# ComfyUI-CGlide
Custom nodes for **MiniMax H3** video generation in ComfyUI.
Four nodes: one that builds the whole prompt and conditioning, one that lets you
watch the shot while it samples, one that writes the file, and one that joins a
continuation onto the clip it continued from.
I make short films with these. Everything here exists because I needed it, and
the defaults are what I actually use.
THE RECITATION — a short film made with these nodes
THE RECITATION — a short film made with these nodes
---
## Install
Search for **CGlide** in ComfyUI Manager, or:
```
cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/CGlide/ComfyUI-CGlide
```
Restart ComfyUI. The nodes appear under **CGlide** in the node menu.
**Update ComfyUI while you're at it.** Honestly, half the H3 problems people
post about are an old ComfyUI, not the model. The low-VRAM path below needs
0.31.0 or newer.
### Requirements
- **PyAV** — reading reference videos and their soundtracks. Usually already
there with ComfyUI.
- **torchaudio** — resampling reference audio.
- **ffmpeg on your PATH** — Glide Video shells out to it. Nothing else uses it.
### Models
Everything comes from the Comfy-Org MiniMax H3 repo:
- the reference-to-video checkpoint (and/or first-last-frame) → `models/diffusion_models/`
- the text encoder → `models/text_encoders/`
- the video VAE → `models/vae/`
- the audio VAE → `models/vae/`
**Less VRAM:** grab the `w4a8` model from Kijai's experimental repo — about
11.8 GB instead of 21 — and the `int8_convrot` video VAE from the same place.
Same workflow, same prompts, you only swap the loaders.
Careful, this one is nasty: if your ComfyUI is too old for `w4a8` you get a
**black video with sound**. No error, nothing. If you see that, it's the
version, not you.
---
## H3 Studio
One node instead of the pile of loaders and text boxes. Nine image slots, three
video, three audio, the prompt, and the checks — all in one panel.
It does **not** touch sampling. Same sampler, same steps as a normal H3
workflow. It builds the prompt and the conditioning, that's it.
**Inputs:** `clip`, `vae`, `audio_vae`, and `first_frame` / `last_frame` for the
first-last-frame family.
**Outputs:** `positive`, `latent`, `width`, `height`, `length`, `seconds`,
`overlap_frames`, `source_video`, `guide_frames`.
The last ones are for chaining — see below. Everything else you wire the way you
would with the native H3 nodes.
### What's in the panel
- **Both model families in one node.** `First / last` and `Omni references` is a
switch at the top; the accent colour follows so you always know which one
you're in.
- **Drag files onto slots.** Or paste — Ctrl+V drops a screenshot straight into
the slot under your pointer. Type `@` in the prompt and pick a reference to
drop its tag in.
- **Several images at once.** The nine image slots take a whole batch, from the
picker or from a drop. Drop onto a particular card and the batch fills from
that card forward; drop onto the rack and it fills whatever slots are empty
and leaves the filled ones alone. A cast usually arrives as a folder, so one
file per gesture was the wrong unit.
- **Drag a picture onto another slot to swap them.** Order comes out of your
file manager and it's rarely the order you want. The `@tags` travel with the
picture — move `@image1` to slot 3 and the prompt is rewritten to `@image3`,
so every sentence you wrote about it still describes it. Hold **Alt** while
releasing to move the picture and leave the prompt alone, for when the prompt
is already right and it's the pictures that are out of order.
- **"Sent to the encoder as".** The model sees `Picture 1`, `Picture 2` and so
on, and the number comes from *which slots are filled*, not from the slot
number. Leave a gap and your Picture 3 is not the one you think it is. This
strip shows you what actually goes out.
- **Trim bars with playback.** Drag anywhere on the track to slide the window
and the picture follows, so you can hunt for the right moment. Pick a length,
slide it, done.
- **Prompt check.** Amber when the soundscape doesn't cover the whole clip, or
when nothing says what the mouths are doing. Those two are most of the
mumbling problems. The sound chip also counts words against the clip length,
so a line that can't fit in the beat shows up before you render it.
- **Shot timeline.** Type a shot marker and the bar splits. One colour per shot,
the first words of each shown in the band, and dragging a boundary rewrites
the timestamp in the prompt. Grey means nothing is scripted there — and
unscripted time is exactly where H3 invents sound.
- **Projects.** Several clips in one file, click to switch, autosaved. A new
clip inherits your references so you're not reloading the same five images
every time. `Save packed` writes a `.h3proj.zip` with the media inside — my
whole twelve-clip film is about 42 MB.
---
## Glide Preview
ComfyUI's preview shows you one frozen latent frame while it samples. So you sit
there for ten minutes looking at a still and you have no idea if the motion is
working.
Drop this between your model and the sampler and you watch the shot move as it
denoises.
- `mode` — animated, contact sheet, or stock.
- `decoder` — `latent2rgb` is free but mushy. Put `taeh3.safetensors` (from
madebyollin) in `ComfyUI/models/vae_approx/` and pick it here for real
picture. **Restart before it shows in the list.**
- `every_n_steps` — raise it if previewing is costing you sampling time.
- `max_resolution` — costs decode time as well as bandwidth.
Honest limit: it caps around **7.2 fps** and I can't fix that. H3 stores about
one latent frame per 3.35 output frames, so that's every frame there is. It's a
preview, not the render — but it's enough to kill a bad take at step four
instead of at minute ten. If the decoder fails it falls back to the stock
preview and your run keeps going.
---
## Glide Video
Frames and audio into one file, in one ffmpeg pass, no second file to mux.
- **Presets** from very compatible up to 4:4:4 10-bit and lossless FFV1. The
4:4:4 10-bit ones are visibly better on H3 output — less flat colour, more
nuance. Read the tooltip, each preset says what it's for.
- `fps` is playback rate only. Setting it wrong changes speed, it does not add
or drop frames. H3 is 24.
- `save_metadata` embeds the prompt and workflow in the file comment. Drag-drop
restore into ComfyUI is reliable for MKV, hit or miss for MP4.
- `fallback_on_failure` retries with a more compatible preset instead of
throwing away a finished render. It says so loudly when it does.
The 4:4:4 and ProRes presets don't play in a browser, so the node writes a small
playable copy next to the real file just for the preview. The real file is the
one in your output folder — the copy is only so you can watch it in the node.
---
## Continuing from your last render
There are two ways to carry one clip into the next, and they do different jobs.
**As a guide** — the CONTINUE FROM slot. Frame-exact: the model picks up the
motion and the sound where the last clip left off. For continuing a shot.
**As a look reference** — an ordinary video slot. Same light, same colour, same
room, but the camera is free to be anywhere. For the next shot in the same
scene.
Both have a **last render** button that grabs the newest video in your output
folder, so you're not going to the output folder and dragging files around. The
copy happens server side, so nothing big goes through your browser. Hover before
clicking and it tells you which file it's about to take and what it is.
On a reference video slot the button does the look-reference version: sound
stays off — same room doesn't mean same soundtrack, and an `@videoaudio` tag
would pull the previous clip's mix into this one — and it scans the clip for the
window that reads clearest, then writes that window into the trim where you can
see it and drag it if you disagree. Hold **Alt** to take the whole clip
untrimmed and place the window yourself.
The window picker is a score, not a promise. If nothing in the clip reads well
it says so in amber and you pick one yourself.
---
## Glide Join — extending a clip
H3 gives you a few seconds at a time. This is how you get more.
H3 Studio's **CONTINUE FROM** slot anchors the tail of your previous clip, so
the model continues the motion and the sound instead of starting fresh. Glide
Join then assembles the result onto the source.
**Wiring:**
```
H3 Studio ──positive──> sampler ──> VAE Decode ──images──> Glide Join ──> Glide Video
──overlap_frames──────────────────────────────>
──source_video────────────────────────────────>
VAE Decode Audio ──audio──>
```
Wiring `overlap_frames` and `source_video` across means the window length is
typed in **one place**. Change the window in the node and the join follows.
**Widgets:**
- `seam_mode` — `early_cut` keeps the continuation's version of the overlap and
colours it onto the source. One continuous model trajectory, so motion carries
best. `early_scurve` is the same join ramped over a few frames, for when the
speed change at the join is visible. `hard_cut` keeps the source's own frames
instead.
- `seam_blend_frames` — ramp length, **only read by `early_scurve`**.
- `match_levels` — the model re-renders the overlap in its own colour, so this
fits gain and offset per frame against the source and holds the last fit
afterwards. Leave it on.
- `match_tail` — H3 rounds its audio grid up, so every clip carries about 8 ms
more sound than picture. That grows at every join. Leave it on.
**Leave the CONTINUE FROM slot empty and the whole thing is a normal
generation** — H3 Studio sends nothing, Glide Join passes the frames straight
through. One workflow for both, no rewiring, no bypassing.
Two things worth knowing:
- The window is **locked to the tail** of the clip, on purpose. A window from
the middle produces material that follows on from the middle, and splicing
that after the last frame skips everything between — it reads as a hard cut
and no seam mode can fix it.
- Colour drift down a chain is real but small when the window is a true tail. If
you see a step at the join it's more likely to be motion than colour.
### The chroma badge — read this one
There's a little badge on the continuation waveform. Green for 4:4:4 and 4:2:2,
orange for 4:2:0. It's not decoration.
Here's what happened. I had a continuation that kept coming back slightly out of
sync — Glide Join kept printing `frame correspondence was off by -2`. So I went
looking at the anchor window, the frame counts, the way the tail is read. Wasted
a good while in there.
It was the codec. I was rendering AV1, which is 4:2:0 — three quarters of the
colour is gone before the model ever reads those frames. Weaker guide, less
exact anchor. I rendered the same pair again as H.264 4:4:4 and the correction
line just disappeared. Then ProRes, which is 4:2:2 — also clean. So the line
sits between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2, and anything above that is fine.
So: **don't chain from a 4:2:0 file.** The badge tells you what's in the slot
before you render.
This is about the **guide** path only. A look reference carries no timing, so
there's no badge on a reference video slot — the same file that's a bad guide is
a perfectly good reference.
---
## Render all — chaining a whole project
Doing the above by hand for five clips is a lot of dragging files around. So
this does the loop for you.
Open the **Project** panel, pick a mode at the bottom, hit **Render all**:
- **chained** — each render goes into the next clip's CONTINUE FROM. Glide Join
stitches as it goes, so the **last file is the whole thing**. There's no
separate assembly step.
- **carry look** — each render goes into the next clip's video *reference* slot
instead, with the window picked for you. Separate clips, same room. This is
the one I use most: it holds a location across a scene without pinning the
camera to where the last shot ended.
- **separate** — same loop, no continuation. Just queues all your clips one
after another.
While it runs the node is locked and shows which clip it's on. **Stop** finishes
the clip it's rendering and stops there — everything already done stays done.
And if a render fails it stops, tells you which clip, and keeps the finished
ones, so you can pick it up from there instead of starting over.
If you don't like the result, **Revert** in the Project panel puts the project
back exactly as it was before the run.
Pick chained with a 4:2:0 preset selected in Glide Video and the node asks you
first — every link in the chain pays for that, not just one join. Carry look
doesn't ask, because a reference doesn't care.
### Skipping a clip
Each row in the project list has a dot. Click it and that clip drops out of the
run — the row dims, the dot hollows, and Render all passes over it. The clip
stays in the project and in the saved file. Click again to bring it back.
This is for when one shot in the middle of a finished sequence needs another
pass and you don't want to re-render the ten that already work.
Two limits worth saying out loud:
- **Each link re-encodes the whole video so far.** Clip 5 means clip 1's frames
have been through the encoder five times. On `H.264 4:4:4 10-bit` at crf 12 I
can't see it, and FFV1 is lossless so it's free — but don't run a long chain
on a share preset. You'd be stacking generations *and* handing every link a
4:2:0 guide.
- **One mode for the whole project, for now.** Per-link — where each gap between
two clips picks its own mode, so a cut inside a scene and a cut between scenes
aren't forced to be the same thing — is what I actually want, and it's coming.
This is the simple version first.
---
## Careful with this
- **A `.py` change needs a full ComfyUI restart**, not a browser refresh.
- **If a node's widget list changes shape between versions, delete and re-add
the node.** ComfyUI matches saved widget values by position and will smear old
values across new widgets.
- The node is new. There will be bugs — open an issue and tell me what you did,
that's genuinely more useful than a star.
---
## Credits
- MiniMax for H3, and the ComfyUI team for the core H3 nodes this builds on.
- **madebyollin** for the TAE decoder that makes the preview readable.
- **Kijai** for the quantised models that put this on smaller cards.
Development assistance from Claude (Anthropic).