lightx2v

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LightVAE

Like 15

lightvae-lite-h3-encoder.safetensors can not loaded by 'load vae'node , but the kvs all the same

elif "decoder.transformer_blocks.0.scale1" in sd and "encoder.down.5.block.0.conv1.weight" in sd: # MiniMax H3 video VAE

https://huggingface.co/lightx2v/LightVAE/blob/main/lightvae-lite-h3-decoder-comfy.safetensors

# ComfyUI Error Report
## Error Details
- **Node ID:** 7212
- **Node Type:** VAELoader
- **Exception Type:** RuntimeError
- **Exception Message:** RuntimeError: ERROR: VAE is invalid: None

If the VAE is from a checkpoint loader node your checkpoint does not contain a valid VAE.

Thanks for reporting, and sorry for the unclear instructions!

Our -comfy.safetensors files require the Load LightVAE (TLR) custom node—not ComfyUI’s standard Load VAE / VAELoader. These are separate compressed components, which the native loader does not recognize as a complete H3 VAE.

We’ve updated the model card with installation commands and a short H3 example:

• Decoder only: select lightvae-lite-h3-decoder-comfy.safetensors in Load LightVAE (TLR), leave encoder = none, and connect its output to VAE Decode. Keep original reference encoding unchanged.
• Encoder + decoder for REF2V: select both H3 -comfy files and connect the output to reference encoding and video decoding.

Keep the audio VAE unchanged. Please try this setup and let us know if you still encounter an error.

I thought we can use the encoder seperately. maybe you can make a comparision with minimax_h3_lynnreal_light_vae_int8_convrot, which i think smaller but a little faster

Our -comfy.safetensors files require the Load LightVAE (TLR) custom node—not ComfyUI’s standard Load VAE / VAELoader.

You mean this:
https://github.com/ModelTC/LightVAE ?

Cannot be loaded because the init py file is missing.

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'D:\ComfyUI\custom_nodes\LightVAE\init.py'

@GlamoramaAttack OMG it's because the node is in the comfyui folder

@lightx2v could you have made this more of a pain? Can't just do a simple checkout, if you're going to put a out a node, at least do it how everyone who uses ComfyUI expects please