State of 'Color Space Aware' effects

Hi,

I've done more testing with working in ACEScct and I have my doubts.

Some color space aware effects do more damage than not managing them and others don't show any sensible difference leaving me questioned as to why they even need a 'color space aware' function.

Dip To Black

Enable/Disable: No discernable difference.

Appearance: Not desireable.

Reveals clipping light, show harsh transitions and color banding in the transition even if they are diminished by the DRT. It also seems like the middle 'true black' frame in the transition is not the black point of the log working color space, just zero, resulting in a negative black. This undesirable appearance is not present when using Direct SDR. For reference in Resolve the appearance does not change at all when switching between a direct SDR or 'HDR' scene referred log working space when a similar dip to black transition is applied. It always looks like that of Premiere's Direct SDR workflow.

ACEScct:

Direct SDR:

Proposal: I think the black value used (or anchor point of the gain function whatever it is) needs to at least be matching the working color space. An internal conversion for 0.0 from linear to the working color space's transferfunction solves this in a future proof way for all potential working spaces, rather than typing in the ACEScct black value.

Furthermore I think a user choice of a linear dip to black would be very welcome so it actually looks like exposing down to pitch black. Since the information of the working space is already present it would simply come down to converting to linear, then dipping to black by multiplying with 1.0->0.0 in the transition duration.

Example:

Film Dissolve

Enable/Disable: Big difference

Appearance: Unusable when enabled, looks ok when disabled.

I'll let you be the judge of this...

ACEScct Color Space Aware ON:

ACEScct Color Space Aware OFF:

Other effects I checked showed zero or minimal differences when switching Color Space Aware on/off:

Cross Dissolve, Color Pass, Extract, Color Replace