diff --git a/packages/engine/src/services/frameCapture.ts b/packages/engine/src/services/frameCapture.ts
index 8390adb68..6ffac1e8a 100644
--- a/packages/engine/src/services/frameCapture.ts
+++ b/packages/engine/src/services/frameCapture.ts
@@ -2677,6 +2677,11 @@ export async function captureFrameToBufferPipelined(
     if (gapStatic) {
       session.staticDedupCount = (session.staticDedupCount ?? 0) + 1;
       session.capturePerf.frames += 1;
+      // Advance the watermark on reuse too, not just on real captures — the
+      // gap-check above starts from lastEncodeResultFrame, so leaving it
+      // pinned to the last REAL capture makes every consecutive reuse rescan
+      // an ever-widening window instead of just the one new frame (review).
+      session.lastEncodeResultFrame = frameIndex;
       return { encodeResult: session.lastEncodeResult, captureTimeMs: Date.now() - startTime };
     }
   }
diff --git a/packages/producer/src/services/render/stages/captureStreamingStage.ts b/packages/producer/src/services/render/stages/captureStreamingStage.ts
index e22d2a3e9..5305ffb82 100644
--- a/packages/producer/src/services/render/stages/captureStreamingStage.ts
+++ b/packages/producer/src/services/render/stages/captureStreamingStage.ts
@@ -526,11 +526,18 @@ export async function runCaptureStreamingStage(
       // orchestrator's DrawElementVerificationError handler re-renders via
       // screenshot (post-#2026 it also reverts any worker inversion).
       // Intentionally ONE guard shared by all workers rather than one per
-      // worker: Node is single-threaded and the guard's checks run
-      // synchronously between await points, so there's no cross-worker race
-      // on `parallelStats`. Sharing also means the rolling median it tracks
-      // is computed across every worker's interleaved frames together,
-      // which is a better signal than per-worker medians would be.
+      // worker, so the rolling median it tracks is computed across every
+      // worker's interleaved frames together — a better signal than
+      // per-worker medians would be. This IS touched from concurrent workers
+      // across real await points (recapture, PSNR), so the shared
+      // `sizes`/`absFloor`/`acceptedSmall` state can interleave — safe by
+      // construction rather than by single-threadedness: `absFloor` only
+      // ratchets down (order-independent min), `sizes` is append-only (order
+      // doesn't affect the median once ≥12 samples exist), and
+      // `acceptedSmall`'s fast path only ever fires on exact byte-equality
+      // against a buffer some worker already re-verified deterministic — so
+      // whichever worker's buffer lands there, the equality check itself is
+      // what re-validates it, not which worker wrote it (review).
       const parallelStats: DeDrainStats = {
         verifyChecked: 0,
         blankSuspects: 0,