EPUB 3 - Media Overlay with No media:duration
A working media overlay whose package omits the required media:duration metadata entirely. Everything else is intact, so this fixture isolates one question: does the reader refuse the overlay, or fall back to measuring the audio itself?
- mimetype
- container.xml
- content.opf
- nav.xhtml
- style.css
- chapter1.xhtml
- chapter1.smil
- narration-1.mp3
Specifications
- Seed
- 20260807
- Epub Version
- 3.0
- Overlay Docs
- 1
- Media Duration Declared
- false
- Actual Seconds
- 1.202
- Defect
- media:duration metadata omitted
Testing contract
Expected to recover- Scenario
- Open the book and start read-aloud playback with no duration metadata present.
- Expected result
- A validator flags the missing media:duration; the reader still plays the overlay, deriving its length from the MP3 rather than refusing to start.
What is a .epub file?
EPUB is the open e-book standard, a ZIP archive containing XHTML content documents, CSS, images, and a package manifest describing reading order and metadata. It supports reflowable text that adapts to screen size and is supported by most e-readers except Kindle natively. It is the dominant format for distributable e-books.
How to use this file
Use an example EPUB to test e-book parsing, ZIP-package and manifest handling, reading-order and metadata extraction, and rendering in e-reader applications.
How to use this file for testing
“EPUB 3 - Media Overlay with No media:duration” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Media accessibility, Conversion testing, Error handling. Containers carrying several subtitle and audio tracks at once, with real language tags and the default, forced, hearing-impaired and visual-impaired flags actually set — for testing track pickers, accessibility menus, and the flag handling that only shows up when more than one track exists.
Documented properties for this file: seed 20260807. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
E-book fixtures are structured archives documented down to their spine and manifest. Test readers and converters, and where a valid↔intentionally-invalid pair exists, assert graceful handling of the malformed container.
Code examples
ebook-convert smil-no-duration.epub out.pdf # Calibre
unzip -l smil-no-duration.epub # EPUB is a ZIPRelated files
- epubEPUB — Intentionally Invalid (bad OCF mimetype)An intentionally invalid EPUB: identical to the valid twin except its OCF mimetype entry is compressed and mislabelled as application/zip — a real EPUB spec violation. For testing how readers and validators handle a malformed container. Clearly labelled; harmless content.
- epubEPUB 2.0.1 - NCX pageList with pageTargetsAn EPUB 2.0.1 that records print pagination the older way: an NCX pageList of pageTarget elements pointing at anchors in the text. The EPUB 2 counterpart of the EPUB 3 page-list nav, and what a converter has to translate between.
- epubEPUB 3 - Embedded Font, Intentionally Invalid (obfuscation not declared)An intentionally invalid EPUB whose embedded font is IDPF-obfuscated while META-INF/encryption.xml is missing, so nothing in the container says the bytes were scrambled. Intentionally invalid and clearly labelled - this is the real-world failure where a book silently renders in a substitute face.
- epubEPUB 3 - Fixed Layout, Intentionally Invalid (no viewport meta)An intentionally invalid fixed-layout EPUB: rendition:layout says pre-paginated but no content document declares a viewport meta, so the canvas size is undefined. Intentionally invalid and clearly labelled - for testing validators and the fallback a reader picks when it has no dimensions to scale to.
- epubEPUB 3 - Intentionally Invalid (container declares no rootfile)An intentionally invalid EPUB whose META-INF/container.xml contains an empty rootfiles element, so nothing points at the package document - even though OEBPS/content.opf is present and correct. Intentionally invalid and clearly labelled; it separates readers that guess from readers that give up cleanly.
- epubEPUB 3 - Intentionally Invalid (duplicate manifest id)An intentionally invalid EPUB where two manifest items carry the same id, so the spine's references become ambiguous and one chapter can be reached twice while another cannot be reached at all. Intentionally invalid and clearly labelled - an XML ID uniqueness violation, not a container defect.
Generated by generation/ebooks_p7.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.