Academy Software Foundation - Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Meeting - December 8, 2023

Join the meeting at https://zoom-lfx.platform.linuxfoundation.org/meeting/97880950229?password=81d2940e-c055-43b9-9b5a-6cd7d7090feb

Voting member attendance

Premier member Representatives

Project Representatives

Carol Payne - OpenColorIO Representative
Cary Phillips - OpenEXR Representative
Chris Kulla - Open Shading Language (OSL) Representative
Jonathan Stone - MaterialX Representative
Ken Museth - OpenVDB Representative

Industry Representatives

Jean-Francois Panisset - Visual Effects Society

Non Voting Projects, Working Groups, Linux Foundation

Other Attendees

Joshua Minor, OTIO
Spencer Stephens, MovieLabs
JT Nelson, Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group
Robin Rowe, CinePaint
Lee Kerley, Sony Imageworks
Bill Ballew, Dreamworks
Sergio Rojas, Different Dimensions
Deke Kincaid, Digital Domain
Bill Baggelaar
Doug Walker, Autodesk / OCIO
Ben Giles, Calligra

Antitrust Policy Notice

Linux Foundation meetings involve participation by industry competitors, and it is the intention of the Linux Foundation to conduct all of its activities in accordance with applicable antitrust and competition laws. It is therefore extremely important that attendees adhere to meeting agendas, and be aware of, and not participate in, any activities that are prohibited under applicable US state, federal or foreign antitrust and competition laws.

Examples of types of actions that are prohibited at Linux Foundation meetings and in connection with Linux Foundation activities are described in the Linux Foundation Antitrust Policy available at linuxfoundation.org/antitrust-policy. If you have questions about these matters, please contact your company counsel, or if you are a member of the Linux Foundation, feel free to contact Andrew Updegrove of the firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, which provides legal counsel to the Linux Foundation.

Agenda

Open Source Forum: CFP & Program Committee #551
Annual Review - OpenTimelineIO #477
Semi-annual stakeholders survey #549
TAC Meeting Schedule - December 2023 and January 2024 #546
guidance/input to Apple re: Uniform Type Identifiers for the various ASWF projects #541
Project Proposal - OpenQMC #434
Transition to LFX Meeting Management #460
Discuss use of OpenSSF Best Practices badge in lifecycle stage requirements. #502
TAC Chairperson and Industry Representative re-election #537
Help with Security Reviews for hosted projects #554

Notes

OpenQMC
- Good progress reported by Eric Enderton at previous meeting
- Eric: no additional progress but still progressing
- John: keeping Framestore in the loop
LFX Platform
- Cary: will follow up for OpenEXR
- John: trying to connect with Brian Cipriano for OpenCue
- John: rolling new features, can demo a few next year
  - Simple voting feature for committees
  - Calendaring feature
  - A few other small things
  - Can invite the team to do a demo next year
  - Eric R: we had first OTIO meeting last week with new system, overall went well, except for getting updated calendar invites. It seems like people with existing calendar invites didn’t get updated. John: we’ve run into some issues with Outlook, sometimes issues with DST. Best way to solve is that as you see these instances come up, open a support ticket, that way the team can resolve it and add a test case against it.
  - Micheal J: would be good if there was a landing page, can delete everything ASWF on my calendar, and get everything back from that page. John: not exactly, but if you go to openprofile.dev you can see all the meetings you are on a invite for, you can individually click on them and resend invite to yourself. It’s a good way to look at this, it’s not a full iCal subscribe. Michael J: I may have things on my calendar that’s not on this page. We may all have calendar entries from before LFX. A new feature will be a single iCal of all your projects.
TAC Chair
- John: we won’t tackle this today, but if you are interested or know someone who might be interested, reach out to me.
Industry Rep
- Vote sent out to renew JF
Guidance to Apple for Uniform Type Identifiers
- Michael J: I put something together, but haven’t posted yet, will put in GH Issue / Slack
Schedule going forward
- Meeting today, no meeting on Dec 26
- Meeting on January 10
- Will skip January 24th
- Open Source Forum on Open Source Forum, we would have a TAC meeting the day before that, maybe we skip that meeting, some people may be traveling.
Unified Stake Holder survey
- Hopefully get better data than 2 separate surveys
- Open all Dec, we will also run in June
- As we have results, we’ll make them public
- Please complete it if you can
Open Source Form on Feb 22nd
- Nominations due Friday for Program Committee, looking for mix of people, could be non ASWF people
- At Petersen Automotive Museum
- TAC leadership meeting in the morning, main program starts at 13:00, followed by reception
- David: joint meeting of TAC + board
Security Expertise
- Intel has offered some resources, if any other company has resources, we would like to hear from you
- Want to target more mature projects to help improve security posture
- What would be the scope? John: looking through code base, identify threat models, produce a report back to the project. CNCF has done this. Want to give useful feedback to the project. Spencer: do we monitor source code to make sure we have integrity? John: we have static and dynamic analysis.
- Scott: can we look at topics in Silver and Gold badges we may be able to fullfill requirements? John: yes, that would be the goal.
OTIO Annual Review: Eric Reineke
- TSC Updates
- 2023 Ecosystem Highlights
- 2024 Areas of Focus
- Project Lifecycle in ASWF
- TAC Requests
- TSC Expansion / Updates
  - Added
    - Jeff Hodges (Adobe/frame.io)
    - Roger Nelson (Autodesk)
  - TSC Chair
    - Eric Reinecke is now the Project TSC Chair
    - Voted last week, positive sign that OTIO is a community project, the community drives it, don’t want to have rotation in leadership. Thank you Josh for all his work, he’s done a great job of leading OTIO, and is passing off a very strong project. Josh is still on the TSC and will remain a strong voice in the community.
    - Josh: Eric has been carrying a lot of this weight, so it was a natural transition.
- 2023 Themes
  - Supporting First-PArty adoption
  - Re-tooling towards an “OTIO-forward” approach (rather than OTIO as a way to read/write other formats)
- Support Vendor Adoption
  - OTIO Application Integrator’s Guide
    - Targets an application developer
    - How do I make my application treat OTIO not just like another format (ALE, EDL), but instead make OTIO central to the application
    - It’s been a great reminder to invest in modernizing our documentation
  - Raven: C++ .otio file viewer
    - Predecessor was otioview in Python, would load other formats with adapters
    - Raven speaks direct to OTIO, doesn’t use adapters
    - Shows that a pure C++ and OTIO are a good fit, OTIO is not just tied to Python
  - OTIO-forward approach
    - Adapter Break-Out
    - Adapters make OTIO useful with existing formats from day 1
    - Adapters take development energy away from OTIO
    - Around 2021 we started to shift messaging: “OTIO IS the format”
    - Talk less about non-OTIO file formats and their adapters and shifted to applications and how to use them with OTIO
    - This year we spun adapters into their own repos outside the main OTIO codebase to emphasize focus on the core. OTIO maintainers can contribute to them, but we want to focus on OTIO core
  - OTIO format transition
    - Progress from legacy editorial formats to OTIO
    - We feel we’ve reached a tipping point of having OTIO in the conversation
  - 2023 Ecosystem Highlights
    - Lots of help from the community on CI/CD improvement and updated C++ adoption
    - AVID hosted an OTIO breakfast table at HPA 2022
    - Mention in MovieLabs Interoperability in Media Creation white paper
    - MovieLabs created a demo of their cloud pipeline vision built around OpenTimelineIO, OpenAssetIO and RV
    - OTIO Vendor Working Group starting to take form
  - OTIO Vendor Working Group
    - Meets at NAB and IBC each year
    - Started with an Adobe-hosted discussion at IBC 2022 and has become a forum to align vendors on a shared standard for timeline interchange
    - At the IBC 2023 meeting, Adobe passed the torch to Avid to lead for the group
    - A rotating cast of OTIO TSC members attend when possible
    - Represents a promising model where the TSC and Vendor Working Group can collaborate to align the project goals and vendor goals
    - Align needs of studios and vendors
    - Eric E: why are there two groups? What’s the difference? Eric: we’ve seen this come up when vendors want to talk about how they need to put their proprietary data in OTIO, we’re happy to talk with vendors on how to do that, do we really want to create standards Effects. There are some things the TSC can address, but we don’t necessarily want to tell vendors what to do. It felt a bit more comfortable to do it this way. Also may be somewhat cultural, the way Open Source software works and the way commercial software works is a bit different. This also allows vendors to avoid committing to roadmaps. This is a good question, and think about why we have 2 groups. David: having the followed the progress of this group, Adobe started it, created a meeting at IBC 2 years ago, other vendors like Avid had heard about OTIO, but questions were general. Other companies joined like Autodesk, more at the product manager level. Interaction at a higher level is a good thing to have, might be a bit too “fluffy” for the TSC, but good to have an adjacent place where you can have a different type of conversation at the business / product management level, and have Ben Schofield bring requirements back to TSC.
    - Eric E: Jeff Hodges from Adobe has been in every one of these meetings, and will report notes back to TSC. For instance a “fluffy” line item was the idea of creating booth badging to demonstrate support for OTIO. So not something that would be addressed at the TSC level.
    - Carol: this fits in the model of other projects, I see similarities with the OCIO UX/UI WG, attended by implementation engineers, what’s discussed there is very different than what’s discussed in TSC. Someone from TSC always attends those meetings and reports back. As project grow, it’s normal to have more than just one meeting. Also follows the ACES development mentality, where they have a separate architecture meeting / group, separate from implementation group. Eric: thank you for the feedback from OCIO, this is very helpful.
    - Josh: vendors are much more focussed on broadcast industry, whereas ASWF is more SIGGRAPH than NAB/IBC. So may not be simple for TSC members to attend NAB / IBC meetings. This is why we asked Jeff Hodges to join our TSC, and can represent TSC.
    - David: we heard other projects like OpenFX have a lot of activities in broadcast, so will expand ASWF activities at NAB, HPA Tech Retreat, and possibly IBC
  - Vendor Adoption
    - Now available with native OTIO support:
      - Blackmagic Design: DaVinci Resolve
      - Colorfront: Transkoder
      - DNEG: xStudio
    - Announced in progress:
      - Adobe Premiere Pro
    - Already shipping:
      - Nuke Studio, Hiero, RV, cineSync Play, Cezanne, Matchbox, tlRender, etc
        
        Nuke Studio demonstrated OTIO round tripping
  - 2024 Focus
    - Complete Adapter break-out release
    - Continue supporting application integrators
    - Documentation scrub
      - Not just communicating with developers
    - High demand schema enhancements
      - Source Media Stream / Channel selection
      - Progress towards color effects
  - ASWF Project Lifecycle
    - Incubation -> Adopted
      - Missing: using an ADOPTERS file or showcased on the project’s website
  - Best Practices Badge
    - Stuck 82% complete
    - Stuck on “The project MUST have a least one primary developer who knows how to design secure software”
    - Also Code Analysis requirements. Jean-Christophe has done a lot of work but his (and our) time is constrained. Hit some roadblocks with code cleanliness, LFX security integration.
    - Would be helpful to get help / resources on that.
  - Requests for Help from TAC 2022
    - TAC members, please ask for active OTIO participation from:
      - Apple - Final Cut Pro X Team
      - Adobe - Premiere Pro team, established
      - Avid - Media Composer Team, established
      - BMD - DaVinci Resolve, DONE
  - Requests for Help from TAC 2023
    - OpenSFF badges
- Any questions?
  - Eric E: very impressed with vendor adoption. Do we have a sense of studio adoption?
    - Eric R: OTIO may be used in more places that we think / know. It’s been tough to get a feel for that. Disney Feature Animation may be working on this? Josh: yes, this is in progress. Eric: Animal Logic did a presentation on their adoption. Netflix is increasing its use every day. If you hear interesting rumblings about studios using OTIO, we want to hear about it. Also AMPAS has a WG on archival, and have been talking about OTIO to recommend as the archival format for timeline information.
    - Larry: great presentation. All projects have the same problem if knowing what it gets built into. In past couple of days, there’s been a conversation surrounding on long / short / nomination for VFX Oscar, maybe we can get info on what packages got used on what projects. Maybe easier to ask about all projects together rather than asking piecemeal. Eric R: both encouraging and disappointing. But it makes sense to ask about all projects. Eric E: support that if anyone knows what projects where used on the long list. Larry: no one has replied unfortunately. It’s a side convo on the OSL channel, but will move it somewhere else. David: would be great to be able to come to Open Source Forum with a list before the ceremony, would be a great tool for promotion and to elevate the work we do and show the range. Show how critical our projects are to the motion picture industry.
    - Eric E: sounds like OTIO has been adopted by vendors and studios, what would people consider about moving to adopted stage. Not trying to belittle the requirements?
    - Eric R: from project perspective would really like this. John: this is has been an ongoing conversation on the badging requirements site, a lot of requirements needing clarification. Don’t think we can resolve this in 2 minutes. Would like to get a straw poll about looking at current requirements that are giving projects the most confusion on how to achieve, and perhaps boxing those out for the time being until we can get clarity, and keeping those aside from requirements for adopted stage, and reintroduce them later and give help projects. Would this generally help?
    - Eric E: it’s adopted when we say its adopted?
    - Carol: is 82% to passing or Gold? Eric R: it’s to Passing. OSL had achieved passing. I would like to “Adopt” OTIO today, but maybe we do a bit more work around this.
    - John: I bet we can look through requirements, quickly eyeball a half dozen that are most problematic, block those out for now, I’ve talked with OpenSFF project, they want to find paths to help our projects better achieve those requirements. Let’s work through those details and incorporate feedback into requirements. We don’t want to hold people in purgatory.
    - Larry: I would not advocate dropping security requirements, but they could be separated than the status of going from incubated from adoption. Once a package is built in to all the major apps, studios, if that’s not “Adopted”, what do words even mean? Maybe we have a separate “suitable for security” status. John: maybe we’ve overloaded the “adopted” term.
    - Nick: we don’t want to keep projects in “purgatory”. We’ve been having this conversation for very long on OTIO, I’d like to be “adopted” before I retire. Maybe we can work towards end of March adoption, are we going to have this conversation next year? John: I think we can move fast. I think within the badge there’s a couple of requirements that are adding a lot of unclarity, let’s identify those. I’ve walked some project leads through those, sometimes projects are already doing requirements, or can do it trivially. Let’s box out the problematic ones, figure out how to address them, and deal with problems on how to address them. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s not clear how to get there. And now block transition to adopted stage. Hopefully process of clarity will make it simple to do. Hopefully an outcome that will work.
    - Carol: but we we just want to get OTIO over Passing, no other project is at Gold (or even Silver). John: analysis from JF spreadsheet, or projects are probably already hitting all of those. When we get into the more practical, there’s a handful we have issues with.
    - Nick: would like to have dates attached to it. John: can we work through this on next TAC meeting, identity the ones we want to box out? That should be a straightforward process. Larry: there are other projects that got to passing, so they can give advice. Eric R: there’s a mix of issues, for instance documenting security issue reporting is not easy. But static analysis is less simple, and it’s been hard to find time to spend on those. Also not the strong point of our developers. John: also unclear what’s “good enough”.
    - Eric R: what if we could together work through some of those points, and maybe that would give us an idea of what’s needed to be done. John: yes we can sync over next couple weeks.