Video Stabilizer — Auto (deprecated)

Straight answer first: VideoStabilizerAutoMEC is deprecated. If you found this node by searching, stop here - the pack's own description says it plainly: "DEPRECATED - use VideoStabilizerMEC (method=auto) instead." The unified VideoStabilizerMEC node folded all three of the old stabilizers (Auto, Classic, Flow) behind one method dropdown, and the old nodes now just forward to it with a warning printed to the console. There's no reason to build anything new on this node.

So this page is mostly a "what was this, and where did it go" writeup. If you have an old workflow that references it, it still runs - it just warns and delegates.

What the auto node did

The idea behind the "auto" stabilizer was a smart-router: let the node pick between the two real backends based on the clip. The two backends are:

• classic - feature-tracking (Good Features To Track + Lucas-Kanade), CPU, fast, best on well-textured footage.
• raft_flow - RAFT dense optical flow, GPU, more robust on texture-poor plates (flat walls, skies).

The auto logic chooses based on clip length and free VRAM: short textured clips get the fast classic path, longer or texture-poor clips get RAFT. force_backend (auto/classic/flow) let you override the choice manually, and preset (handheld_light, handheld_heavy, vehicle, tripod_lock) selected a tuned bundle of transform mode, strength, smooth, and framing.

Its inputs, for the record: frames, frame_rate, force_backend, preset, padding_color. Its outputs: stabilized_frames (IMAGE), padding_mask (MASK), info (STRING).

What you should use instead

The unified node, VideoStabilizerMEC. Same backends, same presets, but a single method dropdown (auto / classic / raft_flow) alongside preset, and manual override widgets when you set preset=manual. The output contract is identical - including the padding_mask, which is the part that makes this stabilizer actually useful: the introduced borders around the stabilized frame are emitted as a mask so you can wire it straight into the pack's InpaintCropProMEC and fill the borders instead of living with letterbox gray.

Installing it (for the pack)

Either way, it's all the same pack:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Code2Collapse/ComfyUI-CustomNodePacks.git

restart ComfyUI or use Manager → "CustomNodePacks". The RAFT backend loads its flow model on first use (GPU recommended); the classic backend is pure OpenCV and needs nothing extra. If the pack's requirements.txt is involved, comment out the packages ComfyUI already bundles before installing.

Bottom line

If you're reading this because you just installed the pack and spotted the node: it works, but it's a museum piece. Migrate old workflows to VideoStabilizerMEC with method=auto - one dropdown, same behavior, no deprecation warning, and the padding-mask output you'll actually want.