KIE • Persistent Load Video

Why a Load Video replacement exists

The stock Load Video node has two annoyances that only bite once you actually iterate. First, the file list is shallow - a video sitting in input/renders/v6/ may as well not exist. Second, and worse, the selection doesn't survive: reopen the workflow and the widget has silently reset, so you queue and get a result driven by the wrong clip. In a local-only graph that's a wasted run. When the downstream node is a paid KIE video call, it's a wasted run and a wasted twenty minutes.

KIE • Persistent Load Video fixes both. Its dropdown walks the whole input tree and your saved outputs, it understands the annotated V6_00001_.mp4 [output] style entries ComfyUI's own widgets produce, and the selection is remembered in the workflow. Reopen the graph and the video is still the video you picked.

How it works

The node builds its file list at load time from ComfyUI's folder paths, covering both the input directory and files already sitting in output, so clips you generated earlier in this same install are selectable without copying them around. When you run it, it resolves the annotated path, works out whether that file lives under output or input, and hands back a real ComfyUI video object built from the file.

It also returns a ui payload the frontend uses to render the player and to restore it on reload - same idea as the pack's Persistent Preview Image. Where Save Image-style nodes store an image record, this stores a video record.

Inputs and outputs

One input:

• file (dropdown) - pick from input or a saved output file. The tooltip is the author saying the quiet part out loud: "Output values remain valid after restart."

Outputs:

• video (VIDEO) - a proper ComfyUI video object. Wire it into anything that takes a VIDEO socket - a local upscaler, LTX/Wan nodes, or straight into a KIE node that accepts video references.
• saved_file (STRING) - the file reference as text. Cheap to log, or to feed into a filename-driven node.

The genuinely useful pairing: drop this in front of MiniMax H3 Reference-to-Video and pipe video into one of its reference_video_1/2/3 sockets to hand KIE a clip you rendered locally. The pack uploads the file to KIE's storage for you.

Install

Manager: search KIE-Nodes-Next and install, or by hand:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/felipederosilva/ComfyUI-KIE-Nodes-Next

Restart ComfyUI afterwards. Dependencies are trivial for this node - requirements.txt is only requests, Pillow, numpy and PyYAML. Windows users get a one-click .vbs installer in dist/; use a recent one (v0.3.1+), since the earliest builds could leave backup folders inside custom_nodes that ComfyUI then tried to import as nodes.

No KIE API key is needed here. It's a local file loader living in the KIE pack.

Where people get burned

It needs a current ComfyUI. The node builds its output through ComfyUI's newer video runtime. On an old build it fails loudly with a "requires a current ComfyUI video runtime" error - update ComfyUI rather than fighting it.

New files may not show up immediately. The dropdown is populated when the node's input types are built, not on every refresh. Generate a clip, then wonder why it's missing from the list? Refresh the node (or the page) and it's there.

It errors instead of guessing. If the file was moved or deleted, you get Video file is missing or unavailable: ... rather than a silent fallback. That's good behaviour - but it does mean tidying up output breaks saved workflows.

Empty dropdown on a fresh install. If ComfyUI's folder paths can't be read at import time, this node comes up with no files to pick. A restart after install clears it up.