Protoface MiniMax H3 · Generate Video

This is the node the pack leads with

Protoface's README namechecks MiniMax H3 first in its model list, and ships a MiniMax H3 Text to Video template in Templates → the Protoface extension. That's not marketing fluff - H3 is the model that made "closed video quality, with native audio" available in ComfyUI without a local 33B omni-modal download and a geofenced licence to argue about. Here it arrives as one paid node.

The pitch, concretely: cinematic video with synchronised audio generated in the same pass, and dense reference control - you can feed it a first frame, a last frame, still references, a reference video, and even an audio reference. Locally that's the kind of multi-input rig people spend a week wiring. Here it's a handful of sockets on one node, and the argument shifts from "can I" to "should I pay for this take."

Inputs, grouped by what they do

Shape of the shot. prompt is the description. duration_seconds is an integer from 4 to 15, defaulting to 8 - count that twice before queueing, because duration is the main lever on cost. quality is a resolution tier defaulting to 480p, i.e. the cheap default; go up deliberately. aspect_ratio is a free string defaulting to auto.

Keys / frames. first_frame and last_frame take a single asset each (a public URL, data URI, or asset id). Supplying both is how you get a controlled transition instead of a free roll - the middle is invented, the ends are yours.

References. reference, reference_video and audio are list-shaped: connect one asset and the socket grows, connect several and they count toward the model's reference limit. This is where H3 earns its keep - a character still plus a motion clip plus a music bed, all conditioning one generation.

Style and toggles. style is a picker (its tooltip is empty, so try the options rather than theorising). generate_audio defaults to true; turning it off doesn't make the render silent-and-cheaper, it just drops a part of what H3 does best. enhance_prompt defaults to false and its tooltip is unusually candid for this pack: it rewrites your prompt "into this engine's native prompt grammar," best effort, and sends the prompt unchanged if the rewrite is unavailable or would alter the requested direction. Translation: it can't hurt much, and it mostly helps when your prompts are short.

Booking. generation_id (fixed = resume/reuse, incremented = new paid job, nothing to do with randomness) and request_scope (auto in the UI; you supply it headless).

Outputs

video (VIDEO, list), files (PROTOFACE_FILE, list - originals, for Protoface Save File), run id (string). Because everything is a list, one node can hand several clips downstream and ComfyUI maps over them; heterogeneous sizes are handled.

Install

No weights. That's the headline - H3's local route is a ~42GB download under a territory-restricted licence; this is a key and a network call.

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone --branch v0.1.0 --depth 1 https://github.com/protoface-ai/protoface-comfyui.git protoface
python -m pip install -r protoface/requirements.txt

ComfyUI 0.41.0+, Python 3.10+, packages httpx, jsonschema, Pillow, av>=14. Manager users: search Protoface, install protoface-nodes, restart, reload the tab. Then Protoface → key. Headless: PROTOFACE_API_KEY_FILE.

Where people get bitten

The defaults are cheap on purpose - 480p, 8 seconds. A clip that "looks soft" is usually you never leaving 480p, not the model.

Reference limits are real and counted across batches: connect a folder of stills and the node refuses with "too many references, including items in input batches." Split the batch.

Then the paid-job rules. A dropped browser or a polling timeout leaves a live job - requeue with the same generation_id, or use Protoface Resume Run with the run id. Incrementing the ID "to retry" is a second charge. Cancellation is best effort and doesn't imply a refund. And keep ~/.cache/protoface-comfyui intact; it's the journal that makes all of that recovery work. On a shared server, remember anyone who can queue a workflow spends your key.