ComfyUI-SelVA/LORA_TRAINING.md

LoRA Training for SelVA

LoRA lets you teach the model new or partially-known sound classes using a small set of video+audio pairs. Only ~10 MB of adapter weights are trained instead of the full 4.4 GB model.

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Overview

Training is split into two steps:

1. Dataset preparation (in ComfyUI) — extract visual features from your video clips using the SelVA Feature Extractor node, and collect clean matching audio files.
2. Training (command line) — run train_lora.py with your dataset directory.

The training script only loads the generator and the VAE encoder. CLIP visual features and sync features come pre-computed from the .npz files, so Synchformer and T5 are not loaded during training, saving 3–4 GB of VRAM.

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Requirements

Same environment as SelVA inference. Additional Python packages:

torchaudio

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Step 1 — Prepare the dataset

1.1 Extract visual features in ComfyUI

For each video clip you want to train on:

1. Load the video with a VHS LoadVideo node.
2. Connect it to SelVA Feature Extractor.
3. Set cache_dir to a dedicated dataset folder, e.g. dataset/my_sound.
4. Set name to a short descriptive label, e.g. dog_bark. The node will save dog_bark_001.npz, then dog_bark_002.npz, etc. automatically as you process more clips.
5. Set the prompt to describe the sound (e.g. a dog barking). This prompt is used to condition the sync features — be specific.
6. Optionally connect a mask to isolate the sound source in frame (recommended when the scene has multiple objects).

Tip: The prompt used for feature extraction conditions the visual sync features. You can use a different, more precise prompt at training time — see Step 2.

1.2 Collect clean audio

For each .npz file, place a matching audio file with the same filename stem in the same directory:

dataset/my_sound/
    dog_bark_001.npz   ← from SelVA Feature Extractor
    dog_bark_001.wav   ← clean isolated audio recording
    dog_bark_002.npz
    dog_bark_002.wav
    dog_bark_003.npz
    dog_bark_003.wav

Supported audio formats: .wav, .flac, .mp3, .ogg, .aiff, .aif

The audio will be automatically resampled and trimmed/padded to match the model's expected duration. Use clean, isolated recordings — no background noise.

1.3 Optional: prompts.txt

If you want a different prompt at training time than the one embedded in the .npz, create a prompts.txt file in the dataset directory:

# One line per file: filename: prompt text
dog_bark.npz: a large dog barking aggressively
dog_bark_001.npz: a dog barking in the distance

Priority: prompts.txt > prompt embedded in .npz > directory name as fallback.

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Step 2 — Run training

python train_lora.py \
    --data_dir dataset/my_sound \
    --output_dir lora_output/my_sound \
    --variant large_44k \
    --selva_dir /path/to/ComfyUI/models/selva \
    --rank 16 \
    --steps 2000 \
    --lr 1e-4

The script will:

1. Load the VAE, CLIP text encoder, and generator.
2. Pre-load all clips (audio encoded to latents, features loaded from .npz).
3. Train LoRA adapters for the specified number of steps.
4. Save a checkpoint every --save_every steps and a final adapter_final.pt with embedded metadata.

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CLI Reference

Argument	Default	Description
--data_dir	required	Directory containing .npz + audio pairs
--output_dir	lora_output	Where to save adapter checkpoints
--variant	large_44k	Model variant: small_16k, small_44k, medium_44k, large_44k
--selva_dir	required	Path to SelVA model weights directory
--rank	16	LoRA rank — higher = more capacity, more VRAM
--alpha	rank	LoRA alpha scaling. Default (= rank) means scale = 1.0
--target	attn.qkv	Which layers to adapt. Add linear1 for post-attention projections
--lr	1e-4	Learning rate
--steps	2000	Total training steps
--warmup_steps	500	Linear LR warmup steps
--grad_accum	4	Gradient accumulation steps (effective batch = grad_accum × 1)
--save_every	500	Save a checkpoint every N steps
--precision	bf16	Mixed precision: bf16, fp16, fp32
--seed	42	Random seed

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Step 3 — Load the adapter in ComfyUI

Connect SelVA LoRA Loader between the model loader and the sampler:

SelVA Model Loader → SelVA LoRA Loader → SelVA Sampler

Input	Description
model	SELVA_MODEL from the model loader
adapter_path	Path to adapter_final.pt or any adapter_stepXXXXX.pt
strength	0.0 = adapter disabled, 1.0 = full strength, >1.0 = exaggerated

The loader reads rank, alpha, and target layers from the metadata embedded in the .pt file — no need to set them manually.

The base model is not modified. The loader returns a shallow copy with a deep-copied generator so the original stays intact.

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Tuning Guide

Clip length

The model has a fixed input duration of 8 seconds for all variants (both 16k and 44k). This is not a parameter you can change.

• Audio shorter than 8 s is zero-padded (silence appended). The model will learn the sound but may also learn silence as part of the pattern — keep in mind for very short sounds.
• Audio longer than 8 s is trimmed at 8 s. Content beyond that is lost.
• Video shorter than 8 s has its last frame repeated to fill the clip.

Practical recommendations:

Sound type	Clip strategy
Continuous sound (rain, engine, wind)	8 s recordings, as many positions in the audio as possible
Single event < 2 s (click, bark, knock)	Center the event — pad deliberately with silence before/after, or loop the event 2–3 times per clip
Repeating event (footsteps, dripping)	Record full 8 s with natural repetition at the intended cadence
Sound with a clear onset (explosion, splash)	Put the onset at ~1–2 s from the start, not at 0 s — gives the model context

Tip: When extracting features in ComfyUI, set duration to 0 to use the full video length up to 8 s. Clips longer than 8 s are automatically clamped.

How many clips do I need?

The table below gives a rough scaling guide. Quality and diversity of recordings matter more than raw count.

Dataset size	Scenario	Expected result
5–10 clips	Quick test / proof of concept	May work if the model already partially knows the sound; often underfits
15–30 clips	Fine-tuning a sound the model knows but gets wrong	Good starting point — covers the main variations
30–60 clips	Teaching a new but acoustically simple sound class	Reliable convergence with default hyperparameters
60–150 clips	Unusual or complex sounds, strong style shift	Needed for stable generalization across video contexts
150–300 clips	Sounds the model has never encountered	Required to avoid overfitting; increase rank to 32
300+	Large-scale domain shift	Consider also targeting linear1 in addition to attn.qkv

Diversity beats quantity. Ten clips of a dog barking in different environments (indoors, outdoors, distant, close) train better than fifty clips of the same recording. Vary: distance, room acoustics, intensity, speed.

Rank

Rank	Use case
8	Fine details on a sound the model already knows well
16	Default — good balance of capacity and VRAM
32	Harder sounds or larger style shifts

Higher rank increases VRAM usage and overfitting risk on small datasets.

Steps

Dataset size	Recommended steps
10–20 clips	500–1000
20–50 clips	1000–3000
50+ clips	2000–5000

Monitor the loss — it should decrease steadily in the first few hundred steps. If it plateaus early, try a higher rank or more clips. If it drops very fast and then bounces, lower the learning rate.

Learning rate

1e-4 is a safe default. If training is unstable (loss spikes), try 5e-5. If learning seems slow, try 2e-4.

Target layers

attn.qkv (default) adapts only the self-attention QKV projections — 21 layers in large_44k. This is the recommended starting point.

Add linear1 to also adapt post-attention projections if attn.qkv alone is not enough:

--target attn.qkv linear1

Loss interpretation

A typical loss curve:

• Starts around 0.8–1.2
• Should reach 0.3–0.6 after convergence for a clean sound class
• Below 0.1 on a small dataset usually means overfitting

Precision

Use bf16 on Ampere+ GPUs (RTX 3xxx, A100, etc.). Fall back to fp16 on older GPUs. fp32 is only needed for debugging — 2× more VRAM.

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Output files

lora_output/my_sound/
    adapter_step00500.pt   ← checkpoint at step 500
    adapter_step01000.pt   ← checkpoint at step 1000
    ...
    adapter_final.pt       ← final adapter with embedded metadata
    meta.json              ← human-readable metadata (rank, alpha, target, steps)

adapter_final.pt format:

{
    "state_dict": { "blocks.0.attn.qkv.lora_A": ..., ... },
    "meta": {
        "variant": "large_44k",
        "rank": 16,
        "alpha": 16.0,
        "target": ["attn.qkv"],
        "steps": 2000
    }
}

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Troubleshooting

No layers matched target=... The --target suffixes do not match any layer names. The default attn.qkv targets SelfAttention.qkv in all transformer blocks. If you changed --target, verify the layer names with model.named_modules().

No .npz files found in ... The --data_dir path is wrong or no .npz files were extracted there yet. Run SelVA Feature Extractor in ComfyUI first with the matching cache_dir.

No audio file found for clip.npz Place an audio file with the exact same stem next to the .npz: clip.wav, clip.flac, etc.

Loss does not decrease

• Try a higher learning rate (2e-4) or more warmup steps.
• Check that the audio files are clean and actually contain the target sound.
• Check that the .npz features were extracted with a relevant prompt.

Loss explodes or NaN

• Lower the learning rate (5e-5).
• Make sure audio is normalized to [-1, 1]. PCM files with 16-bit integer encoding may need to be converted first (ffmpeg -i input.wav -ar 44100 output.wav).