TimeSlice Dual

The pitch: everything TimeSlice Effect does, but the slices pull from two different clips. Clip A fills some bands, clip B fills the rest, and the two interleave like venetian blinds - except each strip is also sampled from a different moment in time.

Why you'd reach for it: this is the transition and mashup node. A/B dissolves in ComfyUI are usually opacity ramps, and the seams show. Dual lets you art-direct a handover instead: the whole frame belongs to A, then bands flip to B one by one, each carrying its own time smear. That covers glitch transitions, split-reality looks (two takes occupying one frame), and side-by-side comparisons without a visible seam.

How it works. It runs the same shared slicing engine as the rest of the pack, then assigns each slice a source with pattern. offset_a and offset_b are independent cascade steps for A's and B's slices, so the two clips don't have to smear at the same speed. Handy detail: input B is automatically resized to match A if their dimensions differ, so you don't have to pre-align clips yourself.

The inputs that matter:

• images_a / images_b - the two clips. They'll be cut to the shorter one's length, so match your frame counts.
• pattern - how slices are assigned to sources: alternate (ABAB), pairs (AABB repeating), aba, aabb, abba. This sets the texture of the interleave.
• mix - the balance. 0.5 keeps the pattern as designed; push toward 0 or 1 and slices get reassigned (seeded) so one source dominates. It's your crossfade, minus the mush.
• offset_a / offset_b - per-source time smear, so one clip can streak while the other stays crisp.
• num_slices, angle, spacing, direction, loop_mode, blend_width, seed - pack-standard shared controls.
• mask (optional) - restrict the whole two-source mess to the white area; outside stays original A.

The optional block - cascade_curve, slice_jitter, and the animate controls (num_slices_end, offset_a_end, offset_b_end, angle_end, temporal_curve, frame_count) - is where Dual earns its keep. animate interpolates the offsets from start to end over the clip, so the balance between A and B shifts mid-take instead of sitting frozen.

Outputs. The same four sockets as the whole pack: images, mask, num_frames, slice_edges. Output length is the shorter of the two inputs - shorter still under trim, so read num_frames rather than assuming.

Install

Pack-wide, nothing special: ComfyUI Manager → search "TimeSlice Nodes" → Install, restart. Or manually:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/systms-ai/TimeSlice-Nodes.git

Restart, and it shows under Systms → effects. Only dependency is numpy; no model files to download.

Gotchas

Both clips should be the same frame rate and roughly the same length - the node cuts to min(B_a, B_b) and won't warn you about the mismatch. Pre-trim wildly different clips before you feed them in. And the usual pack rule: single images in, nothing meaningful out - these are clip nodes. Also worth remembering: two hi-res clips in, two clips in memory, so RAM scales accordingly.

Recipe to start: alternate pattern, mix 0.5, offset_a 1, offset_b 6, num_slices 40 - a subtle two-speed weave. For a transition, animate offset_a from 1→6 and offset_b from 6→1 over the clip, and the two takes trade places as they smear.