After Effects "Linearlize Working Space"

[Devon]

I'm having trouble understanding what After Effect's "Linearlize working space" does and where it can benefit me. I shoot all my footage in SLOG-2, and as soon as I check "Linearlize working space" and "Color management" in after effects, I cannot seem to recover highlights and shadows. The image just looks bad.

If I don't use this feature, can my video files look differently from computer to computer when watching on youtube (assuming I color manage my footage in sRGB?) Do the gamma values change? Once you render to H.264, isn't the footage linearlized during the rendering process anyway?

Sorry for the lack of detail here. I have read posts about this here http://prolost.com/blog/2009/9/30/passing-the-linear-torch.html and here http://prolost.com/blog/2006/6/4/know-when-to-log-em-know-when-to-lin-em.html

Even after reading these posts, I still cannot determine if I should be using "Linearlize Working Space" when editing SLog-2 encoded footage.

[Luke Mason]

If you are doing comping and blending operations, it's better to use linear working space with 32bit floating point.

[AaronChicago]

From what I understand Linear 32bit float in AE is more for compositing elements on top of footage. You get more realistic bright whites from CG elements. Not really for tweaking live footage (highlights etc.) It doesn't seem to do anything different than 8bit. This is just my experience though.