ChronoEdit_SM_LoadVAE

ChronoEdit is built on the Wan 2.1 architecture, so it speaks Wan's VAE - the same Wan2.1_VAE.pth-family encoder/decoder that every Wan 2.1 workflow uses. ChronoEdit_SM_LoadVAE is the pack's way of loading that VAE in the diffusers flavor the ChronoEdit pipeline natively understands. It's a tiny node with one input, one output, and one opinionated gotcha.

What it does

• vae - a combo listing everything in ComfyUI/models/vae. Pick one; that's it.
• output - a VAE socket you can feed straight into ChronoEdit_SM_Latent (encoding) and ChronoEdit_SM_Vae (decoding).

Under the hood it loads the file as a diffusers AutoencoderKLWan via from_single_file, using the config bundled inside the pack - no separate config download, no HF round-trip.

The gotcha, spelled out

The node will refuse anything that isn't a .safetensors file, with an error that basically says "please use the diffusers version." That trips people up because the README's own model layout says to drop Wan2.1_VAE.pth into models/vae - and a .pth file will not load here. The example workflow uses a wan21.safetensors instead. Two ways through:

• Grab a diffusers-format wan_2.1_vae.safetensors for this node, or
• Ignore this node entirely and use ComfyUI's core VAELoader with the .pth file. The core loader produces a VAE socket that ChronoEdit_SM_Latent and ChronoEdit_SM_Vae both accept fine.

Honest take: if you already have the Wan VAE set up for normal Wan video work, you don't need this node. It exists because the pack's diffusers encode path prefers AutoencoderKLWan, and because NVIDIA's original inference script assumed the diffusers form. The encoding behavior does differ slightly between the two VAE routes (the pack's ChronoEdit_SM_Latent takes a diffusers-specific code path when it detects AutoencoderKLWan), so if you're chasing every bit of fidelity, the diffusers file is the path of least surprise.

Installing

Same as every node in this pack: ComfyUI Manager and search ComfyUI_ChronoEdit_SM, or

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/smthemex/ComfyUI_ChronoEdit_SM
cd ComfyUI_ChronoEdit_SM
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then restart ComfyUI. The VAE file itself comes from the README's link to the Comfy-Org Wan 2.1 repackage - grab the .safetensors variant if you want this node to cooperate. And since this pack targets ComfyUI's new extension API, keep ComfyUI updated or the whole node list won't appear.