Netflix's Production Technology Resources channel released a technical deep dive on the ACES Metadata File, the sidecar file that carries a color pipeline from the set through dailies, grading, and VFX. The five-minute video was produced in collaboration with the Academy Software Foundation, which now stewards ACES as an open-source project.
The AMF is the connective tissue of an ACES color workflow. It stores the recipe needed to rebuild the same viewing pipeline in every department, so the look a cinematographer approves on set survives to the final grade.
The video targets professionals already working in ACES. It assumes familiarity with the system and goes straight to the metadata mechanics, rather than introducing color management from scratch.
An AMF is a sidecar XML file that records the full ACES viewing pipeline
An ACES Metadata File is an XML sidecar that holds the minimum metadata required to recreate an ACES viewing pipeline across production, post, and archival, according to the AMF specification.
Inside the file is the complete chain of transforms: the input transform (IDT) that maps camera footage into ACES, any look modification transforms (LMTs) that carry the creative grade, and the output transform (ODT) that describes the display the image was viewed on. It also logs the working color space and the ACES version in use.
That structure lets one file describe an entire "color recipe" instead of relying on scattered LUTs and notes moving between vendors.
The point is protecting the creative look from set to final grade
Netflix frames the AMF as the way to carry a look intact from the first day of shooting through to delivery, a theme it lays out in a companion overview video aimed at a broader audience.
The file supports two ways to move a look downstream. It can embed ASC-CDL values directly, or it can reference sidecar look files such as CLF (Common LUT Format), an approach color vendors have detailed for on-set to post handoffs.
For a DIT setting a show LUT on set, that means the same grade metadata travels to the colorist and the VFX vendor without a manual rebuild at each handoff. Netflix documents the practical steps in its partner-facing AMF guide for productions.
The deep dive is one piece of a larger ACES education push
The technical breakdown sits alongside the overview video and a companion shorts series, part of a run of ACES material from the same channel. Video production came from ImageNova, with contributions from color and camera professionals including Ashley Barron ACS, Francesco D'Ascenzo, Gastone Ferrante, Grace Weston, and Nick Shaw.
The educational effort follows a structural shift for the standard itself. We covered ACES joining the Academy Software Foundation, which moved the color system into the same open-source home as OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, and OpenTimelineIO.
Why standardized color metadata matters for working productions
Color consistency across departments has long depended on tribal knowledge and hand-carried LUTs, and a misread look at any handoff can cost hours of rework. An AMF replaces that with a single, portable description of the pipeline that every tool can read.
For DITs, colorists, and VFX artists, Netflix's breakdown is procedural: understanding what the AMF stores, and how to generate and pass it, keeps the creative intent locked in from capture to delivery. That interoperability is also the argument for ACES living under the ASWF, where color management sits next to the open-source projects the rest of the pipeline already relies on.
