Dailies & VFX interchange

ExpertDuration ~30 min video (two parts) + hands-onTools DaVinci Resolve (free/Studio)

Why this lesson

Color doesn’t start in the grading suite — it starts on set and has to survive a long relay. The dailies pipeline normalizes each day’s footage so editorial cuts with the intended look, and — done right — carries the color forward so nothing is re-invented at the final grade. Meanwhile VFX interchange sends shots out to compositors and gets them back so your grade lands on top cleanly. Both are round-trips, both are pure pipeline discipline, and Netflix’s own two-part walkthrough is the best free teaching on it. The two videos are a sequence — Part Two literally requires Part One’s project setup — so watch them in order.

Watch

Segment: 0:00–5:14 — show look as an ACES LMT, DIT per-scene CDLs, and why CDL/ACES enables the roundtripwatch full video

Watch for: The opening framing: the show look lives as an ACES LMT, the DIT applies per-scene CDLs on set, and because CDL and ACES are portable, that color information can travel across every department and come back at conform. This is the whole thesis of the module in five minutes.

Segment: 5:14–21:33 — dailies project setup, then loading the show look (DRX) and per-clip CDLswatch full video

Watch for: The CDL-portability settings (Luminance Mixer to zero, ACEScct color management), then the core loop: load the show look as a DRX on the timeline node, import per-clip CDLs from the DIT report, and match using only Lift/Gamma/Gain/Saturation so the balance stays CDL-portable — verified on scopes and a multi-playhead wipe.

The explainer

Dailies: consistent color, carried forward. Each shooting day dumps hours of log footage that editorial can’t cut with raw. The dailies pipeline normalizes it: a color-managed project (ACEScct in the Netflix example) applies the show look as a timeline DRX node, and each clip gets the CDL the DIT authored on set. Now editorial receives footage that already looks like the movie, and — the part beginners miss — the color decisions are stored as data, not baked beyond recovery. Two settings make that portability real: zero the Luminance Mixer and grade the dailies balance with Lift/Gamma/Gain/Saturation only, because those are exactly the operations a CDL can hold. Anything fancier won’t survive the trip.

The CDL round-trip. Here’s the elegant part. At dailies you export the color metadata alongside the editorial proxies — an ALE (Avid Log Exchange) or EDL carrying the CDLs, plus a companion CSV of clip metadata. Editorial cuts; months later you conform (Lesson 2.8) and need those balances back on the right shots. You run ColorTrace from the CDL/EDL: Resolve matches each timeline clip to its CDL by reel and timecode and re-applies it — green means matched, and if reels and timecode line up, the whole timeline lands its on-set balance automatically. That’s a CDL round-trip: the color you set at dailies travels out with the edit and comes home at the final grade, so you start finishing from the DP’s on-set intent instead of a blank slate. Part Two shows it end to end — import the timeline, import the metadata CSV, ColorTrace the CDLs, re-apply the show look as a DRX (per-timeline for one look, or per-group via smart filters and post-clip nodes for multiple scene looks), then spot-check against an offline reference.

VFX interchange: send un-graded, in a known space. VFX is the other round-trip, and it has one iron rule: hand out un-graded plates. A compositor adding a CG creature needs the original scene-referred image to light and integrate correctly — a graded, display-referred file has the rendering already baked in and fights every composite. So you export the shot as a plate: an OpenEXR sequence, floating-point and scene-linear, in a known space (ACES / ACES2065-1 for interchange, or the show’s working space). EXR is the standard precisely because it’s float and holds the full dynamic range and wide gamut — an 8-bit display-referred frame would throw away everything VFX needs. You also give them the show look / AMF (Lesson 3.3) so they can preview their work under the intended grade without baking it in. They composite, then deliver the finished shot back un-graded, in the same space, and your grade — which you built once — re-applies on top with no surprises. Match the in and out color spaces and a VFX shot drops into the timeline indistinguishable from a live plate.

Why both are the same skill. Dailies and VFX are both about moving color as portable data through a chain of hands so that intent is preserved and nothing is re-done. CDLs and DRX carry the look to editorial and back; EXR and the AMF carry the scene to VFX and back. Design these loops well and the production stays coherent from the first day’s rushes to the final master. That coherence — not any single grade — is what running color for a production means, and it’s the direct feed into your Level 3 capstone pipeline document.

Do it

1. Build a dailies project: ACEScct color management, Luminance Mixer zeroed. Load a show look as a timeline DRX and give two clips different CDLs (Lift/Gamma/Gain/Sat only). Export an ALE/EDL + CSV of the color metadata.
2. Round-trip it: in a fresh conform project with identical settings, import a cut timeline, import the metadata CSV, and ColorTrace the CDLs back on — confirm the clips go green and the balances land.
3. Re-apply looks two ways: one show look on a timeline node; multiple scene looks via smart filters → groups → post-clip DRX nodes (the Part Two multi-look workflow).
4. VFX hand-off: export one shot as a scene-linear OpenEXR sequence in ACES/your working space (un-graded), note the color space, and confirm that re-importing it and re-applying your grade matches the original — proof your interchange space round-trips.

Level 3 workbook — every Do it exercise, 3.1–3.10, plus the capstone (printable)level-3-workbook.pdf764 KBOriginal course material — free to use

Terms introduced

Terms introduced in this lesson

• Dailies pipeline
• CDL round-trip
• EXR / plate

Each term links to the glossary, where it is defined by the way you just used it.

Check

Check yourself

1. What is the job of a color-managed dailies pipeline?

   To normalize each day’s footage with the show look and per-scene CDLs so editorial cuts with consistent, intended color — and so that color information round-trips to the final gradeTo render the deliverablesTo back up the media onlyTo final-grade every shot on set

2. How does a CDL round-trip work from dailies to final?

   CDLs can’t leave the dailies systemCDLs authored at dailies travel with editorial (as ALE/EDL plus a CSV) and are re-applied at conform via ColorTrace, so the on-set/dailies balance lands back on the right clips automaticallyThe look is baked and never recoverableThe colorist re-eyeballs every shot

3. Why hand VFX an un-graded EXR plate rather than a graded one?

   It’s faster to renderGraded plates are illegalVFX needs the original scene-referred image to composite correctly; they preview under the show look but deliver back un-graded in a known space, so your grade re-applies cleanly on topEXR can’t hold a grade

4. Why is OpenEXR the standard VFX interchange format?

   It’s a floating-point, scene-linear format that holds the full dynamic range and wide-gamut/ACES data VFX needs — unlike an 8-bit display-referred fileIt stores audioIt’s the smallest fileIt’s the only format Resolve exports

Check answers

You can move on when you can… design a dailies loop (show look + CDLs, kept portable), round-trip CDLs to conform with ColorTrace, and specify a VFX hand-off — un-graded scene-linear EXR in a known space, with the show look for preview — that comes back matching.

Mark this lesson complete

Go deeper

Netflix — Color Roundtrip, Part Two: the conform side of the loop, end to end. It requires Part One’s exact project setup — same color management, same reel settings — or the ColorTrace match won’t work. Watch it straight after Part One.

Watch for: Importing the editorial XML, importing the metadata CSV to the media pool, then ColorTrace-from-CDL/EDL re-applying every dailies CDL by reel+timecode (all green), and two ways to restore the look: a single timeline-node DRX, or per-scene looks via smart filters, groups and post-clip DRX nodes. The payoff shot: the same CDL values you wrote at dailies, back on the first node of every clip.

Read

• ACESCentral (acescentral.com): the ACES interchange model, ACES2065-1 as the EXR interchange encoding, and the AMF spec — the reference for a scene-referred VFX hand-off.
• Netflix Partner Help — VFX & Post workflows (partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com): plate delivery and color-space expectations for real VFX interchange.
• OpenEXR / ASWF docs (openexr.com): why float, scene-linear EXR is the interchange standard.

The paid path: the Netflix pair is unusually generous free material and covers dailies→conform well; the specialist depth — on-set dailies systems, large-scale VFX pulls, and DI pipeline design — lives in colour.training and Mixing Light. This page plus those videos gets you designing the loops; the courses scale them to a show.

Next up: 3.10 · The working colorist — the business, the session, the reel, and Baselight literacy.