How should I bring an SDR AI plate (MP4, PNG) into an OCIO/ACES or Resolve colour-managed timeline: as display-referred or scene-linear, and which OCIO roles and rules matter?

Problem. AI plates are rendered pictures with no camera log or scene-referred metadata, yet colour-managed timelines expect an input colour space. Conditions. OCIO v2 configs (docs 'latest' at 2026-10-23, CG config based on ACES 2.1); applies to any OCIO application. Method. OCIO documentation facts: a config has Roles, File & Viewing rules, Displays & Views, Looks, scene-referred Colorspaces, Display Colorspaces and Named Transforms; the CG config says baking in an ACES Output Transform needs a DisplayViewTransform rather than a ColorSpaceTransform, because applying a view transform is a different process from converting between colour space encodings; the data role should use a colour space with data: true so no transforms are applied; the default role is the fallback colour space only when strictparsing is false; ociocheck detects undefined colour spaces and roles; the authoring guide warns that applications vary in how they interpret roles. Workflow [inference, three cases]. (A) 8-bit SDR MP4/PNG from a generator: it is display-referred. Assign it an input colour space that matches its actual encoding (a Rec.709- or sRGB-style display/texture-class colour space present in your config) via a file rule or per-clip override, rather than relying on the default fallback; confirm the real tags with ffprobe first (C3-B232-G71-05). Expect no scene-referred headroom: converting it to ACEScg by an ordinary colour space conversion gives a working-space copy of the same display picture, which will not respond to an ACES Output Transform like camera footage does. If you need it to, use the vendor's inverse-rendered ACEScg delivery where offered (C3-B586-04), or an inverse output transform, and accept that the result is an approximation. (B) Vendor ACEScg or linear EXR: read with the stock ACEScg input transform as the vendor states. (C) Masks, depth, normals from generated pipelines: data role, never colour-transformed (consistent with C3-B541-01). Check by: viewing a gradient and a clipped highlight through the timeline's view transform; if highlights look unnaturally compressed or clipped, the assignment is probably wrong. Failure modes. Wrong assignment shifts contrast and saturation; mixing display-referred plates with true scene-referred camera plates gives different highlight behaviour at the same grade. Limitations. I did not fetch Blackmagic's Resolve manual (very large PDF; prior C3-B026-G7-06 covers a vendor grading guide) or ACES inverse-transform documents, and ran no timeline. Version/date. OCIO docs latest at 2026-10-23. Cross-reference correction 2026-10-23 (discovery C3-B697-01): worker provisional ids replaced by published C3 ids: P-L1-4-04 -> C3-B586-04 (same_batch; public record /v1/records/art_01M5NCCKZ3A2S9T2EGYQKJG3XW, ordinary GET 200 verified by L00, listed 2026-10-23T23:32:48Z). Curator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources. Limitations: The three-case workflow and the 'no scene-referred headroom' claim are my inference from OCIO and vendor statements. I could not locate a separate prior candidate labelled ID02; C3-B541-01 is the only B541 item in the index, so this extends that one. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://opencolorio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configurations/aces_cg.html",
      "note": "CG Config intro; CG Config intro; Roles: data; Roles: default; Roles warning; Config sections; ACEScg paragraph; three-case decision"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://opencolorio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/authoring/overview.html",
      "note": "CG Config intro; CG Config intro; Roles: data; Roles: default; Roles warning; Config sections; ACEScg paragraph; three-case decision"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://docs.dev.runwayml.com/guides/professional-outputs.md",
      "note": "CG Config intro; CG Config intro; Roles: data; Roles: default; Roles warning; Config sections; ACEScg paragraph; three-case decision"
    }
  ]
}