Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

ACES IDT for Dragon

Maybe Graeme can chime in; I know there were some things with ACES that did *not* play nice with MX-based r3ds out of the gate, and they were never really formally addressed (more like, 'avoid it for now' type of thing, with no mention later on). That was pretty early on though.

That said, DigitalFilmCentral, the post house that did Elysium, took an ACES pipeline for that movie (shot on Epic) -- not sure if they went via EXR export though.
 
Geoff, are you using Resolve? The only place I do a conversion to ACES is via EXR in RC-X.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Geoff, are you using Resolve? The only place I do a conversion to ACES is via EXR in RC-X.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Hi Graeme, I'm trying to assemble a piece from various cameras in Resolve in ACES space, this works very well for most of the other cameras.

Unfortunately the current RED IDT isn't wonderful with Dragon.

I'm trying to find a way around that and the only option I can see is to use RedCine-X and export to EXR there and then take the EXR files into Resolve.

Just wondering if there was a new IDT???
 
geoffboyle said:
Is there a new IDT available for Dragon?

The current RED one is not good in highlights, that's being extremely polite.
Click to expand...


??

What planet are you from ?

Edit... Sorry Geoff.... I thought you were talking about Dragon. The RED ONE well before MX days, yes agreed was flawed in the highlights especially if you didn't protect them.
 
Last edited:
Mark Toia said:
??

What planet are you from ?
Click to expand...

I dont know why you need to personally attack Geoff. I have a lot of respect for you Mark but Geoff has just got back on Reduser and his knowledge is welcomed here IMHO.

Below is the Wikipedia definition

[h=3]Input Device Transform (IDT)[edit][/h]
  • The process that takes captured images from any ingestible source material and transforms the content into the ACES color space and encoding specifications. There are many IDT’s, which will be specific to each capture device and likely specified by the manufacture under the ACES guidelines. It is recommended that a different IDT be used for tungsten versus daylight lighting conditions.
 
Mark Toia said:
??

What planet are you from ?
Click to expand...

The planet where you log on to a manufacturer's forum site to ask them for help fitting their product into industry standard workflow practices?

If I were trying to be fair to RED, I'd be doing exactly what Geoff is doing.

If I wanted to make RED look bad... I'd just use the existing Resolve ACES IDT and say "oh the highlights aren't good".

BTW, the lack of a good ACES IDT that is freely available to use in apps such as Resolve (and good 3D LUTs for that matter) is a serious issue for RED. One I've been raising for years too.

It's kinda silly that we have often end up using LUTs downloaded from Arri's very helpful site!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce Allen said:
The planet where you log on to a manufacturer's forum site to ask them for help fitting their product into industry standard workflow practices?

If I were trying to be fair to RED, I'd be doing exactly what Geoff is doing.

If I wanted to make RED look bad... I'd just use the existing Resolve ACES IDT and say "oh the highlights aren't good".

BTW, the lack of a good ACES IDT that is freely available to use in apps such as Resolve (and good 3D LUTs for that matter) is a serious issue for RED. One I've been raising for years too.

It's kinda silly that we have often end up using LUTs downloaded from Arri's very helpful site!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...

Agree.
I thought Geoff was talking about Dragon. Sorry about that.




Adam Eden said:
I dont know why you need to personally attack Geoff. I have a lot of respect for you Mark but Geoff has just got back on Reduser and his knowledge is welcomed here IMHO.

Below is the Wikipedia definition

Input Device Transform (IDT)[edit]
  • The process that takes captured images from any ingestible source material and transforms the content into the ACES color space and encoding specifications. There are many IDT’s, which will be specific to each capture device and likely specified by the manufacture under the ACES guidelines. It is recommended that a different IDT be used for tungsten versus daylight lighting conditions.
Click to expand...

Sorry. .. yes... I thought Geoff was talking about Dragon ... The early RED ONE well before MX days, yes.. was flawed in the highlights especially if you didn't protect them.

Curious why REDONE (pre MX) is still being used?
 
Last edited:
Hi Mark, Geoff and all.

These are the kind of misunderstandings that have previously ballooned. Let's try to keep them down.

Geoff is specifically talking about the IDT (Input Device Transform) which is the first step of an ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) color-workflow.
In an ACES workflow, there are camera-specific IDTs for the first step of the process.

Geoff is not attacking RED or refering to the RED 1, but refers to the current "RED IDT" (edited: according to Graeme "in Resolve"), which is not ideal.
We vaguely touched that base in Bristol.

There is no offense at all in Geoff's request, Mark.

He just asks if there is a less destructive IDT available for Dragon, as the current IDT messes with the signal in a bad way.
In ALL ways this is a very valid request... As many (me including) like the concept of the ACES workflow. ACES is an attempt on standardizing color-transforms for different deliverables at getting a predictable similar output in for different formats.
AND simplifying color-handling in productions that involve different source-material (RED/ALEXA/PHANTOM/GoPro, comes to mind as a natural example), WITHOUT strangulating the signal from any of them. Exactly the perfect tool when you want to compare signals from different cameras, as long as the IDT is non-destructive.

ACES just needs to work for RED sourced material, too. If memory serves me, ARRI has been complaining about the current IDT, too.

As Graeme suggests, it is possible to do it through a workaround, which includes exporting EXRs for ACES in RCX. The catch is that then - all of a sudden, we are not handling R3D-sized files, but rather 16-bit uncompressed RGB UHD files (in this case), which is a bit disadvantageous over the other cameras.

The request is logical and IMHO very legit.

Keep calm and make colors... :)

Geoff knows his stuff, as do you, Mark.

You two represent very different mindsets as to how to create and develop images, though. But the cool thing is that both are available for good results.
 
Last edited:
Gunleik Groven said:
Hi Mark, Geoff and all.



You two represent very different mindsets as to how to create and develop images, though. But the cool thing is that both are available for good results.
Click to expand...


I'm simply trying to get the best images I can out of the Dragon for use in a 4K DCP that will be shown in a projection environment.

The best way I know to do this is to use ACES in Resolve and grade with a 709 ODT in place and then switch to a P3 ODT for output.

I'm doing this with a bunch of footage from different cameras, most have IDT's that work well for their cameras, the new 1.1 IDT's for Canon work particularly well, they pull out considerably more highlight detail than the last one did.

I think I will have to go the RC-X EXR route to get the best out of Dragon but I have been having issued with this approach.

I'm working on it!
 
Thanks Geoff!

I know you are trying to get the best out of all the cameras. And that that is challenging. And that the route you have chosen is good for that.
And that there are issues with the RED IDT.

Appreciate this!

You probably did this, but to verify the highlight-potential visually and quickly, linearlight in RCX @ 250 ISO probably gives you a good hunch as to what is "recoverable" in the top.

Sorry if this is an unnecessary tip!
 
Last edited:
OK, export to EXR file is way way better than using the IDT.

I have to export original size because whenever I try resize in RCX I get file errors, not a problem.

Some huge files going to appear now!
 
Hahahahaha. I know! Best of luck and thanks for doing it this way!

Workflows are discussed over here... :)
ACES has been a silent chapter for a while.
But with the Dragon, I hope it will come to a point where it is working well from the R3Ds.

It is a very good way to go to P3/DCP... If it works.

Who is writing the IDTs?
Academy, manufacturer or...?
 
Sidney L. Plaut said:
Mark, he isnt talking about any red specific camera, rather using the ACES workflow:) - which RED some time ago themselves said was not working particularly well for RED cameras.
Click to expand...

There was only ever one RED specific issue which was addressed a rather long time ago. The other issues with ACES are all ACES issues that you will find with all kinds of source material. When we find an issue we pass the files along to the Academy so they can debug their code. ACES is not finished and still under active development.

Graeme
 
geoffboyle said:
Just wondering if there was a new IDT???
Click to expand...

Thanks Geoff. There is no *new* IDT because there's never been an *old* IDT. We don't use an IDT because we take care of properly transforming the camera data to linear light with the Academy's colour space. We were recently made aware that Resolve does its own thing with regards to extracting linear light floating point data from our camera that looks very different from our linear light output. I can only assume that any IDT that Resolve uses is of their own design and any issues with it are in their hands. That said, this is not good for end users such as yourself who expect things to work correctly so we're taking steps to ensure that you'll get a correct result. I don't think that will be ready for your tests which means that you must use RC-X.

Graeme
 
Gunleik Groven said:
Hi Mark, Geoff and all.

These are the kind of misunderstandings that have previously ballooned. Let's try to keep them down.

...

Geoff knows his stuff, as do you, Mark.

You two represent very different mindsets as to how to create and develop images, though. But the cool thing is that both are available for good results.
Click to expand...

Blessed are the peacemakers.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Thanks Geoff. There is no *new* IDT because there's never been an *old* IDT. ...We were recently made aware that Resolve does its own thing with regards to extracting linear light floating point data from our camera that looks very different from our linear light output. I can only assume that any IDT that Resolve uses is of their own design and any issues with it are in their hands...

Graeme
Click to expand...


Well both Canon & Sony have supplied new IDT's to ACES recently and they are a great improvement over previous ones
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top