Specs for Creative Commons demo timeline media

[JT-os]

The topic came up in discussions for collecting high quality professional level Creative Commons media to use for a demo OTIO timeline project. Blender open movie projects were mentioned and there are many other professional level open movies and CC licensed projects to consider.

Questions for getting started on collecting prospective media: 1) What should the minimum media format specifications be? 2) Should prospective media be centrally stored for easy access by stakeholders? If so, then where? 3) Are there any other specifications or needs or guidelines that should be considered?

[jminor]

Here is some open content from Netflix, including one of the Blender Foundation films, that might be a starting point: https://netflixtechblog.com/engineers-making-movies-aka-open-source-test-content-f21363ea3781

Note that those are more about the actual audio/video media, while we're mostly interested in the editorial timeline. Of course, it would be ideal to have a matching set with both media and timeline.

[jminor]

What I have in mind is gathering some real-world timelines, akin to the sort of thing you might see in the #timelinetuesday posts on social media:

https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=timeline+tuesday https://twitter.com/hashtag/timelinetuesday?lang=en

But rather than screenshots, we would like to have actual EDLs, AAFs, FCPXMLs, etc. that we can turn into OTIO to illustrate what an actual working editorial timeline structure looks like, including tracks, effects, nesting, etc.

[JT-os]

Excellent. I'm compiling the list of easy access download links to all the open movie files just as a reference. 1920x1080 seems the best rez target. I'll take a look at the links you posted. So cross fades/transitions are wanted. Anything else?

So the big idea I am focused on is for anyone to be able edit the same original timeline and media once a "stub" OTIO has been posted. Then of course there's a matching blender internal version if they want to edit it in blender and export it out in OTIO format via a hacked together EDL method.

I'll be putting together some quick reference docs on that also. There are some dos and dont's to keep it clean. That way people can see both the original program timeline, the OTIO in the viewer and then their target app of choice. That's the impression on the big picture that's most useful from what I understand so far.

[jminor]

Sounds great @JT-os.

To answer your question about "cross fades/transitions are wanted. Anything else?" I would say that ideally we would find something that illustrates a wide variety of features that OTIO supports, so multiple tracks, nesting, transitions, markers, time effects, etc. but that is a secondary goal. The primary is to have a real world timeline from a short or feature.

I skimmed through Blender's Spring, which seems to have some cross dissolves in the end credits. We'd rather use that than a trailer made to demo OTIO features. Does that make the goal clear?

[jminor]

Sintel also has some dissolves in a montage in the middle. That would be a good example too.

[JT-os]

Ah, yes that clarification helps. What is preferred is the original footage and edits of the internal timeline from the published open movie. Then export that out as an OTIO timeline from the original project. As opposed to just using the footage and creating a new edit with a new timeline.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll look in to it. I'll look in to finding some sequences in their Camindandes short also. It has some good transitions and very clever cut sequences.

[jminor]

@darbyjohnston has put together some example OTIO content with the Netflix Open Content media here: https://github.com/darbyjohnston/otio-oc-examples

There is also some new example video media available here: https://dpel.aswf.io

[jminor]

We now have the Animal Logic ALab Promo trailer available here as both an Avid Media Composer project and as OTIO: https://dpel.aswf.io/alab-trailer/

More to come soon :)