Cary Knoop

Use Layers (or Parallel nodes) overlaying different intensity pastel colors. Attached a simple example with parallel nodes. With layer mode you can experiment with different composite modes. Pastel_1.1.1.drx

It all boils down to semantics as gamma is in the video world often used to describe any kind of curve. Technically gamma refers to the exponent (or the reciprocal value) of a function and defines how much a linear function is "pulled up or down". For instance below is a graph with various gammas, starting with the red line which is x to the power of 1 thus a gamma of 1, then going upwards with a gamma of 2, 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 (or the reciprocal values). So for instance x to the power of 0.45 is a gamma of 0.45 (or 1/0.45 = 2.22). A log curve is something different and based on the log function, below is a graph with Rec709 (using a gamma of 2.22 or 0.45) and Panasonic's V-Log as an example. By the way Rec709 is not a complete gamma curve as it is linear at the bottom.

First I would check if the black point is not raised and that the shadows do not have too much contrast, I think both of these will "invite" the encoder to use a higher compression. Sometimes it helps to add large grain noise in the blacks.

Here is a straight line ramp (Gamma 2.4), the resulting difference is equivalent: I would avoid sRGB and instead use Rec.709 Gamma 2.2

In Resolve the transforms are different:

DNxHx should work fine but I would make sure you test if the levels and gamma are correctly interpreted at all stages in your workflow.

You might want to consider using EXR output. But the cc version of ACES might not be your best option.

It would take only one constant (DISPGAMMA) to change to make a Rec.709 2.2. ODT, but as far as I know there is no way to add custom ctl files to Resolve. How do you do the transform in ACES? A transform would have to take an ACEScc(t) gamma and make a change that will in effect become equivalent to Rec.709 2.2 once transformed with Rec.709 2.4.

I would forget about sRGB and use Rec.709 with a 2.2 gamma (or 2.4, as opinions seems to differ) as the ODT. For sRGB you need to raise the blacks as they will go below zero. ACEScc handles sRGB better than ACEScct.