I think I might modify the statement about ‘studios using the ODT’ slightly. First what do we mean by studio, could be many different groups of people, so I’ll interpret it as applying to a specific film/project.
I would agree with the statement that I’ve rarely (possibly never) seen a project use the ODT as-is with no LMT, but I do have 1-2 out of many current projects using an LMT combined with stock ODTs for making their editorial media - no idea what happens in DI. These projects tend to be from the same “Film studio” . It is not uncommon for these projects to emulate another look via the inverse of the RRT+ODT.
However more of a problem for me are the “15-20” other projects which don’t deliver an ACES workflow, but instead hand me a single baked LUT, which makes adapting the look to any of my other output devices more work than it could be. I don’t know if these are baked down versions of an LMT+RRT+ODT, or some print stock emulation, a simple tonescale+gamut adjustment, or something totally creative (I’ve reverse engineered examples of at least all of these).
Supporting these and other creative choices that are in conflict with each other, e.g. desaturating highlights vs preserving pure high luminance colours vs hue preserving within the overall framework is a suitable goal to try achieve.
This is separate to what the stock rendering should be, as Scott suggests we can break things if it makes sense, as can be seen in the previous releases, attempts have been made to preserve historical backwards compatibility by supplying LMTs and or other emulations “under” the current rendering, we should of course follow suit.
Perhaps we need to categorise the current wish list by stating if it is possible under the current framework to agreeably solve the problem or not. To me this means that modifications to the current rendering needs to be made in the direction of facilitating more possible outputs and moving the “restrictions/constraints” to the LMT.
If we have enough of a case on the ‘not’ side then it makes sense to consider what adjustments to the framework need to be made to allow for the desired flexibility, whilst minimising the other valid concerns the content owners have such as wanting to limit the scope of black box/secret sauce components, such as baked LUTs - I think it is OK to have such a component for creativity, but shouldn’t prevent anybody from retargeting to an alternate output device. i.e. I do not think we can go as far as “providing a set of LUTs” that replace the whole output Transform.
Kevin
You guys are totally entitled to wish for a hue-preserving rendering but I would like to point out that non-hue preserving rendering accounts for the majority of all the content produced by the entertainment industry. Given that, would I say that all the movies shot with ARRI and their rendering pipeline are broken or that the rendering of the Planet of The Apes is busted because hue skew? I would not dare, would those productions have benefited from hue-preserving rendering, I cannot say but at any rate, they are out and made their producers and consumers happy.
