Just think of the overall project as a framework for image interchange, and ACES as being the Academy-specified color encoding for that interchange. That color encoding is written up in a SMPTE document whose identifier happens to be ST 2065-1. Try googling for “aces 2065-1 SMPTE” and I’m sure you will find the formal document.
There is already an Academy document, carefully written up by Scott Dyer, that details the official names for all the pieces of ACES. Perhaps he or Steve can post a link to it. I think it would help you (and many others).
Thanks Joseph, I really want to embrace ACES.
The main concepts are pretty easy to grasp but confident pipeline integration is another story.
I’d love to read the paper your referring to !
I’m actually going through all ACES Specifications and Technical Bulletins to learn more.
My goal is to mix/match BMC 2.5k (raw dng’s) with an ARRI Alexa Plus 4:3 (raw ari’s).
The last item in the section titled “System Documentation” is TB-2014-012, “Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) Version 1.0 Component Names”. That tells you what things are officially called now, but also identifies older names you may come across.
There are no names in the version history nor is there any acknowledgments section but I am pretty sure this was largely or wholly the work of Scott Dyer at the Academy, who deserves a lot of praise for pulling this together.
As for your goal, ACES is a good tool for color matching the output of various cameras. The importance of matching noise characteristics, dynamic range, and so on depends on your content, and in any case is outside the scope of ACES.
You can also find a review of all ACES-based colour spaces here:
p.s.: It’s not mandatory to pre-emptively convert footage files from their “raw” formats (in your case ARRIRAW) to ACES (OpenEXR as per SMPTE ST2065-4 specs) prior to using an all-ACES workflow – In fact, sometimes this is a cumbersome passage that you only do for additional reasons, but not a choice picked up by itself.