VISTA: A Test-Time Self-Improving Video Generation Agent
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Abstract (arXiv)
Despite rapid advances in text-to-video synthesis, generated video quality remains critically dependent on precise user prompts. Existing test-time optimization methods, successful in other domains, struggle with the multi-faceted nature of video. In this work, we introduce VISTA (Video Iterative Self-improvemenT Agent), a novel multi-agent system that autonomously improves video generation through refining prompts in an iterative loop. VISTA first decomposes a user idea into a structured temporal plan. After generation, the best video is identified through a robust pairwise tournament. This winning video is then critiqued by a trio of specialized agents focusing on visual, audio, and contextual fidelity. Finally, a reasoning agent synthesizes this feedback to introspectively rewrite and enhance the prompt for the next generation cycle. Experiments on single- and multi-scene video generation scenarios show that while prior methods yield inconsistent gains, VISTA consistently improves video quality and alignment with user intent, achieving up to 60% pairwise win rate against state-of-the-art baselines. Human evaluators concur, preferring VISTA outputs in 66.4% of comparisons.
Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 41 of its 85 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Oct 2025.
Builds on
41 of 85 references.
References · 41
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 23.
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- 2026COMIC: Agentic Sketch Comedy Generation11 Mar 2026
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- 2026VideoGen-Agent: Reinforcing Video Generation Agents21 Sep 2026
- 2026Motion-Omni: End-to-End Joint Speech and Full-Body Motion for Spoken Dialogue28 Aug 2026
- 2026GroundShot: Visually Consistent Multi-Shot Long Video Generation via Entity-Grounded Shot Scheduling18 Jun 2026
- 2026Bridging Creative Intent and Visual Quality: Creator-Driven Recurrent Video Generation with Agentic Feedback Loops17 Jun 2026
- 2026PermaVid: Consistent Video Generation Across Edits via Disentangled Context Memory15 Jun 2026
- 2026TransVLM: A Vision-Language Framework and Benchmark for Detecting Any Shot Transitions30 Apr 2026
- 2026SPIRAL: Self-Evolving Action-Conditioned Video Generation via Reflective Planning Agents9 Mar 2026
- 2026BrandFusion: A Multi-Agent Framework for Seamless Brand Integration in Text-to-Video Generation3 Mar 2026
- 2026Retrieval, Refinement, and Ranking for Text-to-Video Generation via Prompt Optimization and Test-Time Scaling2 Mar 2026
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