MiniMax H3 (Hailuo 3)

H3 generates video and synchronised stereo audio jointly, from text, images, reference video, reference audio, or any mix. It is the same model family whether you hit the hosted API or run the open weights, but the two paths are wired completely differently and only one of them is free.

Two paths, do not confuse them.

• Hosted API, partner nodes MinimaxHailuo03TextToVideoNode / ...FirstLastFrameNode / ...ReferenceNode, category partner/video/MiniMax. 2K output, priced per second, no local weights.
• Local open weights, core nodes MiniMaxH3ImageToVideo and MiniMaxH3ReferenceToVideo from comfy_extras/nodes_minimax_h3.py. 768p, free, and everything below is about this path.

Who owns what, so you open one file, not three. THIS file owns the prompt format and the operating rules. reference.md next to it owns weights, quant sizes, acceleration packs and their wiring. The MiniMax entry in the kit's MODELS.md owns the node-level graph (every node and socket) and the licence. When they disagree, the node code wins and the discrepancy is a bug worth reporting.

The prompt format is not free-form prose

H3-Base consumes the output of a hosted prompt refiner (H3-Context-IR) that is not in the open release. So locally you write in the refiner's output shape yourself. From MiniMax's own VIDEO_PROMPT_WRITING_GUIDE_base_en.md, that is an optional instruction line, a blank line, then three fields:

integrated_multimodal_description: [Shot 1] ... [Shot 2] At 00:04.500, ...

overall_soundscape: ...

non_diegetic_music: ...

• integrated_multimodal_description carries visuals, action, shots, speakers, dialogue and diegetic sound along the timeline. overall_soundscape sums ambience and physical-action sound. non_diegetic_music is score the characters cannot hear.
• Image modes need a fixed first line. I2V: For the target video, at 0.00 seconds into the target video, <Picture 1> (from [Shot 1]) is fully referenced. First-and-last-frame uses the alignment sentence naming both pictures and the second each lands on, to two decimals.

A complete prompt, end to end

Nothing above is usable until you have seen one whole. This is a 5 s text-to-video brief in the official shape:

integrated_multimodal_description: [Shot 1] Cinematic medium-wide shot, Push In slowly. A bicycle mechanic in
a navy work coat lowers a metal shutter in a narrow workshop at dusk; warm tungsten light spills across
scattered tools and rain-dark pavement outside. He pauses, looks toward the street. At 00:03.200 he switches
off the bench lamp and the frame drops to ambient blue. The mechanic (weathered voice, mid-fifties, speaks
English only) says quietly: <d>[English] That's enough for today.</d>

overall_soundscape: Steady rain on a metal awning, the rolling clatter of the shutter, one soft click of the
lamp switch, distant tyres on wet asphalt. No music from within the scene.

non_diegetic_music: Sparse solo piano, slow, minor key, entering after the shutter closes and fading to
silence on the lamp click.

For image-to-video the same block is preceded by the fixed line and one blank line:

For the target video, at 0.00 seconds into the target video, <Picture 1> (from [Shot 1]) is fully referenced.

integrated_multimodal_description: [Shot 1] ...

Note what is doing the work: one physical action the camera and the sound can both follow, a camera move from the fixed vocabulary, the spoken line wrapped in <d> so the words are exact, and the two audio fields kept separate so diegetic sound and score do not fight.

Dialogue: the single most common cause of "the speech is gibberish"

Speakers get stable IDs (S1), (S2), joint (S1,S2). The words go inside <d> with a language tag, and everything about who says it and how stays outside. Copy the line verbatim, do not paraphrase or translate:

The young woman with a quiet, breathy voice (S1) says: <d>[English] I get off at the next station.</d>

Without <d> the model is never told the exact words and improvises phonetics. Voiceover needs the exact phrase says in an off-screen voiceover plus a statement that the lips stay closed. Use <scenetrans> when a line crosses a cut, <cutoff> when speech is truncated by the end. On-screen text goes in double quotes, verbatim.

Camera is a controlled vocabulary

Motion type plus amplitude plus speed, and medium amplitude at normal speed is the default you simply omit: Zoom In/Out, Push In/Pull Out, Pan Left/Right, Truck Left/Right, Tilt Up/Down, Pedestal Up/Down, Arc Shot, Tracking Shot.

Reference-to-video: label every file with a job

<Subject N> is the one that does the real work, because it binds sources: "<Subject 1> is the woman whose appearance comes from <Picture 1> and whose walking motion comes from <Video 1>." Then <Picture N> is a frame or composition anchor, <Video N> an editing or temporal source, <Audio N> a copied signal.

Reference-to-video has its OWN output contract, and it is six sections, not the three above. MiniMax ships two prompt guides, and until 2026-08-09 this skill knew only the first. VIDEO_PROMPT_WRITING_GUIDE_base_en.md governs T2VA / I2VA / FL2VA / L2VA and gives the three fields at the top of this file. VIDEO_PROMPT_WRITING_GUIDE_ref_en.md governs full-reference mode and opens: "A complete rewrite output consists of six sections in the following order":

subject_definitions: <Subject 1> is ... whose appearance comes from <Picture 1> ...
summary: ...
retention_analysis: ...
detailed_description: [Shot 1] ...
overall_soundscape: ...
non_diegetic_music: ...

subject_definitions declares the references and their labels; summary states the task type, the target video and the main relationships to the references; retention_analysis says how each reference is retained, transferred or reused; detailed_description carries visuals, action, shots, sound and dialogue in playback order; the last two match their base-mode meanings. The order is fixed, and the field is retention_analysis, not retention. Note this is six named sections of prose in one string, not a JSON array, whatever a third-party node's docs call it. Confirmed by reading the guide on MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3 (23 553 bytes, 2026-08-09); the core node itself validates none of this, comfy_extras/nodes_minimax_h3.py takes a plain multiline string, so nothing will tell you when you get it wrong except the result.

Limits from the official card: 9 images, 3 video clips, 3 audio clips, 12 files total, clips 2 to 15 s each and 15 s total, and audio can never be the only reference. The local MiniMaxH3ReferenceToVideo node has four Autogrow families reaching those ceilings: ref_images (max 9), ref_videos (3), ref_video_audios (3, the soundtrack of the same-numbered reference video) and ref_audios (3, standalone). A template showing three image sockets is not the limit.

Ten production jobs to write against

Krea's 2026-08-05 guide frames H3 prompts as production paperwork, one job per clip: director's single-shot brief · timed three-beat teaser · first-to-last-frame passage · influencer identity-and-voice lock · reference-motion performance · native-audio product reveal · brand-title reveal with required text and negatives · protected-frame object swap · UI walkthrough · omni-reference director brief. Pick the job first, then decide which control has to survive: camera, timing, identity, motion source, or the sound event line.

Note their examples use a [0-3s] beat style, which is a readable shorthand rather than MiniMax's own [Shot N] plus At 00:04.500 convention. Both work; the official form is the safer default locally.

Operating facts that bite

• Frame count sits on a grid. length must leave remainder 5 modulo 17 (124 frames = ~5 s, 73 = ~3 s, 362 = ~15 s). The node calls it the "17k+5 grid" and the trained range is ~124 to 362 frames.
• Native size is ~1 MP, template default 1344 x 768 at 24 fps. Higher costs time and VRAM without more real detail; the official 2K route is a hosted regenerate pass that is not open.
• Duration: trained and tested 5 to 15 s. Longer runs but is untrained territory.
• Speed: the open release ships full attention only; sparse attention is promised later. This is why it is slow, and why the community acceleration below matters.
• Licence: open weights, not open source, and the territory clause is unusually strict. See MODELS.md.

When it goes wrong

Symptom	Most likely cause
Speech is fluent-sounding nonsense	The line is not inside <d>[Language] ... </d>
Face drifts across the clip	No <Subject N> binding the identity source, or refs at the wrong scale after an upscale
Audio garbles after a latent upscale	audio_denoise left at its default 1.0 (inferred cause, not measured); audio settles late, so run more of the schedule in pass 1
Wrong face animated in a crowd	Reference sizing set to match when identity needed max
Acceleration node refuses to load	The build is older than the pack requires; a tagged release is not automatically new enough
Output length is not what you asked	length fell off the 17k+5 grid