ACES And DaVinci Resolve 101 Webinar – Understanding The Workflow

Updated: May 11, 2020 – At ~17:30 in the video we updated two slides to correctly state that LogC and Slog are scene-referred recording formats. For Premium Members, the download for this revised Insight is appended as ‘v2’.

Learning The ACES Workflow In DaVinci Resolve: Presented By Peder Morgenthaler

Team Mixing Light is very exciting to present our first-ever webinar!

We originally arranged for Peder to give this presentation on NAB 2020 at the Mixing Light Presentation Theater within the Flanders Scientific booth. Of course, life got it the way and we had to re-jigger our plans.

Hence–Mixing Light Webinars is born!

Since this was our first webinar, we assumed that attendance at the actual webinar would be light (plus, this far into the Stay At Home orders, we figured people were tired of webinars). We were wrong!

Attendance Far Exceeded Our Expectations. This Insight Is Free Through May 15, 2020

As a result, we instantly filled up our Zoom webinar ‘room’ (limited to 100 people by our account level).

Facebook, our After Hours Slack Channel, our Contact Us page, and the posting announcing this webinar quickly overflowed our support channels with registrants who were locked out.

For that reason, we’re keeping this Insight free, in front of the paywall, through Friday, May 15, 2020. This should give everyone who signed up plenty of time to get ‘edumcated’ on the ACES workflow and how it’s executed in DaVinci Resolve.

What You’ll Learn In This Webinar

Are you confused about ACES? What is it used for? How do you use and implement ACES within DaVinci Resolve?

In this webinar, colorist & Mixing Light contributor Peder Morgenthaler covers the basic concepts of the Academy Color Encoding System, including:

• What is the problem that ACES is trying to solve?
• What reasons might a project decide to use ACES?
• How can you get the ACES pipeline going in Resolve?
• An explanation of the essential alphabet soup of ACES acronyms.
• How do you set up mixed camera formats in DaVinci Resolve with an ACES color pipeline?
• A demonstration of Peder’s approach to color grading in ACES.
• How do you work with RAW media in an ACES workflow?

The first 70 minutes of this webinar is Peder’s presentation laying the essential groundwork you need to know to have an educated discussion talking about implementing ACES workflows in DaVinci Resolve. The last 30 minutes is the Question & Answer section of this webinar. Some of the questions that Peder answers include:

• Working with Look-Up Tables (LUTs) in ACES
• Using Lift/Gamma/Gain controls vs. Log controls
• How to change your DaVinci Resolve settings for multiple deliverables?
• Are there projects where ACES is in inappropriate workflow?
• If you are delivering to multiple color spaces, which is the version you should set up for the initial color grade?
• Does ACES require a more powerful computer compared to working in non-ACES workflows in DaVinci Resolve?
• Are there distributors requiring ACES archival masters as a delivery requirement?

Additional ACES Resources On Mixing Light (and beyond)

• Flightpath: What is ACES and How Do You Use It? – Mixing Light has been teaching ACES workflows for years. We’ve organized our content into an ACES Flightpath. This is a curated collection of Mixing Light Insights that can be watched in the order presented. Plus, on the right sidebar, we list and link to many ACES resources that you may find essential to mastering ACES for your particular needs, including ACES Central – the official home of ACES.