ACES step by step for low budget shoots

ACES step by step for low budget shoots.
OK, I’ll try and keep this as straightforward as I can.

The object here is to view an image on-set that will match an image viewed in an ACES workflow regardless of the software used for post. I have personally done this in Baselight, Resolve & RIO.

First you will need a LUT box of some kind, this needs to go between the camera and the monitor.
There are a lot of good ones around at various prices from BMD, FSI, AJA, Teradek, Fuji or of course you can use a recorder like the Convergent Design Odyssey , Atomos Shogun or Videodevices PIX

Set your camera monitoring to log out, make a note of what this log out is, Logc, Clog, Clog2, Clog3, Slog2, Slog3, Vlog, Log310WG etc these are all in the CML-ACES packages.

Load the appropriate LUT into your LUT device, this may require a tranlation stage, some of these units require a special format but they will all start with the standard CUBE LUT format and provide the software required to do this.

With some cameras you can load a LUT directly into the camera avaoiding the requirent for a LUT box. These tend to be in the manufacturers own format but in the CML-ACES packages there are versions for most cameras that take them, if there’s not then they probably take standard CUBE files.

Connect the output of the LUT box to your rec709 monitor.

And that is basically it!

In post you set your system to work within an ACES cct environment and load the appropriate IDT for your camera and ODT for your viewing system.

Working this way you will see in post, any post house, what you saw on set.

This is a manufacturer independent, post house independent, consistent and predictable workflow.

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Thanks for this post, I am referencing an autochcrome type look which i have recreated in ACES cct using resolve 16.2. The original Lut i was given was too contrasty and made in DaVinci YRGB which was no good for me in ACES.
I would like to use my ACES Lut as you suggest ,using a Lut box onset, I am shooting on a sony venice which can output ACES proxy , ACES to 709 or ACEScct.
My question is in terms of exporting the Lut out of resolve, do i export it as a cube as per normal or are there any specific steps i need to take considering it is a ACES lut In terms of precision?

What you’ll be exporting as a look is what is called the LMT. For onset monitoring a 33x33 would do although I would always export a 65x65 as well for the final grade.
A important tip is to have the correct ODT (709 in most cases) and no IDT (that means that cct would be the input colour space). Then output ACEScct out of the Sony Venice on the SDI and that’s it.

Thanks for your input Pablo, I resorted to exporting a 65x cube out of resolve without the IDT+ODT then bringing that look up into Livegrade and having pomfort do the IDT and ODT and exporting that for onset viewing purposes. This seems to have held up fine. Thanks once again.

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That is a sensible thing to do, because then LiveGrade will handle the range discrepancies between log and “video” output of Sony cameras, without you needing to wrap your head around it and do it manually.

See my post here for more detail.

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