Colorfront Express Dailies

Hi forum!

Is there anyone working in Colorfront Express Dailes? I have a question on the transcoding to ACES conformed EXR:s…

Best!
Kristian Krebs

ExD is quite limited for ACES, but OSD can do everything. Did you get your question answered already?

Well, not really… We have built a pipeline were we want to convert the RAW files to ACES EXR:s already at the DIT, and we were hoping to convert them to linear AP0. The way I get it, this is the way ARRI recommends. It seems though that no one is actually doing it, maybe because of the storage issue. So ExD only transcodes to ACEScc or ACEScg which is not perfect in our opinion. It seems their way is to keep the original RAW file as “original” and use that for transportation and archive, and to send CDL:s along the chain. That makes ExD only useful to create offlines and CDL:s within ACES. Its not bad but to me its not perfect. At this point Im trying to figure out if there is anyone doing it like we do or if we need to change our pipeline. I might have to read a bit on OSD then… I would be really happy to get your opinions on the subject!

All the best!
Kristian

I can see in the picture that I have in fact got it a bit wrong… It seems ARRI is actually moving the AP0 around as a RAW and the only step that converts the file into an EXR is the VFX step. The thing is that we want to do it earlier in the chain. So my question is still if our way of doing it is supported and if its really a good idea?

Kristian, I think you are correct that ExD is designed for simply making dailies for an offline workflow. To convert to full ACES AP0 you could use its big brother OSD. But I am not sure why you would have the DIT do this on set. The EXR files would be much larger than the ONEG, so why not wait until you have VFX pulls and only render the EXRs that you need?

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Late but… Thank you for your answer! We have taken your suggestion into account (I hope this is the right expression :-)) and we are trying different pathways to push the ONEG further down in the pipeline and render only certain clips to EXR:s. It seems very wise to do so. thank you!

All the best!
K

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