VACE Load Video From Path

ComfyUI's built-in loaders want files inside its input directory, and that's a pain when you're running a project with media folders elsewhere - a scratch render dir, a shared drive, footage organized per-project. VACE Load Video From Path is the escape hatch: it loads a native Comfy VIDEO object from an absolute path, or from a relative path resolved in a sensible order. One string input, one VIDEO output, no decode-to-frames stage.

How it works

For an absolute path, it's a direct load. For a relative path, it checks candidates in this order until one exists:

1. base_directory (if you provided one) + the path
2. ComfyUI's input directory + the path
3. the Comfy process working directory + the path

That ordering is the whole design: you can point it at a project-relative file with base_directory set to your project root, or just drop a filename and let it find it in the usual places. Paths go through expandvars and expanduser, so $VAR, ~/, and quoted paths work.

The output is a native Comfy VIDEO - not an image batch. That matters for two reasons. First, it connects directly to VIDEO-consuming nodes like VACE Two Video Bridge Prep, which reads frames and FPS out of the object itself. Second, the node is file-aware: it fingerprints the file's path, mtime, and size, so if you regenerate the source video on disk, Comfy re-runs the downstream graph without you touching anything.

Inputs and outputs

• path (STRING, required) - absolute or relative video path. The tooltip's summary of it is basically the whole manual: "Absolute video path or relative video path."
• base_directory (STRING, optional) - base dir used when path is relative.
• Output: video (VIDEO) - feed it into any native VIDEO input.

Installing it

Part of the comfy-vace-automation pack, no extra pip dependencies:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/EnviralDesign/comfy-vace-automation

Restart ComfyUI, or install via ComfyUI Manager (search "comfy-vace-automation").

When it bites you

• "Video path does not exist" - the error helpfully lists every candidate it checked, in order. If you expected it to find the file, read that list: it tells you whether your path was mis-typed, whether base_directory is wrong, or whether the file genuinely isn't in any searched location. This error is the node's best debugging feature.
• Relative path surprises. Since the fallback chain includes the working directory, a relative path can resolve to a different file than you intended if the process CWD changes. For anything important, use an absolute path or set base_directory explicitly.
• Not a frame loader. There's no FPS output and no IMAGE output here - if you want frames, feed the VIDEO into a node that extracts components (like the bridge prep or the Collector). Trying to plug video directly into an IMAGE input will just confuse both nodes.

This is one of those small utility nodes that feels trivial until you're staring at a path-error for the tenth time. Combined with VACE Two Video Bridge Prep, it's the pack's story for NLE-style work: keep your clips anywhere, point at them, and let the bridge nodes handle the rest.