ACES 1.0 and Beyond

Presenter: Charles Poynton
Duration: two, 2-hour sessions
Date/time: Wed, Sep 2, 2015 11:00 - 13:00 EST
      and Thu, Sep 3, 2015 11:00 - 13:00 EST
Registration: USD 240, GoToTraining

The corresponding in-person workshop has been presented in Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, New York, Los Angeles/Burbank, Munich, and Berlin.

2‑page flyer in PDF format is available.

Synopsis:

For nearly 20 years, cinema production and post-production was based upon the conceptual model of film acquisition, where the S-shaped tone response and the colour crosstalk of film were built-into the image encoding. The scheme made CGI and VFX difficult.

Digital cinema cameras are now commonplace; however, image data encoding is diverse and nonstandard. Some cameras generate data roughly comparable to a film scan (e.g., ARRI log C); others generate data comparable to HD (BT.709/BT.1886), or are based upon HD video (Hypergamma). “Log” formats of various kinds (e.g., Sony log, Red log). DI houses and CGI/VFX facilities have to deal with image data in new forms.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has has released ACES 1.0, which defines a pipeline that acquires and processes “scene-linear” data – that is, image data closely coupled to scene exposure. Colour transforms imposed during the DI process create the desired “look” and systematically compensate for the viewing conditions of cinema. The ACES scheme is being deployed commercially.

In this webinar, Charles Poynton will discuss the technical and visual requirements for acquisition and processing using the ACES scene-linear model. He will introduce the basic technical parameters of various camera encodings and describe their dynamic range and noise properties. He will describe the input device transform (IDT) by which image data from different cameras is trans­formed to a common colourspace (ACES). He will outline how “picture rendering” must be imposed in the DI pipeline, for example, by the ACES reference rendering transform (RRT). He will describe ACES log coding (ACESlog, ACESproxy), the ACES colourspaces (AP0, AP1), and describe the four key colour transforms in ACES: IDT, LMT, RRT, and ODT. He will explain how the scene-linear model is applied to the DI pipeline, and how it aids CGI/VFX integration. He will describe various output device transforms to yield imagery suitable for D‑cinema, HD, and other displays. We will go “Beyond” version 1.0 by discussing how the the RRT and ODTs might be extended in the future.

Who Should Attend: The workshop will be suitable for people in positions such as these:

The attendee should be familiar with digital video, HD/UHD, and digital cinema. Knowledge of mathematics isn’t required; nonetheless, many graphs and several equations will be shown!

Registration: USD 240. Detailed handout notes – some of which form portions of the second edition of Mr. Poynton’s book – will be provided. To register, access Go To Training.

Copyright © 2015-08-18 20:19 EDT
Charles Poynton