Load a video model

We're starting a new chapter on video generation, and we're going to load a model that turns prompts into short clips.

Text-to-image takes three files: the diffusion model, a text encoder, and a VAE. Video works the same way. We use the same files, but with modelConfig.mode: "video" so the engine knows to emit frames instead of pixels.

Wan 2.1 T2V (WAN2_1_T2V_1_3B_FP16) is the text-to-video model in the SDK. The text encoder is UMT5_XXL_FP16. The VAE is WAN_2_1_COMFYUI_REPACKAGED_VAE. We load all three in one call.

The first call takes the longest, since the three GGUF files together run hundreds of megabytes. Subsequent video() calls reuse the loaded model.

mode: "video" switches the diffusion engine from image generation to video generation (a sequence of frames). Without mode: "video", the engine tries to render a single image instead of a clip. The loadModel call looks like:

const videoId = await loadModel({
  modelSrc: WAN2_1_T2V_1_3B_FP16,
  modelType: "sdcpp-generation",
  modelConfig: {
    mode: "video",
    t5XxlModelSrc: UMT5_XXL_FP16,
    vaeModelSrc: WAN_2_1_COMFYUI_REPACKAGED_VAE,
  },
});
console.log("videoId:", videoId);

The next lesson writes a real video() call against this videoId.

Note: mode: "video" is required. Without it, the engine tries to render a single image instead of a clip.