MiniMax H3 Preset Export

Once you've spent twenty minutes arranging six reference clips, three images and two audio beds on a timeline for a character-replacement shot, you want to keep that arrangement. Saving the workflow keeps everything - including your model loader choices and the pack version they were tuned against. This node saves something narrower on purpose: the shot setup.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. A workflow is an environment; a preset is a creative decision. This export writes a plain folder you can hand to someone else, drop in a different installation, or version alongside a script.

How it works

It writes an ordinary directory under ComfyUI/output/MiniMaxH3_Presets/<preset_name>/ containing a preset.json. No ZIP, no archive step, no custom format you need a tool to read.

The written payload has a format tag, a schema version, the preset name and type, a canvas block (width, height, generation seconds, fps) and a sampling block (whether two-stage was on and how many high-resolution steps). The timeline itself is scrubbed first, and the scrub list is the most interesting part of the node:

• anything whose key normalises to contain lora, or to secondpassmodel, modelname, checkpoint, checkpointname, pluginversion or comfyversion, is dropped;
• per-clip proxy and peaks fields are dropped (those are cached preview data - regenerable, and large).

So model and LoRA selections deliberately don't travel. The README is upfront about it: presets "intentionally omit workflows, model/LoRA selections, plugin versions, and ComfyUI versions." Your friend loads the preset on their machine and picks their own checkpoint. That's the right call - a preset that hardcodes a model path is a preset that breaks on the next machine.

Two save modes:

• configuration (default) - timeline and creative settings only.
• complete - also copies every referenced video, image and audio file into the preset folder, deduplicating by source path and resolving filename collisions with a _2, _3 suffix. On load, complete presets materialise their media into ComfyUI/input/minimax_h3_timeline_director/presets/<name>/ and leave the shared preset folder untouched.

Writes are staged in a temporary directory and then renamed, so a failed export can't leave you with a half-written preset that the loader will then try to parse.

Inputs and outputs

Required: preset_name (default MiniMaxH3_Preset) and save_mode (configuration or complete). The name gets sanitised - non-word characters that aren't Chinese become underscores, and the result is capped at 120 characters - and a colliding name gets _2 appended rather than overwriting. Worth knowing before you export the same preset name twice and wonder where the second one went.

Optional: material_plan (Material Plan) or segment_plan (Segment Plan). Connect one; connecting both raises. Either works, because a segment plan carries its source plan internally.

Outputs: Saved Folder (STRING, the path - handy for a text preview) and Save Status (STRING, e.g. Saved configuration preset: name). This node is marked as an output node, so it always executes even if nothing downstream consumes it.

Install

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Songssx/ComfyUI-MiniMaxH3-TimelineDirector.git

Restart and search MiniMax H3. No pip dependencies - empty dependency list. The pack registers a small HTTP route for the frontend, which is why a restart is needed rather than a reload. Needs a recent ComfyUI with native MiniMax H3 nodes, the H3 Ref2VA model, CLIP, video VAE and audio VAE, and Python 3.10+.

Common issues

"Connect Material Plan or Segment Plan, not both." Exactly that. Pick one - Segment Plan is usually the more useful tap point, since it implies the resolved per-segment assignments.

"Connect Material Plan or Segment Plan before exporting a preset." Nothing is wired into either optional input. The node needs a plan to have something to save.

complete mode is enormous. It copies media, so a preset with six long reference videos is six media files. Use configuration for sharing and complete for archiving your own setups.

The preset has no model name in it. By design - see the scrub list. If you need the model recorded, that belongs in your workflow JSON or a README beside the folder.