How Can We Help?
EDL to CDL conversion tool
Hello.
After many years I’m back at writing pure code to help my teams with automations for a theatrical project we’re doing VFX and finishing for ― all in an end-to-end ACES 1.0 pipeline of course !
In particular, this Python script is called edl2cdl and its task is to translate the CDL values embedded in an EDL file from editorial into ASC CDL’s XML-based formats (.ccc, .cdl and .cc file extensions). edl2cdl has mainly one small, practical but paramount use by CG/compositing products (like The Foundry Nuke), which are poorly to completely-non timeline based, while artists using them still benefit to view their job through the cinematographer’s own intent (which should have been quite effectively represented via CDLs).
Adding some automation to have the right VFX plates receive the corresponding CDL from the set can be tricky, so this script (plus some Nuke gizmo I’ll post later) allow for a really functional and working workflow.
Where’s the ACES part? Well, despite CDL can be well used outside of (and in fact were designed by the ASC long before) ACES, they are indeed a valuable bridge component to it.
Particularly if your on-set or near-set color-grades are done using CDLs viewed through an ACESproxy pipeline or on top of a color-corrector internally working in ACEScc, then the transmission in the next DI, VFX and finishing stages is very straightforward as long as CDLs are always applied on top of ACEScc codevalues.
You can find the edl2cdl here in my GitHub page
