Pattern Browsing Challenge

What’s the best way to pattern browse comps that have gone to grade and come back in dated and timestamped folders?

One big challenge being that sometimes multiple grade revisions will be rendered on the same comp version - So the version number doesn’t change, and also on the same day - so the timestamp becomes relevant

so I could have a path like this in the morning:
grade/20241018/1012/shots/sh0350_comp_v011

and then another render of the same clip in the afternoon:
grade/20241018/1750/shots/sh0350_comp_v011

Bearing in mind that I have control over the folder structure as the grades are happening in house in most cases.

The closest I got was requesting the timestamp be added to the dated folder like 202410181012 and using that as the version number but I couldn’t get that to work cleanly

I’d like to hear suggestions of a good folder structure and pattern browse that deals with all these issues. Cheers

@leovfx

grade/{version}/{version}/shots/{name}

you should eliminate the double {version} token by using YYYYMMDDHHMM as the folder name, which would then act like a version number.
incremental dates will tick up a version as far as the pattern browse base is concerned.

What happens if you keep the double version token? That wouldn’t work would it?

it doesn’t work
you should try it

good luck

OK thanks. Yes this is what I’ve done in the past. It stopped working for some reason and I couldn’t figure out why in the time I had. Will try it again on another project. Cheers

You might softlink the grade in to Flame and let grade overwrite the old grade, then it would uppdate in your timeline/comps if you flush all renders and caches.

Ha. Yeah. Thats what we currently do. Looking for something more sophisticated to keep comp version numbers intact.