December 15, 2020

Host: Michael Dolan

Attendees:

• [X] Mark Boorer (TSC) - Industrial Light & Magic
• [X] Michael Dolan (TSC Chair) - Epic Games
• [X] Carol Payne (TSC) - Netflix
• [X] Doug Walker (TSC Chief Architect) - Autodesk
• [X] Matthias Scharfenberg - Industrial Light & Magic
• [X] Dennis Adams - Sony
• [X] Thomas Mansencal - Weta Digital
• [X] Christophe Brejon
• [X] Zach Lewis - Method
• [X] J Schulte - Industrial Light & Magic
• [X] Scott Dyer - A.M.P.A.S.

OCIO Configs Working Group Meeting Notes

• Continue spreadsheet discussion. Update from ACES:

  • Michael: Would like to shift this meeting one week forward in the new year as it currently conflicts with a SMPTE meeting Scott attends. Any objections?
  • No objections.
  • Michael: Scott shared his opinion via email that he thinks we could omit ACESproxy and DCDM ODTs from the reference config. Can discuss with him further in new year to make a formal decision.
  • Carol: No problem with that.
  • Doug: No objection. Think it's better to track what Academy is doing and remove if it matches what they are doing. Some we may need to preempt for practical reasons.
  • Zach: Is there a way to deprecate?
  • Michael: Deprecation is supported with inactive color spaces and the upcoming alias feature (for deprecated names).
  • Mark: Since they are not currently there, would be better to not implement.
  • Doug: Agree.
  • Mark: Depends what mean by deprecating. Doesn't work any more? Think we would follow typical OCIO patch notes saying this doesn't exist anymore and add ociocheck warnings.
  • Thomas: Deprecate is not removal. Warn in prior release. We're talking about removal without warning.
  • Mark: If we were to deprecate a BuiltinTransform, would likely be over multiple versions.

• Conclude discussion about whether to generate config from graph code currently in repo, or to have a separate library which explicitly builds config, using the graph lib to validate:

  • Michael: Discussing whether we should stay on course with current config generation code, or use that for validation and have separate more concise script just for config generation.
  • Mark: Nothing wrong with usefulness of this code, but as someone involved with setting up configs, found it hard to approach current setup and to make changes. It does so many other things than generate the config. Can get stats, build graph, etc. I previously showed simpler version I created that just builds config. Discussed mapping needed between CTL and what we wanted color spaces to be called, and the intermediate color space that doesn't exist. Sounds like there are more exceptions to the rule than just following CTL. Think we would be better hand rolling config code.
  • Carol: With the display spaces, we're getting to place with mapping where we have to do it ourselves anyway. Once fixed on ACES side, would manual intervention lessen?
  • Mark: Two PRs for URNs that mismatch. Each of our code has chunk to handle the misnaming. Don't think those are dominant parts of the problem. Different problem with needing to tease apart ODTs.
  • Zach: Not going to avoid mapping one way or other.
  • Mark: Nice aspects to tracking CTL. Comment strings make good docstrings, but one of the big UX decisions is in regard to how those are formatted since some are long and can't be displayed easily in apps. Should we lead the way and lessen those? Feel our intent would be clearer expressed, even with risk of drifting. Should present ACES workflow in OCIO way.
  • Michael: Think we could use the current lib to support generating config in smaller script. Find a middle ground between both approaches.
  • Thomas: That's what it currently is essentially. CTL discovery code builds list of transforms, can be used directly, which is similar to what Mark did. Graph built on top of that, used to fit config generation code. Config code is agnostic. Just gets input from graph. Nothing says graph needs to be used. I think there is value in getting that info from CTL. Can highlight issues which wouldn't be discovered otherwise. What is being used to maintain current config. As current maintainer, it is useful. When switched from 1.0 to 1.1, was easy to see what was missing. Is complex, but can also look at complexity and reduce where needed and make it easier. Don't have strong opinion. Can go in another way. Just need to know to not waste time maintaining code that won't be used.
  • Carol: Think there's an overarching thing with OCIO way of doing stuff. A partnership aspect of this between OCIO and ACES that should be improved. Mark's points are valid. Hard to translate between projects. Think if this is going to be ACES reference config, have responsibility to link to CTL, to keep us accountable.
  • Thomas: Agree. When started to work on automated generation, idea was to have something Scott and Alex could run automatically. Could be useful for them to check stuff on their end.
  • Carol: Thinking too with comments, this is ACES reference config so can be more verbose. Can make descriptions for a more well rounded studio config.
  • Thomas: To that, could be something in CTL itself, front facing (one liner) user comments. Maybe some roads to be made here, and CTL can help us do that work.
  • Mark: I'll push my simplified version in a PR so you can see what I was looking for. At this point it's doing same thing. Just less code. There's a disconnect between CTL and OCIO. We aren't using the CTL in OCIO, but re-implementing transforms ourselves. Get the desire to strengthen link between projects, but feel the relationship goes opposite direction too, with many using ACES through OCIO.
  • Doug: Because of Thomas experience maintaining existing configs, has learned how challenging it is to maintain. At each update may not be obvious what has changed. What has been produced is complex, but it does try to solve this problem with how to keep in sync with something with many moving parts. Certainly not a unique problem for OCIO. All ACES product partners face same problem. Every time there's a new ACES release takes days to go through and make sure the transforms are implemented correctly. Everyone is re-implementing it vs. using CTL directly. It would be nice to give feedback to Academy to make it easier to do what we're trying to do since we're not the only ones.
  • Michael: Since we will also need to use this to generate the studio config, which will include much more than just ACES, more argument to leverage this code as library supporting config generation. Then both scripts can use it as needed and for validation.
  • Thomas: Agree to find middle ground. We can raise exception when we don't have things mapped. Want library because I'm planning to use it, and hope others too. Can become tools to not only generate ACES config, but other configs too.
  • Mark: For ACES config, all the guts are builtin transforms being chained together. Just need to write YAML file in correct order.
  • Carol: If we are thinking future extensible, good to start out well.
  • Thomas: Needs to be something we can test. Advantage on a show is if something is broken you change it, but here we're talking about something being shipped in software. It needs to work. When I did transition between 1.0 and 1.1, took ages because a mistake will effect everybody. When Nuke ships with this, it's a big difference. Internal and public software different jobs.
  • Mark: Discussions around entry points for building ACES config vs config library different. Would have had other discussions around creating the lib. That's my concern. Not putting down current work. There is massive ramifications for doing it wrong, so that's important and I appreciate what's there.
  • Thomas: Understand. Maybe I can do a write up on current state and idea.
  • Zach: Raise interesting question. Do we want to have mechanism for testing against ctlrender, etc?
  • Thomas: Yes, planning to do that.
  • Michael: Thomas set up GHA CI so we can test against images, etc.
  • Thomas: Not implemented yet, but where I want to go. Don't think we can do less than current config. Need to confirm implementation is matching.
  • Doug: Think this will be very helpful to ACES project. Already flagged issues with Transform IDs. As we get it, we'll likely find differences with CTL and reference images.

• Talk about dev workflow, it is a bit painful atm:

  • https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenColorIO-Config-ACES/pull/9#issuecomment-735352837
  • Thomas: Annoyance currently is we're not using gitflow. Currently one main branch. When merging and squashing, get diverging history because of other in-progress work. If you have two feature branches, if you squash one, need to rebase.
  • Michael: Same setup we have for core OCIO. Messy if people have many commits, which is why we enforce squashing.
  • Thomas: Can ask people to be cleaner. We tend to rebase on develop before merging. Can ask people to squash on their own. Makes it easier to revert changes.
  • Mark: Think we expect most dev work to happen on forks, and for changes to come in as PRs, vs. feature branches pushed to repo.
  • Thomas: Yeah, that's what is happening. Look at PR #9. Can talk on Slack.
  • Michael: Gitflow can get complex. OpenEXR is doing something in the middle, with a develop and main branch. We could do something like that.
  • Thomas: Mostly talking about main/develop. Not full gitflow. Two branches. Suggested same to Academy.

• Talk about what we can do with the incorrectly named ACEStransformID as I have the feeling we won’t get a resolution from the AMPAS soon:

  • Scott: Working to get issues resolved with our repo. Fixes in dev branch not integrated yet.

• Fully fledged display spaces, it was agreed here on Slack, but maybe we can make it official:

  • Thomas: Doug agreed in slides that the way the transforms were broken up could be simplified to have single transform instead of group transform.
  • Doug: Agree. Adding BuiltinTransforms in current PR.

• Items for next TSC meeting agenda:

  • Further discuss spreadsheet questions with Scott.