2021-11-08

Owned by Alex Forsythe
Last updated: Nov 13, 2021 by Thomas Mansencal
2 min read

RAW to ACES Working Group Meeting Notes

November 8, 2021

Host: Alexander Forsythe

Attendees

Alexander Forsythe (TSC) - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
John Mertic (ASWF) - The Linux Foundation
Kimball Thurston (TSC) - Weta Digital
Mark Boorer - ILM
Michael Lafuente (TSC) - MSG Sphere Studios
Thomas Mansencal (TSC) - Weta Digital

Agenda

  • Review Trademark and Account Assignment.

  • Discuss license type

  • Discuss RAW engine plans

Notes

Trademark and Account Assignment

  • TODO: Alex to look which Academy entity need to transfer the trademark.

License Type

Considered licenses are Apache 2.0 and BSD 3

  • Kimball: Apache 2.0 safer because of patent assignments

  • Alex: Which one does matter the most to Weta?

  • Kimbal: Apache 2.0 and it is the recommended license from the ASWF.

  • RESOLUTION: Apache 2.0 is selected

RAW Engine Plan

  • Mark: Compatibility with libraw. How are we supporting new cameras?

  • Kimball: RAW Decoding should be handle by a plugin:

    • RAWtoACES is performing the colour conversion with spectral knowledge but a plugin, e.g. RAWspeed or ARRI SDK like OpenImageIO is doing would provide the RAW decoding support.

    • Weta's HDR merging tool will be contributed as the basis but need to be refactored to be more modular.

  • Thomas: Weta had some concerns about the LibRaw license.

  • Kimball: Yes, which is why plugin approach makes sense as it is LGPL.

  • Thomas: We can link against it and we don't have to have the project released as LGPL.

  • Mark: Spent a lot of time on the OpenImageIO LibRaw plugin, curious about the interaction with OpenImageIO.

  • Kimball: Talked with Larry to see if the new RAWtoACES could eventually replace OpenImageIO libRaw support but we need to figure out the colour science aspect.

Repository

  • Alex: We need to finalise the charter document to be able to start to code.

    • Multiple repos? Data and Code?

  • Thomas: Important to consider the data license, some datasets could be used for research only and some other for commercial endeavour, thus we might want separate data repositories.

  • Kimball: Need to look at the ASWF initiative for datasets to see how we store it.

  • Kimball: We should move the RAWtoACES repo under the https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation organization and benefit of the redirection.

  • TODO: Transfer https://github.com/ampas/rawtoaces ownership to https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation.

  • Thomas: The current master branch can be renamed to something else, e.g. legacy.

  • Mark: Careful with migrating the current repository if it contains a lot of data in history, it could be huge.

  • Alex, Thomas: History should mostly be a handful of json and few C++ source files.