# Learning Zero-Shot Subject-Driven Video Generation Using 1% Compute

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17816 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17816/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12242/) (2022)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [An Image is Worth One Word: Personalizing Text-to-Image Generation using Textual Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01618/) (2022)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [Gradient Surgery for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06782/) (2020)
- [Continual Learning with Deep Generative Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08690/) (2017)
- [Multi-Concept Customization of Text-to-Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04488/) (2022)
- [Efficient Lifelong Learning with A-GEM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00420/) (2018)
- [CogVideo: Large-scale Pretraining for Text-to-Video Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15868/) (2022)
- [PixArt-α: Fast Training of Diffusion Transformer for Photorealistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00426/) (2023)
- [LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00103/) (2024)
- [VideoCrafter2: Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09047/) (2024)
- [VACE: All-in-One Video Creation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07598/) (2025)
- [Lumiere: A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12945/) (2024)
- [BLIP-Diffusion: Pre-trained Subject Representation for Controllable Text-to-Image Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14720/) (2023)
- [Latent Video Diffusion Models for High-Fidelity Long Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13221/) (2022)
- [OminiControl: Minimal and Universal Control for Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15098/) (2024)
- [SkyReels-V2: Infinite-length Film Generative Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13074/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [DreamActor-H1: High-Fidelity Human-Product Demonstration Video Generation via Motion-designed Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10568/) (2025)
- [V-Warper: Appearance-Consistent Video Diffusion Personalization via Value Warping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12375/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Subject-driven video generation (SDV-Gen) aims to produce videos of a specific subject by adapting a pretrained video model, enabling personalized and application-driven content creation. To achieve this goal, per-subject tuning methods require approximately 200 A100 GPU hours to generate a customized video, whereas zero-shot methods avoid per-subject tuning but typically rely on millions of subject-video pairs for the supervision, incurring massive network fine-tuning costs (10K-200K A100 GPU hours). We propose a data- and compute-efficient zero-shot SDV-Gen framework that avoids test-time per-subject tuning and the use of large-scale subject-video pairs. Our key idea decomposes SDV-Gen into (i) identity injection learned from subject-image pairs and (ii) motion-awareness preservation maintained by a small set of arbitrary videos. We optimize the two tasks with stochastic switching, using random reference-frame sampling and image-token dropout to prevent trivial first-frame copying. Our gradient analysis shows that the two objectives rapidly evolve toward nearly orthogonal update subspaces, explaining the stable optimization. Using CogVideoX-5B, we adapt a single model with 200K subject-image pairs and 4,000 arbitrary videos in 288 A100 GPU hours. This yields about 1% of compute compared to prior zero-shot baselines (i.e., 0.4% of VACE and 2.8% of Phantom) while using no subject-video pairs, yet remaining competitive in subject fidelity and motion quality. We show that the same recipe transfers to Wan 2.1-1.3B and Wan 2.2-5B.