diff --git a/harness/badapple/README.md b/harness/badapple/README.md
index b7b62a6..c890a77 100644
--- a/harness/badapple/README.md
+++ b/harness/badapple/README.md
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ against MAME's debugger API and is not how anything reaches a machine.
 
 ```
 harness/badapple/
-├── README.md            this file
+├── README.md            this file (setup, data preparation, run)
 ├── demo.sh              one command: wait for the OS, load, send
 ├── rdebug_load.py       payload image → terminal RAM over rdebug (TCP 771)
 ├── clip_from_video.py   video → raw 1-bpp frames for make_tiles.py
@@ -42,28 +42,93 @@ Two facts about it are load-bearing and were measured:
 
 ## Setup
 
+Two builds and one piece of data preparation.  Steps 1 and 2 are C builds; step 3
+is the part that needs a source video.
+
 ```sh
 cd /path/to/vt1200
 
-# 1. MAME + the driver (skip if you already have vt1200 built)
+# 1. MAME + the driver (skip if vt1200 is already built)
 harness/mame/build.sh
 
-# 2. the payload (TI SDK under DOSBox)
-harness/udpstream/build-stream.sh        # -> harness/udpstream/build/vidstream.bin
+# 2. the payload (TI SDK under DOSBox) -> harness/udpstream/build/vidstream.bin
+harness/udpstream/build-stream.sh
+```
 
-# 3. a clip cache (skip to use the committed 30-frame synthetic clip)
+Step 3 is described below, because the numbers (time, disk, what "good" looks
+like) are what make it repeatable.
+
+## Data preparation: a video to a tile cache
+
+Nothing ships a full clip: `harness/udpstream/tiles/` in the repo is the
+**30-frame synthetic clip**, which is enough to smoke-test the transport but shows
+a moving ellipse, not the animation.  A real clip is three commands and about
+five minutes.
+
+### 3a. Get a source video
+
+Any file ffmpeg can read.  For Bad Apple the usable public sources are:
+
+| source | why |
+|---|---|
+| `archive.org/details/hd-60-fps-bad-apple-shadow-art-pv-720-x-960-60fps` | 960x720, 60 fps, 219 s, ~35 MB — the one this demo was measured on (the item name is scrambled; the file inside is 960x720) |
+| `yt-dlp <url>` from YouTube | fine, but the 4K/8K uploads are upscales of the same 2009 render and add no detail |
+| the original PV's Flash file (`archive.org/details/dagobah_Bad_Apple_HQ`) | the true master, vector — needs a Flash renderer to rasterise, which nothing here does |
+
+Resolution matters less than it looks: the terminal shows **1 bpp**, and the
+pipeline scales to 1280 px wide before thresholding, so anything at 960 px or
+more lands on the same picture.
+
+### 3b. Frames
+
+```sh
 python3 harness/badapple/clip_from_video.py bad-apple.mp4 /tmp/badapple --fps 15
+```
+
+* one `*.bin` per frame, 1280x960, 1 bpp, 160-byte rows, **LSB first** — bit 0 of
+  a byte is the row's leftmost pixel, the order both the terminal's scanout and
+  the payload's encoder use.  Do not substitute `ffmpeg`'s `format=monob`: it
+  packs MSB first and mirrors every eight pixels on the display.
+* `--fps 15` on the 219 s source gives **3,292 frames**; `--height 960` fills 30
+  of the 32 tile bands (a 4:3 source at 1280x960, the bottom two rows black), and
+  `--height 1024` fills the screen by stretching 4:3.
+* measured cost: **~12 s**, **489 MB** on disk (153,600 B per frame).
+* the source is white paper with black silhouettes, which is already the right
+  polarity.  If yours is inverted, add `--invert`; `--threshold` (default 127)
+  decides what counts as ink.
+
+### 3c. The cache
+
+```sh
 python3 harness/udpstream/make_tiles.py --clip /tmp/badapple --out /tmp/badapple-tiles
 ```
 
-`clip_from_video.py` writes **LSB-first** 1-bpp rows (bit 0 of a byte is the
-leftmost pixel), which is the order both the terminal's scanout and the
-payload's encoder use.  Do not substitute `ffmpeg`'s `format=monob`: it packs
-MSB first and mirrors every eight pixels on the display.
+Takes **~2 min 47 s** (pure-Python Lloyd's algorithm over 3,292 frames) and
+writes four files, **6.1 MB** total:
 
-`make_tiles.py` prints what it built — on the real clip (3,292 frames at 15 fps,
-1280x960) that is 256/256 dictionary entries, 55 keyframes, mean delta 496 B,
-1.63 MB of stream, PSNR 24.4 dB.
+| file | size | what it is |
+|---|---|---|
+| `dictionary.bin` | 32,768 B | 256 32x32 tiles, the vocabulary every frame is expressed in |
+| `indices.bin` | 4,213,760 B | one 1,280-byte index frame per clip frame |
+| `stream.bin` | 1,645,081 B | the plan: 55 keyframes + 3,141 deltas + 96 "nothing changed" |
+| `manifest.json` | 199 KB | the numbers below, per frame |
+
+It prints the same summary.  What it said for this clip, and what to check:
+
+```
+3292 frames, 256 dictionary entries (256 used)     <- the dictionary is saturated
+55 keyframe(s), 3141 delta(s), 96 unchanged
+payload 1280 B full, 496 B mean delta (5..3602), 1628615 B total
+reconstruction 15823231 bit(s) over 3292 frame(s), BER 0.003667, PSNR 24.36 dB
+```
+
+Saturated entries and a 24 dB PSNR are expected, not errors: one byte per tile is
+the format's ceiling, and shadow-art edges are expensive.  A clip that reports
+`inf` PSNR has every tile in the dictionary — that happens only for very flat
+footage.
+
+Keep the cache outside the repo: it is 6.1 MB of derived data.  Pass it to the
+demo with `--tiles /tmp/badapple-tiles`.
 
 ## Run it in MAME