Media Folder (genkai)

You bought a pile of character reference sheets, or you shot 200 stills, and now they're sitting in a folder with names like IMG_4471.png. Using them means remembering filenames, opening Finder, dragging files in one at a time. Media Folder turns that folder into a browsable gallery you can drag thumbnails out of.

One thing to get out of the way immediately, because it saves confusion: this node has no outputs. It is a browsing panel. It doesn't hand anything to a workflow, it has no splitter, no presets, no enable switches. It exists to feed the H3 Media Loader, and the loader is where the real wiring starts.

How it works

Paste a folder path and click Load folder (or press Enter). The backend scans the directory and loads everything in background batches, so a folder with a few thousand files doesn't lock the UI. Subfolders includes nested folders. Load files… adds individual files from anywhere, which is the escape hatch for the one image you keep outside the folder.

External media gets copied into ComfyUI/input/genkai_media_folder so the H3 loader can address it the same way it addresses anything else. Files already living inside ComfyUI's input, output or temp directories are reused where they are - no copy. Symlinks are skipped.

The gallery defaults to 30 files per page with real pagination and a scrollbar; Settings lets you change the page size or turn on Unlimited files per page. The All / Images / Videos / Audio tags filter what's displayed and show file counts next to each. Filtering is display-only - nothing gets unloaded behind your back, and the filter choice is saved with the workflow.

Videos and audio get playback controls and duration labels; double-click a video for a bigger preview. Pictures open enlarged on click.

The inputs that matter

There are three, and two of them are basically set-and-forget. folder_path is the folder to browse, on the machine running ComfyUI. recursive includes subfolders. media_state is the JSON blob the frontend writes to remember the gallery contents and settings - don't touch it.

That third input is doing real work, and it's the nicest part of the design: the path, the gallery contents, the filter and the appearance settings are all stored in the workflow, so reopening a workflow brings the gallery back. Reload the same folder and matching references keep their existing edits.

How to install it

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/GENKAIx/Genkai-ComfyUI-Nodes

Or via ComfyUI Manager, searching the pack title. Restart and hit Ctrl+F5 - the gallery UI won't render properly on a stale browser cache. Category is GENKAI → Media. No models, no extra packages; it uses the aiohttp that ComfyUI already runs on.

Common issues

External files get copied, so a 40GB footage folder means 40GB in ComfyUI/input. Point it at folders that already live under ComfyUI's input/output/temp if you care, or keep the folders modest. Note that copying is one-directional too - dragging a reference into the gallery does not write it back to your source folder.

A video thumbnail that won't preview. Browser playback depends on the file's codec - HEVC and some container/codec combos just won't play in Chrome. This doesn't block anything: the reference still transfers to H3 Media Loader fine. It's a preview problem, not a data problem.

Removing a thumbnail is not deleting a file. The remove button drops it from the gallery and the saved state. Your disk is untouched, which is exactly what you want until the day you wanted the opposite.

Subfolders off, files missing. Default is off. If your stills are organised into per-character subfolders, turn it on or you'll see an empty gallery and assume the node is broken.

Worth saying plainly: this is a convenience node for a specific stack (H3 media references). If you're not using H3 reference-to-video, it's a nice image browser and nothing more - core ComfyUI's loaders will do you fine.