ACES...

[Gunleik Groven]

Whoever mentioned 1080 here? :)
But if you deliver 1080, that obviously s good enough for that project. Many valid reasons for shooting 5k for 1080...

[Jose Lomeña]

Whoever mentioned 1080 here? :)

only me :-) ... I confused prores with 1080p...

[Martin Stevens]

When I was a boy I had a tour of the Disney effects studios
when they were making the movie "The Black Hole".

Their fancy motion control camera system was called....."ACES".

It stood for "Automated Camera Effects System".

:)

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Our workflow for commercials wouldn't work for film-out but what we do is:

R3D -> Nuke -> EXR -> Nuke -> DPX

That way we can work in linear color space but also have the r3d settings saved in Nuke. We'll then erase the EXRs at the end of a project to save space but have the option to re-render with the exact settings should we need them again.

If RED released a Linear>RG3 LUT it would let us use RG3 (which I do like) on projects.

[Gunleik Groven]

Our workflow for commercials wouldn't work for film-out but what we do is:

R3D -> Nuke -> EXR -> Nuke -> DPX

That way we can work in linear color space but also have the r3d settings saved in Nuke. We'll then erase the EXRs at the end of a project to save space but have the option to re-render with the exact settings should we need them again.

If RED released a Linear>RG3 LUT it would let us use RG3 (which I do like) on projects.

This is quite similar to our VFX/Resolve pipeline

Edit
Firstlight
Run out EXR's RLF for VFX --> Cineon DPX for re-ingest into resolve project
Main project - firstlighted RLF/RC2 (soont be RC3) "RAW" in resolve (since our last series, we have stayed without rendering RGB material as much as possible and practical)

Currently working on 24x 30 minutes X-mass calendar...
Come summer! :)

[Bruce Allen]

Yeah, you guys are all doing it right.

You know who's not doing it right? The guy using Adobe software (which doesn't understand Log very well). Eg the workflow RED is pushing heavily right now.

He "edits in RAW 4K" in Premiere, using R3D decode settings that clip because it looks good on his monitor (no LUTs involved - because Adobe workflow for LUTs sucks and its color management makes things horribly slow - and Red doesn't say "here, use this LUT with RedLogFilm" so nobody knows what LUTs to use anyway). Then he decides to run Warp Stabilizer on the footage.

Awesome... the Warp is Stabilized - but the clippy R3D decode settings are now baked in. Not awesome.

Even less awesome: if you go and change R3D decode settings, you have to do a new Warp Stabilize. You can't say "apply the Warp Stabilize from clipped clip A to clip B".

The problem is that due to Adobe / RED marketing, these people don't even know that there was another way - eg work in RedLogFilm... use LUTs to get the crunchy preview... but the data is still there.

BTW what LUT do you guys use when working with RedLogFilm?

I'm embarrassed to say that I use the Arri Alexa ones - simply because you can easily download them from a website for whatever system I'm using.

Hopefully OpenEXR will put all of this stuff behind us... but I have to say that for now things are a tad convoluted.

And the amount of acronyms in OpenEXR drives me nuts. There are so many transforms happening. We need to make a nice simple website to explain it all or else people are going to make a lot of mistakes.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Jon Chema]

We think the concept of ACES is a good one. Trying to create a single workflow that works with all camera options seems just fine to us. We are doing our best to help connect RED footage to the ACES program. The Academy is serious and committed to the ACES workflow... and we are too.

But... it is not ready yet to work with RED footage today. We strongly discourage anyone from using ACES in its current form to grade anything RED except test footage. It is critical that ACES is not considered a current solution for production quality work with RED footage.

We will do our best to change this... and we'll let you know as soon as we feel this option is ready.

Jim

Is there a layman's explanation of the ACES workflow anywhere? I'm confused as to what it entails.....

[Graeme Nattress]

Bruce, I think we all want to work towards linear light workflows with proper monitor independence. ACES is one attempt at doing this. As much as I somethings worry over the details, the concept is valid.

Graeme

[Bruce Allen]

Bruce, I think we all want to work towards linear light workflows with proper monitor independence. ACES is one attempt at doing this. As much as I somethings worry over the details, the concept is valid.

Graeme

Thank you for listening as always.

We will use a club to flatten the prickly ACES into a pancake, scrape some of the acronyms off it, then mould it into something useful for cinema domination!

Now we just need to get Adobe to actually add EXR timecode read and write before 2035.

Ah well - thank heavens for the ProEXR plugin for now!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Michael Cioni]

I have nothing against people who live in the desert. I also have nothing against people who live in the north pole. It is clear that over time, man has found ways to thrive in places that are complex and (to the average person) require more work to survive. But because of the known challenges of territories that are short on water and warmth, human civilizations have gravitated to places that offer more temperate climates, more resources, essentially more water and more warmth. Large cities grew in areas where the geography and climate made life easier, yet amidst all the known comforts of temperate places, some still prefer to live in the desert and some in the north pole.

To me, ACES offers many theoretical advantages to image control, monitoring and distribution. Personally, I find that the back-half of the ACES pipeline is its strongest characteristic. I like the idea of more uniform archiving and the encouragement of better preparedness for future display technology. I also like that the ACES platform is going to encourage advancements towards linear EXR files. I like the idea that ACES encourages production, visual effects, and post production to collaborate closer together, and often sooner in the process. The ACES system does not work if only part of a production uses it, therefore, ACES can be a champion for file-based efficiency by forcing departments to consider their collective color science strategy upfront.

But even with these advantages I think that people will begin to identify drawbacks to the ACES agenda. Complex systems have tendencies to fail over simple systems. Complex systems tend to cost more than simple systems. Anyone who has examined the ACES IIF system knows that it's fairly complex. Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest solution is typically the best, and there are a lot of great looking pictures out there that did just fine with far simpler alternatives. Until the development of ACES matures to the point that its complexity is better understood, better adapted and better optimized, simpler solutions will continue to be popular.

The complex world of ACES will get worse before it gets better. ACES will cost more. ACES will take longer. ACES will eat up more space and require more support, more assessments and more adjustments. But in the long run, ACES will likely prevail and its benefits will strongly outweigh its limitations. For my company, Light Iron is not a group of people that believe in singularity. We believe in pluralism. A pluralistic view on filmmaking suggests that there are infinite ways in which to manage a project. And the direction of that pluralism should always be dictated by the personalities of the filmmakers, not the Academy. Some people's view of ACES is that it homogenizes cameras and color so as to simplify DI. Others feel ACES brings uniformity to archivists. Some believe it levels the playing field amongst competitors. And some feel it actually improves their images.

The fact of the matter is, I have nothing against people who live in the desert or in the north pole. But when you choose to live in a more complex environment, life without water and warmth is going to be difficult. My recommendation: wait for ACES to evolve. Watch it. Learn it. Test it. Discuss it. Practice it. Provide feedback. Do comparisons. And publish them. Take advantage of the widely published ACES IIF documents to help you navigate this new territory and listen to what your instincts tell you.
m