diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 2f359bf..30b185d 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -13,8 +13,16 @@ frontend/build/
 frontend/export-viewer/node_modules/
 frontend/export-viewer/.svelte-kit/
 
-# Media uploads (mounted volume in production)
-media/
+# Media uploads. In production these live in the `media_data` DOCKER VOLUME, never in the
+# working tree — so this pattern is anchored to the repo root and exists only for a local
+# bind-mount experiment.
+#
+# It used to read `media/`, unanchored, which matches a directory of that name at ANY depth.
+# The only one in the repo is `e2e/fixtures/media/`, so the rule's entire practical effect was
+# to keep every E2E fixture untracked: a fresh clone got the specs and none of the images or
+# videos they read. `.github/workflows/e2e.yml` does a plain checkout and generates nothing, so
+# the committed CI job could not have run the upload, video or export suites at all.
+/media/
 
 # Playwright E2E suite — runtime artifacts (the suite itself is committed)
 e2e/node_modules/
diff --git a/e2e/fixtures/media/huge-99mp.jpg b/e2e/fixtures/media/huge-99mp.jpg
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diff --git a/e2e/fixtures/media/sample2.jpg b/e2e/fixtures/media/sample2.jpg
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