Is it possible to play a movie live in the node editor? I know you can do it in the sequencer but I want to play it in the node editor.
Any help?
Yes, just load an image sequence into an image node, set the type to “sequence”, set the number of frames, connect to an output node, enable the “backdrop” check box, and either scrub through with the time line or left/right arrow keys. Be careful, Blender caches every frame that you scrub through into RAM and does not clear them so you can easily crash Blender with this method. It does this so that you can paint on the image sequence without having to re-save each image before advancing to the next frame.
An easier way is to use the movie input node… takes image sequences aswell as movie files. But yeh playing back through the compositor is not going to be realtime and will chew up a ton of ram.
I see, so playing a movie file real time in the node editor is not possible. 
Playing a movie in real-time anywhere in Blender is not possible. Blender was not designed to be a movie container.
Sure, if you have plenty of ram - but you realize that the compositor is for editing footage, not previewing it. Better to load up in the Movie Clip Editor where you usually do tracking work - that will work better for previewing footage
Blender is not designed to play back heavily compressed footage. For best frame rate you would have to use the proxy function which converts the camera originals to lower resolution lightly compressed frames. This is easier to playback. Remember there is a lot of overhead when Blender is playing back a clip, unlike a movie player (like VLC) that just does one thing.
You can’t do that. As I mentioned above the only way to achieve this is to add the compositor’s scene as a strip in the VSE. Otherwise there are color correction tools available in the properties tab of the strip, look for modifiers.
It’s a software-conversion issue. You need to realize that every image that you put into Blender is converted to 32 bits per channel via OpenEXR (your 8 bpc video just increased to something like ten times it’s original memory/size footprint). That’s a whopping dose of memory and computational color space conversion to contend with, worse than trying to play back full, uncompressed frames. Besides, you’re not gonna get on the fly image correction and play back with any software that I’m aware of, particularly for HD frames. The longer your effects chain gets, the longer you’re gonna have to wait for the conversion. That’s just the way that it is and everyone here has to deal with it.
I wish this wasn’t so and have asked one of the developers about a button to allow for limited conversion to 16 bpc color space since OpenEXR supports this. The response was basically this: “You don’t know how complex and nightmarish that would be for us to accomplish, kid”.
I see, so playing a movie file real time in the node editor is not possible.
Most programs can not do do this. Even final Cut and Premiere have a behind the scenes pre-render function to accomplish playback. So you are always looking at a proxy image when the playhead is rolling. Then the final image is substituted when you stop playback.
The acceptance of most of the majority of posters in this thread that “Blender doesn’t do RAM playback in it’s compositor” (node editor) or the repeated statement “But why do you want to play footage in the compositor?” is completely surreal. Keep burying your collective heads in the sand guys. Also comparing Blender’s compositor to Final Cut or Premier is not the issue. How about comparing Blender’s compositor to other actual Compositing packages, not editing packages. Johhny Wicked’s question stands and is completely relevant and from what I have read here is also completely unanswered. If Blender wants to call it’s “Node editor” a “Compositor”, then it needs to include the basic functionality of having a RAM preview. Having a ram preview playback facility in any compositor is absolutely fundamental to Compositing. You need to work on your shot then ram preview it to see how your work stands up on a moving sequence, not just on one or two still frames. So if I’m working on a sequence which incorporates tons of green screen elements where the keys may or may not “boil” or where animated masks need to be watched through for any slippage or errors that might only come to light in the final composite I can’t? C’mon guys, give yourselves a serious reality check on this. It’s crap and it should be right up there on the top list of things that need sorting in Blender. The Blender community really needs to stop justifying this essential lack of functionality in the Compositor. Otherwise simply don’t call it a compositor, just call it a faux compositor. I work on projects where it’s not uncommon to have to composite literally hundreds of shots to composite and there is no way to composite properly without RAM preview. And what, for every shot am I supposed to try and follow some kind of god-awful artist unfriendly workaround in the VSE (which as Johnny points out is a separate window and system), simply to get some semblance of RAM preview. I get that Blender has tons of power with its nodes etc. etc. but try telling any After Effects, Fusion, Shake, Combustion, Smoke, Nuke, Flame compositor that they can’t have any way of ram previewing their work. For gods sake, even Pain’t and Effect or Puffin’s system’s commotion had RAM preview as long as 15 years ago. The sentiment that seems to be being expressed here by a bunch of senior or “pro” Blender users that Johnny is somehow asking for something tricky when he’s just bringing up one of the most fundamental usability issues in Compositing probably explains why it is that Blender is so far behind on this very basic issue. Excuses of “You don’t understand, Blender converts everything to 32 bits” are nothing but excuses and don’t cut it on the commercial or professional marketplace. Nothing excuses the lack of a basic RAM preview system in the Compositor. It’s retarded to continue thinking this lack of RAM preview in Composting is in any way acceptable and it makes Blender unusable in a professional situation for any studio needing a production capable Compositing solution. This is one of the exact reasons why Blender is not taken up by more working studios. Which in turn affects all of your prospects of increasing the work you get in the industry because the less studios who take Blender up because of fundamental issues (such as not having a RAM preview in Compositing) the less integration it’s going to have in the market place. So, such a shame, that for all of Blender’s power in it’s node system which could make it a superb compositor, the basic lack of RAM preview makes it unusable in production.
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Seriously its not hard to add a vse preview window in place of the uv image editor and preview there if you’re desperate to not switch away.
I think Angus made a valid point! RT preview is essential for a good compositor.