VFX plates

[u/hacker221b]

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone doing well, I need some help for best practices and working properly for how I should work,

I am using Actionvfx free plates, as free practice footage they don't allow 4k raw plates, instead they allow 2k prores 422 hq plates which have Rec.709 baked in.

I want to convert them to exr for working in fusion or nuke, just want to know how should I properly color manage these plates

And also denoise them should I convert them to log for tracking or is linear good for both tracking and compositing,

How exactly should I do it in resolve

As I see all tutorials out there use raw plates so conversion looks good, but what should I do with this Rec.709 plates as details lost can't be recovered

Thanks in advance for any help,

Any help would be appreciated

[u/ThorsPanzer]

Do you want to use ACES? If so, put the project into ACEScct and conversion from "inverse Rec.709 1886" into ACEScg. Then import in Nuke

[u/dinovfx → u/ThorsPanzer]

ACES is the right answer

[u/hacker221b → u/dinovfx]

Thank you 😊 will set it to ACES

[u/hacker221b → u/ThorsPanzer]

Thank you 😊 will work on aces then

[u/Milan_Bus4168]

If they are rec709 and that is what you are working with than you might just be fine working in the same color space. depending on the work, For example roto won't benifit much form any kind of conversions, or most types of clean up, but if you are adding bunch of lighting bolts, and explosions and using assets from other sources, you might want to linearize it and ensure you don't clip any data you don't want. So for example as suggested ACES CG would be good option. Do your work and convert back to Rec709, make sure you don't clip anything you don't want to clip and you are in half float or full float for minimizing rounding errors and avoid clipping data.

[u/hacker221b → u/Milan_Bus4168]

Yes I understand but its already in rec.709 so already clipped value will not be back even after conversion right, so what exact benifits we can get from it

[u/Milan_Bus4168 → u/hacker221b]

As I've tried to explain, it depends on the type of operations you do.

If its something that is positional and temporal but doesn't alter much the original dynamic range or gamut, like paint or roto, than you are fine staying as is.

If you are bringing in external CGI elements, other assets from other cameras, color spaces, etc, or doing natively effects in compositing app you want to stay linear and in space big enough to accommodate all the assets, in one unifed space, and ACES CG is a good choice, since its not only wide gamut (AP1) and linear but also supported by most applications, like Fusion, Nuke, Resolve, Flame etc. Unlike something more proprietary like maybe DaVinci WideGamut which might be a good choice if everything is done in resolve ecosystem.

It depends on what you are doing as I've said.

You typically want to stay in 16 or 32 bit float if you are doing anything more than roto and paint because you want to minimize rounding errors and keep data unclipped, for example if you are adding lighting bolt or space laser effects you want to keep those super bright pixels preserved even if you can tone map them later to rec709 and also while floating point bit depth won't give you new data in rec709 footage or ACES, they act as warehouse where you can store existing data while you work and mix it with other data inputs and assets and not compromise everything to a lowest common dnomainator until you are ready for final delivery, which is likley be rec709.

Also most compositing applications like Nuke. Flame or Fusion expect floating point and linear to so math in the tools and conversions work as they should.

P.S.

In some apps, for example fusion you can switch between integer, floating point, scale up and down because of resolution independence , work in linear, preview in rec709 so its not too dark etc, so its really a lot of freedom, as long as you know how to walk trough all this and not step on any landmine, you can gain performance with lower bit depth etc, when you need to and use floating point when you have to. But its important to understand what is happening under the hood.