# Controllable Video Generation: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16869 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16869/

## Key facts

- Cited by 98 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 226 of its 305 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 226)

- [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)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12092/) (2021)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [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)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [Density estimation using Real NVP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.08803/) (2016)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [LAION-400M: Open Dataset of CLIP-Filtered 400 Million Image-Text Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02114/) (2021)
- [Glow: Generative Flow with Invertible 1x1 Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03039/) (2018)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [LIBERO: Benchmarking Knowledge Transfer for Lifelong Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03310/) (2023)
- [Frozen in Time: A Joint Video and Image Encoder for End-to-End Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00650/) (2021)
- [OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08008/) (2018)
- [MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04200/) (2022)
- [NICE: Non-linear Independent Components Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1410.8516/) (2014)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02905/) (2024)
- [Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11565/) (2022)
- [The 2017 DAVIS Challenge on Video Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00675/) (2017)
- [Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03575/) (2025)
- [Conditional Image Generation with PixelCNN Decoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05328/) (2016)
- [CogView: Mastering Text-to-Image Generation via Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13290/) (2021)
- [Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17117/) (2023)
- [VGGSound: A Large-scale Audio-Visual Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14368/) (2020)
- [Structure and Content-Guided Video Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03011/) (2023)
- [DensePose: Dense Human Pose Estimation In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00434/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 98)

- [Follow-Your-Emoji-Faster: Towards Efficient, Fine-Controllable, and Expressive Freestyle Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16630/) (2025)
- [MultiShotMaster: A Controllable Multi-Shot Video Generation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03041/) (2025)
- [In-Context Learning with Unpaired Clips for Instruction-based Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14648/) (2025)
- [JarvisEvo: Towards a Self-Evolving Photo Editing Agent with Synergistic Editor-Evaluator Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23002/) (2025)
- [Aurora: Towards Universal Generative Multimodal Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22295/) (2025)
- [Follow-Your-Shape: Shape-Aware Image Editing via Trajectory-Guided Region Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08134/) (2025)
- [ContextFlow: Training-Free Video Object Editing via Adaptive Context Enrichment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17818/) (2025)
- [What about gravity in video generation? Post-Training Newton's Laws with Verifiable Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00425/) (2025)
- [Paper2Video: Automatic Video Generation from Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05096/) (2025)
- [WorldLens: Full-Spectrum Evaluations of Driving World Models in Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10958/) (2025)
- [FastVMT: Eliminating Redundancy in Video Motion Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05551/) (2026)
- [A Survey on Cache Methods in Diffusion Models: Toward Efficient Multi-Modal Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19755/) (2025)
- [Past- and Future-Informed KV Cache Policy with Salience Estimation in Autoregressive Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21896/) (2026)
- [Manifold-Aware Exploration for Reinforcement Learning in Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21872/) (2026)
- [LiveEdit: Towards Real-Time Diffusion-Based Streaming Video Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26740/) (2026)
- [GCGNet: Graph-Consistent Generative Network for Time Series Forecasting with Exogenous Variables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08032/) (2026)
- [VFXMaster: Unlocking Dynamic Visual Effect Generation via In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25772/) (2025)
- [UltraViCo: Breaking Extrapolation Limits in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20123/) (2025)
- [VQQA: An Agentic Approach for Video Evaluation and Quality Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12310/) (2026)
- [ReDirector: Creating Any-Length Video Retakes with Rotary Camera Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19827/) (2025)
- [Group Editing: Edit Multiple Images in One Go](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22883/) (2026)
- [Follow-Your-Instruction: A Comprehensive MLLM Agent for World Data Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05580/) (2025)
- [SMRABooth: Subject and Motion Representation Alignment for Customized Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12193/) (2025)
- [MIND-V: Hierarchical World Model for Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation with RL-based Physical Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06628/) (2025)
- [ASTGI: Adaptive Spatio-Temporal Graph Interactions for Irregular Multivariate Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23313/) (2025)
- [UniPR-3D: Towards Universal Visual Place Recognition with Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21078/) (2025)
- [CML-Bench: A Framework for Evaluating and Enhancing LLM-Powered Movie Scripts Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06231/) (2025)
- [VII: Visual Instruction Injection for Jailbreaking Image-to-Video Generation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20999/) (2026)
- [CoRA: Boosting Time Series Foundation Models for Multivariate Forecasting through Correlation-aware Adapter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21828/) (2026)
- [LiveLight: Real-time Streaming Video Relighting with Interactive Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01771/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the rapid development of AI-generated content (AIGC), video generation has emerged as one of its most dynamic and impactful subfields. In particular, the advancement of video generation foundation models has led to growing demand for controllable video generation methods that can more accurately reflect user intent. Most existing foundation models are designed for text-to-video generation, where text prompts alone are often insufficient to express complex, multi-modal, and fine-grained user requirements. This limitation makes it challenging for users to generate videos with precise control using current models. To address this issue, recent research has explored the integration of additional non-textual conditions, such as camera motion, depth maps, and human pose, to extend pretrained video generation models and enable more controllable video synthesis. These approaches aim to enhance the flexibility and practical applicability of AIGC-driven video generation systems. In this survey, we provide a systematic review of controllable video generation, covering both theoretical foundations and recent advances in the field. We begin by introducing the key concepts and commonly used open-source video generation models. We then focus on control mechanisms in video diffusion models, analyzing how different types of conditions can be incorporated into the denoising process to guide generation. Finally, we categorize existing methods based on the types of control signals they leverage, including single-condition generation, multi-condition generation, and universal controllable generation. For a complete list of the literature on controllable video generation reviewed, please visit our curated repository at https://github.com/mayuelala/Awesome-Controllable-Video-Generation.