feat: integrate MINERVA benchmark with Lance-backed video mode and pipeline latency guidance

[Luodian]

Summary

• add a new minerva task integration with task YAML/template, scoring utilities, and optional Lance-backed video blob resolution
• add tools/minerva_to_lance.py to convert local MINERVA metadata + downloaded videos into a Lance dataset (video_blob enabled)
• add benchmark tooling for both resolver-only latency (tools/bench_minerva_video_resolution.py) and fixed-pipeline storage comparison (tools/bench_minerva_pipeline_latency.py)
• document practical interpretation: with the same decode pipeline, local raw vs Lance is often near-parity on local pre-downloaded disks; Lance value is stronger for remote/object-storage access, reproducibility, and repeated subset workflows

Review Feedback Triage (Copilot + Maintainer)

• addressed robustness feedback in lmms_eval/tasks/minerva/utils.py: thread-safe resolver init, blob resource cleanup, safer answer-letter extraction, empty video_id handling, deprecated key warning, and loguru eval_logger consistency
• addressed converter feedback in tools/minerva_to_lance.py: explicit empty-metadata validation, missing-file accounting, sample missing ID reporting, and hard failure when no rows are writable
• clarified package naming in docs: pylance is the Python package that exposes the lance import module
• kept full resolver-index issue closed via on-demand filtered scans (no eager full-table index build)
• maintainer suggestion on unified Lance dataset reader/API is tracked as follow-up architecture work; current PR keeps minimal task-scoped resolver for safe merge scope

Validation

• uv run python tools/bench_minerva_pipeline_latency.py --local-video-dir data/minerva/videos --lance-uri data/minerva_hf_package/data/train.lance --lance-cache-dir /tmp/minerva_lance_cache_bench_20260221_v3 --limit 100 --batch-size 1 --decode-num-frames 8 --output-root /tmp/minerva_pipeline_latency_20260221_v3
  • local: total_mean_ms=529.845, decode_mean_ms=529.535, videos_per_s=1.887
  • lance: total_mean_ms=533.630, decode_mean_ms=528.902, videos_per_s=1.874
  • ratio: lance/local total_mean=1.007 (about +0.7%)
• uv run python tools/bench_minerva_pipeline_latency.py --local-video-dir data/minerva/videos --lance-uri data/minerva_hf_package/data/train.lance --lance-cache-dir /tmp/minerva_lance_cache_probe_1121 --limit 10 --batch-size 1 --decode-num-frames 4 --output-root /tmp/minerva_pipeline_latency_probe_1121
• uv run python -m py_compile lmms_eval/tasks/minerva/utils.py tools/minerva_to_lance.py lmms_eval/models/model_utils/load_video.py tools/bench_minerva_pipeline_latency.py tools/bench_minerva_video_resolution.py lmms_eval/models/simple/dummy_video_reader.py
• lsp_diagnostics clean for touched Python files

[kcz358]

Looks quite hardcoded right now if want to use lance db. Possibly can have an lance db reader via hf api if we are using hub and we might need a unified dataset format for lancedb type dataset.

[Luodian]

good suggestion

[Luodian]

interesting, copilot hallucinates on the package name, it should be pylance instead of lance.