Date: 2022-05-10

Location: Online, Zoom

Members Attending

• Gary Oberbrunner (director)
• Pierre Jasmin (director, RE:Vision Effects)
• Peter Huisma (director, co. secretary, Assimilate)
• Dennis Adams (director, Sony Creative Software Inc)
• John-Paul Smith (director, Boris FX)
• Phil Barrett (member representative - FilmLight)
• Philippe Jean (Autodesk) - disappeared after a couple of minutes
• Garrick Meeker (Digital Anarchy)
• Jason Clement (Boris FX)
• Robert Fanner (Foundry)
• Boris Yamnitsky (Boris FX)
• Mike Escola (Boris FX)
• Paul Miller (Boris FX)
  Not present: Grass Valley, Blackmagic, FXHome
  

Observers Attending

• David Morin (Academy Software Foundation)

Minutes

---

Meeting commenced at 1704 UK Time

Agenda Items

1. AGM
1. Gary opened the meeting and welcomed the participants
2. Pierre noted that we have quorum.
3. Dennis and J-P taking notes
4. Peter presented the financials
1. GBP 5084.29 in the bank
2. Last time we gathered membership fees was 2020, 2021 was skipped due to the pandemic
3. We may ask for membership fees this year depending on the future of the association.
4. In 2020, 8 members paid dues and are considered to be the current membership.
5. Gary proposed reelecting the directors, Peter seconded. Passed unanimously by show of hands.
2. ASWF
1. Gary presented a slide deck explaining the motivation for ASWF move (see slides)
2. 75% of the membership will need to approve the change, this means 6 members need to vote in favour.
3. David explained that it is not necessary for companies to join as ASWF members in order to participate. Joining as a member is about making a contribution to your favourite non-profit to support the cause.
4. Pierre asked about how ASWF members participate in the decision-making process and David clarified that the TAC is the major decision making body. Their decisions are passed to the board (premier members) who review non-technical matters to ensure that the engineers can continue to do their work.
5. J-P explained the legal process. The board will arrange legal advice to draft a written resolution that will be circulated to members for approval. Members have 28 days to approve the resolution, failure to respond is considered a vote against. Once the resolution has been drafted, members will be consulted individually to answer any questions and secure votes. As soon as we have 6 votes in favour, we can proceed.
6. Peter explained the finances - our accountant will need to prepare final accounts on closing of the business.
7. Gary opened the floor to questions on this topic
1. Dennis explained that he has participated in a number of ASWF projects and thinks this is an excellent idea.
2. Garrick asked in what areas we expected to increase the contributions to the project. Gary and Pierre explained that we expect more host support, more plug-ins and contributions to the standard from the larger community we will be able to engage. There was discussion of the OpenMeshEffect standard which is an extension of OpenFX that has engaged with us.
3. David further added that when the project joins, we hope it will benefit from a new start to become the best version of itself. Other projects experienced an increase in commits of 100% in their first year. The beating heart of the project is the people who have looked after it so far, when the TSC is formed it should contain both "old guard" and "new guard" to reinvigorate the project.
8. As the ASWF discussion concluded, Gary opened the floor for technical discussion:
1. Pierre mentioned the new overlay suite, developed this year, which is now supported by Scratch, Flame, Silhouette and Left Angle Autograph.
2. Phil Barrett asked if we could consider CUDA/Metal/OpenCL extensions. Gary explained that there are extensions for this in the wild (Resolve, FilmLight) which could be brought into the standard. There is also a unified Sony/Resolve OpenCL header that is ready to be standardized.
3. Another important next step is colour management. J-P mentioned that in Boris FX we have an internal extension to support OCIO which could be contributed.
4. Frederic has been making new updates to Natron including OpenTimelineIO. There is definitely scope for OTIO to use OFX. Having OTIO as a container for timelines that include OFX filters between hosts would be huge.
5. Pierre mentioned that we could also have an OTIO suite in OFX that allows a plug-in to look outside its clip at the rest of the timeline. This would help us deal with the issue of time bounds that has never been fully resolved.
6. Autodesk have also worked in this area and may have something to contribute, also in the area of spatial format.
9. David gave some concluding notes - he has much more detailed information available about the foundation and would be happy to host a separate presentation to discuss this.
10. There being no further matters to discuss, Gary proposed that we adjourn the meeting, and Dennis seconded.
11. The meeting concluded the meeting at 1755 UK time.