FREE Cleaned and Redeveloped Academy Color Encoding System (ACES /OCIO)

What is ACES?

The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is the industry standard for managing color throughout the life cycle of a motion picture or television production. From image capture through editing, VFX, mastering, public presentation, archiving and future remastering, ACES ensures a consistent color experience that preserves the filmmaker’s creative vision. In addition to the creative benefits, ACES addresses and solves a number of significant production, post-production, delivery, and archiving problems that have arisen with the increasing variety of digital cameras and formats in use, as well as the surge in the number of productions that rely on worldwide collaboration using shared digital image files.

ACES is a free, open, device-independent color management and image interchange system that can be applied to almost any current or future workflow. It was developed by hundreds of the industry’s top scientists, engineers and end users, working together under the auspices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

What problems does ACES solve?

Today’s motion pictures and television shows are complex collaborative efforts, involving many separate companies using digital image capture, image creation and editorial workflows that are much more difficult to integrate than film-based workflows.

On a typical production there might be half a dozen different digital cameras as well as a film camera in use, all recording to different devices and media using different data formats. During post-production, especially on major motion pictures, multiple facilities may be engaged for editing, visual effects, mastering and other work. Digital image files arrive at these facilities in any of a dozen (or more!) formats and color encoding schemes, often without essential metadata. At the end of the process, studio deliverables could range from large-screen film prints to mobile device encodings.

All along the way, the integration challenges increase – and on the horizon there are undoubtedly emerging technologies and new all-digital distribution platforms that will add complexities of their own.

ACES solves numerous integration challenges by enabling consistent, high-quality color management from production to distribution.  It provides digital image encoding and other specifications that preserve the latitude and color range of the original imagery, allowing the highest-quality images possible from the cameras and processes used. Equally important, ACES establishes a common standard so deliverables can be efficiently and predictably created and preserved. ACES enables filmmakers to manage the look of a production today and into the future.

What are the benefits of ACES for specific users?

Virtually everyone involved in production, post-production and archiving can enjoy ACES benefits.

For cinematographers, colorists and digital imaging technicians, ACES preserves creative intent from on-set capture to presentation by:

• Eliminating uncertainty between on-set look management and downstream color correction through standardized viewing transforms and equipment calibration methods
• Preserving the full range of highlights, shadows and colors captured on set for use throughout post-production and mastering
• Simplifying the matching of images from different cameras
• Providing a means to repurpose source materials when creating alternate deliverables

For visual effects and other post-production facilities, ACES streamlines digital workflows by:

• Simplifying the interchange of unfinished motion picture imagery
• Providing a standard color management architecture that can be shared by hardware and software vendors
• Eliminating uncertainty associated with undocumented or poorly documented file formats and color encodings
• Establishing standards for metadata

For producers and studios, ACES reduces production costs and enables future-proofed archiving by:

• Providing a free, open source color and look management architecture that can be shared by vendors whose hardware and software products are used on set and in post-production
• Ensuring digital assets can be repurposed to take advantage of future high-dynamic-range, wide-color-gamut display devices
• Ensuring the archive contains the highest fidelity digital source master possible, representing the digital equivalent of the “finished negative”

Source by Oscars.org

This improved .ocio file contains the latest stable version, which is 1.2.

Added setup video tutorial