Asset Repository WG - 19 Jan 2021

Attendees

[x] Michael Johnson (Apple) + WG Chair

[ ] Joshua Minor (Pixar + OpenTimelineIO)

[x] John Mertic (Linux Foundation)

[ ] Nick Porcino (OTIO, OpenEXR / Pixar)

[x] Eric Enderton (NVIDIA, DigiPro)

[x] Sean McDuffee (Intel)

[x] Eric Bourque (ADSK)

[x] Erik Hansen

[x] JT Nelson (Pasadena Open Source consortium / SoCal Blender group)

[ ] Lee Kerley (SPI)

[ ] Phil Sawicki (Autodesk)

[x] Roman Zulak (Imageworks)

[ ] Orde Stevanoski (Imageworks)

[ ] Cary Phillips (ILM, OpenEXR)

[ ] Sebastian Herholz

[x] Philippe Sawicki (Autodesk)

[x] Sam Richards (Disney Imagineering)

[ ] Will Telford (Autodesk)

[x] Sebastian Herholz (Intel)

[ ] Carson Brownlee (Intel)

Apologies: 

• Cary Phillips (ILM, OpenEXR)
• Joshua Minor (Pixar + OpenTimelineIO)

Agenda Items

• Update on Moana
• The current plan from Disney is to have a USD version available “soon”. It sounds like they’ve explicitly removed the sort of metadata that one might want to  use to make AOVs from, but we can take a look once it’s available.
• One issue that has come up is Disney wanting/needing to do fixes to the data set as people find issues with it that they want to fix. This implies the existence of it in some sort of version control system.

• Update on Blender discussion
• Wave + Josh in discussions.
• Git LFS vs. IPFS - advantages/disadvantages
  • perforce - used by Pixar
  • Git LFS - used now by Wave at Apple
  • no one had complaints about any of these
  • Store ”ingredients + recipe” or “final baked product” ?
    • Eric B: a software vendor often wants both
    • but for ASWF, as long as the recipe works seamlessly, that’s fine. That’s the open source way.
    • Wave: Maybe only keep 2 versions of baked outputs (current and “undo”)
    • Sean: Sci-vis sometimes just checks in md5 checksum
• Licensing
• ASWF Lawyer says:
  • Each ASWF project has its own "project licenses" specified in its Technical Charter. These are the licenses under which the project makes its own contents available. These will vary across the ASWF projects: for instance, OpenEXR's Technical Charter says that its code is made available under the license specified in the OpenEXR LICENSE file, and its documentation is made available under CC-BY-4.0.
  • If the question is about what license should be used for new content specifically created for an ASWF project, the starting point would be to follow the policy specified in the charter for that project. Or if there's a use case that isn't handled, then we could discuss what approach makes sense for that particular asset type.
  • If the question is instead about whether or not the project can use / redistribute existing third-party content which is under a different license, that's something we can discuss in the context of license compatibility. This is similar to what the projects do when looking at whether third-party software can be incorporated into the projects' code base. The projects' IP policies also describe the process for evaluating exceptions to the IP policy (see for instance section 7(c) in the OpenEXR technical charter).
  • I'd guess that in many cases, the projects would not expect to grant exceptions to redistribute third-party content that is under a limited use license. For example, if there is an asset which only permits "reuse for internal testing," the project likely would not want to redistribute that asset itself -- because it would not be in line with the broad use permitted under CC-BY-4.0. 
• Images - ARRI and other camera manufacturers have footage on their sites.
  • RED Camera Users Group -- JT to check.
  • ASWF value add?  Pointers to camera manufacturers data.  Possibly host, if files get taken down.
  • Erik H: HBO does camera assessments every year, so they have contacts at manufacturers.  Erik H to follow up, and with Joseph Goldstone.
• https://www.red.com/sample-r3d-files
  • https://www.arri.com/en/learn-help/learn-help-camera-system/camera-sample-footage
• JT:  Bei Ying got Christie, Barco, everyone to contribute to camera calibration and projection.
• Erik H: ASC camera stem shootout. Wave: Digital codecs bakeoff, back in the day.
• Many cameras, many image formats. Footage with and without people - different permissions. 
• • License: Balance what consumers want, versus what contributors want.  Where do we start?
  • John M: Permissive vs Copyleft. A matrix of options.
    • John can’t provide Legal Advice.
    • But if you have list of requirements, we can point to interesting licenses.
    • ASWF Legal Committee can advise and help get buy-in. Advisory to projects.
    • Hard in a vacuum; easier if you have a contributor you’re trying to convince.
    • Could try running license proposal past Nick C / Disney. But Disney Legal tends to put their own stamps on things.