SmartDirector: Keyframe-Conditioned Cinematic Video Generation with Narrative Pacing Control

Hugging Face Daily Papers Papers
keyframe-conditioned video-generation narrative-pacing cinematic low-resolution high-resolution-refinement data-pipeline

Summary

SmartDirector is a framework that enhances video generation by using multiple keyframes to improve narrative structure and temporal pacing, operating in a two-stage process of low-resolution generation and high-resolution refinement.

The narrative quality of a video fundamentally determines its perceptual value. Although existing video generation methods can produce visually appealing content, they predominantly rely on sparse conditioning signals such as text prompts or first/last frames, which limits precise control over narrative structure and temporal pacing. In this paper, we propose SmartDirector, a framework that enhances the narrative capacity of video generation models through multiple keyframes. SmartDirector supports flexible generation scenarios including single-shot generation, multi-shot narrative synthesis, and video extension. The framework operates in two stages: Director-Gen generates a low-resolution video conditioned on the provided keyframes, and Director-SR refines the output by exploiting high-resolution keyframes as semantic anchors to recover fine-grained details. To enable robust multi-keyframe training, we construct a data pipeline that curates single-shot and multi-shot sequences from movies. Extensive experiments demonstrate that SmartDirector substantially outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches. We will release the code to facilitate further research.
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Paper page - SmartDirector: Keyframe-Conditioned Cinematic Video Generation with Narrative Pacing Control

Source: https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.27891

Abstract

SmartDirector enhances video generation by using multiple keyframes to improve narrative structure and temporal pacing through a two-stage process of low-resolution generation and high-resolution refinement.

The narrative quality of a video fundamentally determines its perceptual value. Although existingvideo generationmethods can produce visually appealing content, they predominantly rely on sparse conditioning signals such as text prompts or first/last frames, which limits precise control overnarrative structureandtemporal pacing. In this paper, we propose SmartDirector, a framework that enhances the narrative capacity ofvideo generationmodels through multiplekeyframes. SmartDirector supports flexible generation scenarios includingsingle-shot generation,multi-shot narrative synthesis, andvideo extension. The framework operates in two stages: Director-Gen generates alow-resolution videoconditioned on the providedkeyframes, and Director-SR refines the output by exploiting high-resolutionkeyframesas semantic anchors to recover fine-grained details. To enable robust multi-keyframe training, we construct adata pipelinethat curates single-shot and multi-shot sequences from movies. Extensive experiments demonstrate that SmartDirector substantially outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches. We will release the code to facilitate further research.

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