Pattern Browsing Slow

I like to build my edits with pattern browsed comps (from Nuke usually), and generally it all works well (apart from when TC changes etc).

My main gripe is how slow it is to update a version, I wanted to check if others have the same experience? I will select my clip on the timeline, Flame thinks about it for 15-30 seconds depending on how many versions of the clip there are, and then same thing for actually changing the version. So it can sometimes be best part of a full minute before it will update. Not fun for being able to compare 2 versions. Is this expected behaviour?

Alt + up or down arrow in nuke is basically instant to change a version, I get there are software differences under the hood, but hoping for a closer experience to that.

I have the same experience. I feel like it used to be faster before 2024, but I can’t really confirm that.

It might have also been faster because I was doing it on a Linux box instead of a mac? Do to some version mismatching we’ve got going because of moving to Rocky I can’t really compare and contrast.

yeah out past 5-6 versions Flame PB grinds to a halt practically. You can copy the PB clip on the timeline, hard commit that version and then above it switch to another version of the pb clip and then compare with the page up / down buttons. I’ve had some success going back and deleting earlier renders from the server which i know will never see the light of day… really really in need of an overhaul.

using openclips is so much faster, but zi havent found a great way to have nuke artists update the openclip , NIM can do that abd there are custom writenodes flosting around but they all need/want soecial binanries that come with flame which means every nuke artist needs flame to be installed for this to work…

We really just need a more simple way to add versions to openclips this is high on my list of development, its just a xml why do i need so much fancy stuff to change the contents?

Thanks for the replies, good to know it’s not just me and others are seeing the same performance. The struggle continues!

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hey @ocaiden i don’t know what version of flame you are currently on but i’ve also found if you just park all your PB clips on a isolated timeline layer, you can select it and mouse/pen click to access the “source versions” menu and mash “select latest version” it seems to be a bit faster updating the segments than fiddling with the UI inside the pre-processing menu on the TL ribbon. Hi to all the gang over there from NY

It appears to get slower based on 2 things:

How deep your folder path is.
How many things are in the folders.

…which both boil down to: how much stuff it has to look at.

We’re looking at making a script to move all but the 5 latest renders to another folder to speed things back up when it starts getting heavy.

As slow as it is, it still beats doing it manually.

I find that if you want to flick between latest and previous versions then updating to latest then using undo/redo switches almost instantly.

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would it be even more benefitial to have a external script that updates a .clip openclip file to save the results?

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yes. as much as i’m complaining here, i’m on a show with 200+ vfx shots and pokey old pattern browsing is saving my bacon.

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duplicating media like that seems like an easy solution but prob a potential for confusion later on, esp on big jobs with lots of people who want to go to one location to grab the latest / greatest version of a shot.

seems like it should be possible to limit the pattern browsing to the last 5 renders maybe? i have no idea what that token string looks like however…

we’d be moving it, not duplicating.

and the latest versions would stay where they are.

The tokens on pattern browsing are extremely basic. I don’t think there’s a way to limit the number of versions, and I guess it would still have to look at all versions to decide which were latest.

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