Colourspaces in D-cinema, ACES, and Streaming

2026‑06‑03

1-day masterclass
Montréal, Wed Jun 17, 2026, 08:30–17:00 (doors open 08:00)
Organized by SMPTE, Montréal section
Hosted by NFB / ONF
Presented by
Charles Poynton, independent researcher, Toronto
Register CAD 413.91–552.36

planned for Toronto, fall, 2026

presented in Hamburg, 2025‑11‑29
presented in Vancouver, 2025‑12‑11
presented in Dublin, 2026-05-12
presented in Glasgow, 2026-05-22

Why are there so many colourspaces in digital cinema/UHD/HDR/WCG/streaming pipelines?

Colourspaces for cameras
Colourspaces for grading
Colourspaces for distribution
Colourspaces for presentation/display

In this masterclass, we’ll explore the theoretical and practical aspects of colourspaces commonly used in production, post-production, and presentation of movies, broadcast, streaming video, and games. You’ll learn why the requirements at each stage are distinct, and you’ll gain an understanding of the transforms among them. By the end of the day, you’ll have a deep understanding of power function (“gamma”) and logarithmic/quasilog (“log”) encoding. You’ll learn about the OpenEXR, CTL, ACES, and OpenColorIO approaches to transforms among these colourspaces. You’ll understand the implications of sRGB, 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6-gamma for SDR display, and the HDR10, PQ, and HLG standards for HDR. You’ll appreciate why video in distribution is always display-referred (despite some proponents claiming that their distribution encoding is scene-referred).

Lots of graphs and equations will be shown and explained. If you have first-year university math: great! You’ll gain a deep understanding of log coding and the CIE chromaticity diagram, among other things. However, we’ll address the necessary math fundamentals during the day; if you have high-school math, you’ll come away with a deep understanding of colourspaces.

The masterclass is appropriate for:

colourists & color assistants
DITs and technical DoPs
studio colour scientists
post-production supervisors
data management technicians, media engineers, and mastering engineers
display calibration engineers
graphics software developers

NFB / ONF, Alanis-Obomsawin Theatre
1500 Rue Balmoral
Montréal, QC H3A 2H7

An associated masterclass, Colour science for VFX/CGI, will take place Fri Jun 19. Some material will be duplicated (eg, ACES). If you wish to attend that class as well, for an increment of CAD 100, please register for this one and send email.

Charles Poynton is an independent researcher and image/colour scientist based in Toronto. He wrote the book Digital Video and HD Algorithms and Interfaces, now in its second edition. Thirty five years ago, he chose 1080 image rows for HD standards, by which “square pixels” were established for HD and digital cinema. He earned his PhD in 2018 from Simon Fraser University with a dissertation entitled Colour Appearance Issues in Digital Video, HD/UHD, and D‑cinema. He is a Fellow of SMPTE, Colorist Society (CSI), and IMIS (formerly BKSTS). ∎