---
name: wan-multitalk
description: Build WAN MultiTalk audio-driven talking-avatar / lip-sync video workflows. MeiGen-AI MultiTalk on WAN 2.1 14B I2V via kijai WanVideoWrapper (portrait + audio → lip-synced video)
globs:
  - "**/*.json"
---

# WAN MultiTalk — Audio-Driven Talking Avatar

## Overview

MultiTalk (MeiGen-AI) drives a still portrait's lip-sync and head motion from an
audio track. It runs on WAN 2.1 14B Image-to-Video via kijai's
ComfyUI-WanVideoWrapper. Wav2Vec speech embeddings condition the WAN sampler so
the mouth and expression follow the speech, while the lightx2v step-distill LoRA
keeps it to a few sampling steps.

Use it for talking heads, dubbing, and single-speaker avatar clips (~10s at 480p).
It is distinct from `wan-animate` (pose/motion-driven character animation). This
is audio → lip-sync, not reference-video motion transfer.

Pack: `wan-multitalk` (480p, ~10s). Higher-res/longer variants exist in the source
bundle (720p, long-context) as VRAM/duration knobs on the same graph.

## Pipeline (node graph)

```
LoadImage (portrait) ─┐
LoadAudio ─ AudioSeparation ─ AudioCrop ─ DownloadAndLoadWav2VecModel ─ MultiTalkWav2VecEmbeds ─┐
                                                                                                 ▼
WanVideoModelLoader (WAN 2.1 14B I2V GGUF) ─ MultiTalkModelLoader ─ WanVideoLoraSelect (lightx2v)
   + LoadWanVideoT5TextEncoder (umt5) + WanVideoTextEncode + WanVideoClipVisionEncode (clip_vision_h)
   + WanVideoVAELoader ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                                     ▼
                       WanVideoImageToVideoMultiTalk ─ WanVideoSampler ─ WanVideoDecode ─ VHS_VideoCombine
```

Key nodes (all kijai WanVideoWrapper unless noted):
- **DownloadAndLoadWav2VecModel.** Auto-downloads the Wav2Vec speech model on first
  run (no manifest entry needed).
- **MultiTalkWav2VecEmbeds.** Turns the (separated, cropped) speech into the
  embeddings that steer the mouth and expression.
- **MultiTalkModelLoader** + **WanVideoImageToVideoMultiTalk.** The MultiTalk head
  on top of the WAN I2V model.
- **AudioSeparation** and **AudioCrop** (audio-separation-nodes-comfyui). Isolate the
  voice from music/noise before embedding and trim the segment you want to animate.
- **ImageResizeKJv2** (KJNodes), **VHS_VideoCombine** (VideoHelperSuite). Resize and
  mux to mp4.

## Models

| File | Loader | Folder |
|------|--------|--------|
| `Wan2.1_14b_Image_to_Video_480p_GGUF_Q8.gguf` | WanVideoModelLoader | `diffusion_models/` |
| `WanVideo_2_1_Multitalk_14B_fp8_e4m3fn.safetensors` | MultiTalkModelLoader | `diffusion_models/` |
| `umt5_xxl_fp16.safetensors` | LoadWanVideoT5TextEncoder | `text_encoders/` |
| `Wan2_1_VAE_bf16.safetensors` | WanVideoVAELoader | `vae/` |
| `clip_vision_h.safetensors` | CLIPVisionLoader | `clip_vision/` |
| `Wan21_I2V_14B_lightx2v_cfg_step_distill_lora_rank64.safetensors` | WanVideoLoraSelect | `loras/` |

Sources: kijai `Kijai/WanVideo_comfy`, MeiGen-AI `MeiGen-AI/MeiGen-MultiTalk`, GGUF
`city96/Wan2.1-I2V-14B-480P-gguf`, and Comfy-Org's repackaged UMT5. See
`packs/wan-multitalk/manifest.yaml` (some URLs are best-effort; verify per mirror).
Wav2Vec auto-downloads. The bundled WanVideoWrapper loader rejects the scaled_fp8
UMT5 checkpoint; use the UMT5 fp16 file above, not generic `t5xxl_fp16` weights.

## Inputs & key parameters

- Portrait (LoadImage): front-facing, clear face, neutral-ish expression works
  best. Resized by ImageResizeKJv2 to the target (480p).
- Audio (LoadAudio): the speech track. AudioSeparation isolates the voice;
  AudioCrop selects the segment (drives clip length).
- Steps: low (the lightx2v distill LoRA is why; typically ~4 to 8). Raising steps
  rarely helps and costs time.
- BlockSwap (WanVideoBlockSwap): trade VRAM for speed. Increase blocks swapped
  to CPU on lower-VRAM cards.

## VRAM tiers (from the source bundle's variants)

| Target | Approx VRAM | Lever |
|--------|-------------|-------|
| 480p 10s | ~8–12 GB | base |
| 480p low-VRAM | ~6–8.4 GB | more BlockSwap, GGUF quant, lower quality |
| 720p 10s | ~11–16 GB | higher res |

Pair with the VRAM launch-flags guidance (see `troubleshooting`): `--use-sage-attention`
+ appropriate `--*vram` mode; MultiTalk benefits from `--reserve-vram` headroom for
the Wav2Vec + VAE round-trips.

## Gotchas

- **Audio must be voice-isolated** for good lip-sync. Skipping AudioSeparation on a
  music-heavy track makes the mouth chase the wrong signal.
- **One speaker.** This graph is single-speaker; multi-speaker MultiTalk needs the
  multi-embed variant (not in this pack).
- **Wav2Vec first run** downloads a model, so the first render is slower.
- If lips look under-driven, check the MultiTalk embeds are actually wired into
  `WanVideoImageToVideoMultiTalk` (not bypassed), and that the audio isn't silent
  after AudioCrop.

## Sources

- **Official:** none found.
- **Empirical:** sampler values, wiring, and prompt notes from working graphs in `packs/` and observed renders; not a vendor prompting guide.