Review and Approval WG kickoff

Attendees:

• John Mertic

• Luis Villanueva (DreamWorks)

• Sean Wallitsch (DreamWorks)

• Mark Jackels (DreamWorks)

• Michael Kessler (Epic Games)

• Kevin O’Neal (Autodesk / Shotgun)

• Henry Vera(Dneg)

• Erik Strauss (Netflix)

• Darby Johnston(DJV)

• Larry Gritz (Sony Pictures Imageworks)

• Cottalango Leon (Sony Pictures Imageworks)

• Alex Wilkie (Animal Logic)

• Joshua Minor (OpenTimelineIO)

• Balroop Johal (Animal Logic)

• Chris Hall (AMD)

• Bruno Sargeant (Unity)

• Kevin Wheatley (Framestore)

• Kimball Thurston (Weta Digital)

Agenda:

- Welcome/Intros

- Discuss purpose of this working group and background

- Select WG leader(s)

- Align on proposal ( template at https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/tac/blob/master/process/wg_readme_template.md )

- Next steps and meeting cadence.

Meeting Notes:

Thank you Luis!

• Based on surveys/discussions on the challenges studios face is the need for standardization, simplification, and improved integration into review systems.

• There are commercial solutions, but are looking more to create an overall framework for how to tackle this.

• Challenges include:

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  • Need for improved performance

  • Different players for different needs (e.g. flp book players, 

  • Need to support per facility (even user) customization (e.g. hot keys)

• Should define what we expect to get out of this working group -- should setup clear expectations.

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  • Wide representation to from chip makers to VFX houses

  • What are we going to do and what are we not gonna do?

• Erik Straus + Bruno Sargeant will be leading the group, subject to availability.

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  • Kimball Thurston is the TAC sponsor

• Media Review has been one of the topics that has come up time and time again during ASWF foundation discussions and surveys

• This gained renewed interest due to the WFH reality brought upon from COVID; there was dissatisfaction about existing solutions

• Mission for this group isn’t too figure it all out, but rather to reduce/clarify the scope of this problem

• If we agree that this something worth collaborating on we should definitely move forward, but if not then this group may not be the right place

• ES - should spend some time to define the space and clarify the complexity of the issue and what scope of influence actually is -- this will help the ASWF decide how to move forward

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  • The outcome of this group may be nothing, and the energy around this space may be better served focusing on other initiatives

• Should identify a baseline that’s shared among all participants

• What is review and approval?

• The challenges differ depending on use case

• Lots of different

• The ability to view media and gain approval - Luis

• Should we limit ourselves to 2D media?

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  • Adding 3D review capability would be a great long term goal

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    • Many 3D objects can be turned into 2D spins

  • Just defining 2D review capability is a big enough projecte

• Multi-track video should definitely be included.

• Approval as information that comes out of a review, what are we capturing

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  • Notes, annotations, etc?

• What forum are these reviews taking place? (theaters, at desk, etc)

• Should avoid getting into too much into the weeds; maybe we can start thinking of general inputs and outputs

• Might be worth looking at SciTech talks around this topic as a starting point to help narrow the scope and also identify common approaches

• DWA some documentation around this that might be worth sharing.

• Should also get the user perspective in this group -- should try bringing some of our colleagues along for future sessions

• Is there a position ASWF has in regard to this issue/space? What do we see the solution for this actually being? Open Source? Vendor.

• Are there high level goals that should be considered?

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  • Many vendors have a variety of tools but can we make sure these tools interoperate with each other (similar to OTIO)

• Even just defining the problem space, even if nothing else gets done, would be a big win

• Feels like the feeling at large is that current set of open source and 3rd party solution are somehow lacking in this space

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  • Also, even if a studio/facility has a great solution the bigger question is whether it’s worth continuing to develop a separate application themselves or somehow become part of a larger community effort

  • Is there an awesome player/solution out there that could be open sourced?

  • Or is there the possibility to collaborate in some type of “next gen” solution?

• We should consider the end users as well since they are a key part of the review/approval processes

• Mission Statement (template)

• Goals:

• Helping to define what review and approval mean

• Identify the ecosystem and its capabilities

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  • Not just a single tool, several tools come together to provide the necessary experience/functionality

• Identify what are the contexts these reviews play out in

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  • Who are the consumers/personas involved?

• Identify what are the challenges that users (studios, vendors, etc) are facing in this space

NEXT STEPS:

• Erik to take an initial stab at defining the initial definition for review and approval

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  • Then as a group we can review/revise them

• Should start building the persona/consumer list

• Might be useful to have a companies who are willing to “pull back the curtain” and share how they are handling review and approvals

• May also be helpful to compile a list of available review solutions

• Still need to define the boundaries for this group

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  • This groups outcome may likely be a recommendation for the ASWF

• SPI and Weta may be able to do a presentation of their systems

• Should establish how the artifacts generated by this group will be handled -- need to figure out what companies are comfortable with

• Meeting cadence should be every two weeks for now (everyone’s busy) though the exact time of the week is still up for discussion