This might be 1 or 2 FR here.
This applies to: retiming, shake resizing when using multiple frames and any other filter that is time dependant (like noise reduction can be), simple at the end formatting without rerendering like adding a 2/3 pulldown, specialized DOD process, ...
In Shake it has never been possible to read two frames from a branch other then at the FileIn point. TimeX has issues too if one for some reasons by so doing creates a situation where something is evaluated twice.
It seems the less destructive path toward that could be simply via a nested script approach
This would allow one to type a script name in the fileIn path name
Yes it's a bit like AE precomp requirements in some cases, but it's better then nothing, but it would open the option of supporting different frame rates as well like that.
Another implementation option would be to have a ScriptIn and ScriptOut node type. Same thing maybe, but imagine to illustrate ScriptIn-ScriptOut one has a show of people on greenscreens over CG backgrounds and one makes shake script to take Maya renders, and pre-keyed source elements and make a first shake script out of that, that might also include presets for keying so it does something... and the compositors load the script where there is two ScriptIns and a compositing node, one is the auto rough ley (and other preprocesses) and one is the CG render. Looks at it, starts working on shot with ScriptIns while final key is in progress or final CG needs to be rerendered. When the KeyScript is done, it suddently when the compositor opens the Shake script, a fileIn equivalent if the frames have been preprocessed, else it process results on demand.
The same mechanism would serve time-based processing well as well since it could then be treated I think as a fileIn as then you are in interactive mode within one script level domain (and maybe make pre-processing methods cleaner - eg autocrop), simply by encapsulating stuff in their individual scripts (as opposed to macros), which one would be able to tab to. Perhaps a better GUi model then tabs for that could simply be when you go to a nested script there is a button you can press to go back Up. And then of course such super-macros would need to allow to publish parameters so expressions etc can be evaluated in the parent script.
Pierre
