🅐 Video Load

Here's the thing most people expect when they search "video load" in ComfyUI: a node that decodes a video into frames. That is not this node. ACE_VideoLoad reads a file name from a dropdown and returns the file path as a string - it does not touch a single frame, does not import video, and doesn't need ffmpeg or any decoder. It's a file picker with a nice UI, and that's the whole job.

It's part of 🅐 Ace Nodes (hay86/ComfyUI_AceNodes), the usual one-author grab-bag. Its sibling ACE_VideoPreview plays the path in the browser, and ACE_VideoConcat joins paths via ffmpeg - this node exists to feed those, and anything else that wants a video path as a STRING.

How it works

The dropdown is built from files with mp4, webm, mkv, or avi extensions in ComfyUI's input folder (ComfyUI/input). There's a JS widget (web/js/videoLoad.js) that lets you upload a file straight into the input folder from the node, which saves you a trip to the file explorer. The output is the absolute path to the file, as a STRING.

So the practical wiring is:

• ACE_VideoLoad → ACE_VideoConcat (needs two paths)
• ACE_VideoLoad → ACE_VideoPreview (plays it in the UI)
• ACE_VideoLoad → any ffmpeg-wrapper node or script that accepts a path string

What you actually set

Just video - the dropdown. Everything else is automatic. The outputs are a single STRING (the path), and it's not an output node, so you can chain it onward.

Where people get burned: if you're looking to process a video - extract frames, feed a video-to-video model, make a latent video - this node is the wrong tool and you want something like VideoHelperSuite's VHS_LoadVideo which actually decodes into IMAGE frames and audio. This one is only for the narrow "give me the path" job, and if you wire it into a frame-expecting input you'll get a type error or, worse, a string where an image should be.

Installing

ComfyUI Manager → search ComfyUI_AceNodes, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/hay86/ComfyUI_AceNodes

Then restart. The pack's requirements.txt is heavy (transformers, rembg, insightface, soundfile, …) even though this node needs zero Python dependencies beyond core - the usual grab-bag tax. The upload widget is worth it if you're frequently dragging new clips in; otherwise the dropdown over the input folder is fine.

Verdict: a boring node that does a boring job correctly. If you only ever decode videos into frames, you don't need it. If you're building path-string pipelines around ffmpeg wrappers, it's the missing handle.