# UniCtrl: Improving the Spatiotemporal Consistency of Text-to-Video Diffusion Models via Training-Free Unified Attention Control

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02332 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02332/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 67 of its 82 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Video generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/video-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 67)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Photorealistic Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Deep Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11487/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10741/) (2021)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (2022)
- [Consistency Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01469/) (2023)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Sora as a World Model? A Complete Survey on Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05131/) (2024)
- [Optical-Flow Guided Prompt Optimization for Coherent Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15540/) (2024)
- [I4VGen: Image as Free Stepping Stone for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02230/) (2024)
- [CTRL-D: Controllable Dynamic 3D Scene Editing with Personalized 2D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01792/) (2024)
- [IV-Mixed Sampler: Leveraging Image Diffusion Models for Enhanced Video Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04171/) (2024)
- [ByTheWay: Boost Your Text-to-Video Generation Model to Higher Quality in a Training-free Way](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06241/) (2024)
- [VideoGuide: Improving Video Diffusion Models without Training Through a Teacher's Guide](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04364/) (2024)
- [DropletVideo: A Dataset and Approach to Explore Integral Spatio-Temporal Consistent Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06053/) (2025)
- [PhysVid: Physics Aware Local Conditioning for Generative Video Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26285/) (2026)
- [RefDrop: Controllable Consistency in Image or Video Generation via Reference Feature Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17661/) (2024)
- [Steering Video Diffusion Transformers with Massive Activations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17825/) (2026)
- [V.I.P. : Iterative Online Preference Distillation for Efficient Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03254/) (2025)
- [Video Consistency Distance: Enhancing Temporal Consistency for Image-to-Video Generation via Reward-Based Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19193/) (2025)
- [Embedding Prediction Helps Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02203/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Video Diffusion Models have been developed for video generation, usually integrating text and image conditioning to enhance control over the generated content. Despite the progress, ensuring consistency across frames remains a challenge, particularly when using text prompts as control conditions. To address this problem, we introduce UniCtrl, a novel, plug-and-play method that is universally applicable to improve the spatiotemporal consistency and motion diversity of videos generated by text-to-video models without additional training. UniCtrl ensures semantic consistency across different frames through cross-frame self-attention control, and meanwhile, enhances the motion quality and spatiotemporal consistency through motion injection and spatiotemporal synchronization. Our experimental results demonstrate UniCtrl's efficacy in enhancing various text-to-video models, confirming its effectiveness and universality.