OpenTimelineIO

OpenTimelineIO

Links

• Main web site: http://opentimeline.io/
• Documentation: https://opentimelineio.readthedocs.io/
• Wiki (more documentation): https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO/wiki
• GitHub: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO
• Discussion group
• Slack channel
  • To join, create an account here first: https://slack.aswf.io/
• Presentations

DEVELOPMENT STATUS

OpenTimelineIO is a mature framework widely deployed across the film and television industries. It is natively supported in most non-linear editing applications, and has deep integration in game engines, digital content creation tools and adjacent industries as well.

The API for OpenTimelineIO is considered stable, but is still undergoing active development, refinement and bug fixes. Work is underway to strengthen the mathematical and theoretical underpinnings of OpenTimelineIO. The current version of OpenTimelineIO may be confidently deployed in your domain.

We encourage all developers and end users to provide feedback, requests, comments, and/or code contributions.

Overview

OpenTimelineIO is an interchange format and API for editorial cut information. OTIO contains information about the order and length of cuts and references to external media. It is not however, a container format for media.

For integration with applications, the core OTIO library is implemented in C++ and provides an in-memory data model, as well as library functions for interpreting, manipulating, and serializing that data model. Within the core is a dependency-less library for dealing strictly with time, opentime.

The project also supports an official python binding, which is intended to be an idiomatic and ergonomic binding for python developers. The python binding includes a plugin system which supports a number of different types of plugins, most notably adapters, which can be used to read and write legacy formats into the OTIO data model.

Documentation

Documentation, including quick start, architecture, use cases, API docs, and much more, is available on ReadTheDocs

Supported VFX Platforms

The current release supports:

• VFX platform 2023 - 2027
• Python 3.9 - 3.15

See also OpenTimelineIO VFX Reference Platform Support Matrix for details of which versions of OTIO support which VFX Reference Platform years.

For more information on our vfxplatform support policy: Contribution Guidelines Documentation Page For more information on the vfxplatform: VFX Platform Homepage

Adapter Plugins

To provide interoperability with other file formats or applications lacking a native integration, the opentimelineio community has built a number of python adapter plugins. This includes Final Cut Pro XML, AAF, CMX 3600 EDL, and more.

Note: for releases after v0.16, the OpenTimelineIO PyPI package will only include the core libraries and file formats. Users that need the full set of adapter plugins should use the OpenTimelineIO-Plugins PyPI Package. Each OpenTimelineIO release will have a matching OpenTimelineIO-Plugins release.

For more information: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO/issues/1386

For more information about this, including supported formats, see: https://opentimelineio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/adapters.html

All adapters except the native .otio, .otioz and .otiod have been relocated to separate repositories under the OpenTimelineIO organization located here: https://github.com/OpenTimelineIO The OTIO python bindings also support several other kinds of plugins, for more information see:

• Media Linkers - Generate media references to local media according to your local conventions.
• HookScripts - Scripts that can run at various points during OTIO execution (ie before the media linker)
• SchemaDefs - Define OTIO schemas.

Installing / Quick-Start

The Python-wrapped version of OpenTimelineIO is publicly available via PyPI. You can install OpenTimelineIO via:

python -m pip install opentimelineio

For detailed installation instructions and notes on how to run the included viewer program, see: https://opentimelineio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/quickstart.html

Example Usage

C++:

#include <iostream>

#include "opentimelineio/timeline.h"

void
main()
{
    OTIO_NS::SerializableObject::Retainer<OTIO_NS::Timeline> tl(
            dynamic_cast<OTIO_NS::Timeline*>(
                OTIO_NS::Timeline::from_json_file("taco.otio")
        )
    );
    for (const auto& cl : tl->find_clips())
    {
        OTIO_NS::RationalTime dur = cl->duration();
        std::cout << "Name: " << cl->name() << " [";
        std::cout << dur.value() << "/" << dur.rate() << "]" << std::endl;
    }
}

Python:

import opentimelineio as otio

timeline = otio.adapters.read_from_file("foo.aaf")
for clip in timeline.find_clips():
  print(clip.name, clip.duration())

There are more code examples here: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO/tree/main/examples

Also, looking through the unit tests is a great way to see what OTIO can do: https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO/tree/main/tests

Developing

If you want to contribute to the project, please see: https://opentimelineio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/contributing.html

Also please review our AI Policy if using AI coding assistance tools.

You can get the latest development version via:

git clone [email protected]:AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO.git --recursive

You can install development dependencies with python -m pip install .[dev]

You can also install the PySide2 dependency with python -m pip install .[view]

You may need to escape the [ depending on your shell, \[view\] .

Currently the code base is written against python 3.9-3.15, in keeping with the pep8 style. We ask that before developers submit pull request, they:

• run make test – to ensure that none of the unit tests were broken
• run make lint – to ensure that coding conventions conform to pep8
• run make coverage – to detect code which isn’t covered

PEP8: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

For advanced developers, arguments can be passed to CMake through the pip commandline by using the CMAKE_ARGS environment variable.

*nix Example:

env CMAKE_ARGS="-DCMAKE_VAR=VALUE1 -DCMAKE_VAR_2=VALUE2" pip install .

Additionally, to reproduce CI failures regarding the file manifest, run: make manifest locally to run the python check-manifest program.

C++ Coverage Builds

To enable C++ code coverage reporting via gcov/lcov for builds, set the following environment variables:

• OTIO_CXX_COVERAGE_BUILD=ON
• OTIO_CXX_BUILD_TMP_DIR=path/to/build/dir

When building/installing through pip/setup.py, these variables must be set before running the install command (python -m pip install . for example).

License

OpenTimelineIO is open source software. Please see the LICENSE.txt for details.

Nothing in the license file or this project grants any right to use Pixar or any other contributor’s trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names.

Contact

For more information, please visit http://opentimeline.io/ or https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenTimelineIO or join our discussion forum: https://lists.aswf.io/g/otio-discussion