recording sessions from file modification dates and present those inferences as observed session ground truth.

Session-held-out benchmarks are not supported by the existing canonical provenance.

19. Full-Game Recordings

The wider research workspace contains 27 longer full-game recordings.

However, a verified mapping between these recordings and the 637 canonical segmented clips has not been established.

Full-game identity must not be used as a verified session or clip-grouping annotation.

The longer recordings are outside the canonical V1 release.

20. Annotation Verification Categories

Ampe-DB distinguishes five annotation-status categories.

Category	Definition	Examples
Verified	Directly supported by the canonical audit and accepted as V1 ground truth	Movement class, pseudonymous participant identity, participant-pair membership
Derived	Deterministically calculated from verified data or defined rules	Binary movement relation, auxiliary rule-derived outcome
Technical QC	Describes file or representation quality rather than interaction semantics	Visibility, frame coverage, duplicate membership, audio decoding
Historical / Experimental	Earlier algorithmic products not accepted as canonical ground truth	Automatic ankle-comparison labels, historical landing-frame predictions
Unavailable / Unverified	Not supported by the current evidence	Verified landing time, temporal lag, recording session, independently observed winner

These categories must remain distinct in the dataset documentation and associated research publications.

21. Official Supervised Benchmark Targets

Canonical V1 supports two principal classification tasks.

Four-Class Movement Classification

Target: movement_class

Classes:

left_left
left_right
right_left
right_right

Binary Movement-Relation Classification

Target: movement_relation

Classes:

same_leg_configuration
different_leg_configuration

The binary classification label is derived from the four-class target.

It should not be characterized as an additional independently observed behavior.

Benchmark Warning

Because participant-pair membership and movement-class distribution are strongly associated, models may exploit participant-specific or pair-specific characteristics under poorly designed evaluation protocols.

Official benchmarks must therefore preserve exact duplicate grouping and report relevant participant and pair overlap.

Pair-held-out evaluation is the primary V1 generalization benchmark.

Participant-held-out evaluation is a diagnostic protocol restricted to eligible participants with complete target-class coverage.

See docs/BENCHMARK_PROTOCOL.md for the published assignments and reporting requirements.

22. Fixed-Prefix Experiments

Researchers may study classification using only an initial portion of each interaction clip.

For example, a model may receive the first 25%, 50%, or 75% of a clip.

These tasks may be described as:

Fixed-prefix movement classification
Partial-observation movement classification
Early clip-prefix classification

They must not be described as pre-landing or pre-decision prediction without verified event-timing annotations.

23. Adding Future Annotation Layers

Any future V1.x annotation layer should document:

Annotation name
Operational definition
Allowed values
Annotation unit
Annotator instructions
Exact-duplicate handling
Missing-value rules
Confidence or uncertainty representation
Quality-control procedure
Inter-annotator agreement, where applicable
Version identifier
Annotation provenance

New annotations should not silently overwrite rejected historical annotations.

Where annotation changes affect benchmark comparability, an appropriate dataset version change should be documented.

24. Summary of Canonical V1 Ground Truth

Ampe-DB V1 supports four principal verified or reproducibly derived semantic structures:

Four-class dyadic movement configuration
Binary same-versus-different movement relation
Pseudonymous participant identity
Participant-pair membership

Of these, the binary movement relation is deterministic rather than independently annotated.

Landing timing, synchronization events, temporal lag, recording-session provenance, and independently observed winner or round outcome remain outside the verified canonical V1 ground truth.

The dataset's original annotations and its subsequently corrected skeleton representations must be distinguished when reporting scientific methods or results.

Ampe-DB V1 — Annotation Guide
Documentation Revision: October 2026
Research Authors: Ruth Senior Biney and Isaac Kojo Yedonu Aboah