# Beyond Flicker: Detecting Kinematic Inconsistencies for Generalizable Deepfake Video Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04175 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04175/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 59 of its 86 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 59)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [FaceForensics++: Learning to Detect Manipulated Facial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08971/) (2019)
- [CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot... for now](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11035/) (2019)
- [Celeb-DF: A Large-scale Challenging Dataset for DeepFake Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12962/) (2019)
- [Thinking in Frequency: Face Forgery Detection by Mining Frequency-aware Clues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09355/) (2020)
- [Face X-ray for More General Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13458/) (2019)
- [Multi-attentional Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02406/) (2021)
- [Detecting Deepfakes with Self-Blended Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08376/) (2022)
- [Exposing Deep Fakes Using Inconsistent Head Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00661/) (2018)
- [Lips Don't Lie: A Generalisable and Robust Approach to Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07657/) (2020)
- [What makes fake images detectable? Understanding properties that generalize](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10588/) (2020)
- [Generalizing Face Forgery Detection with High-frequency Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12376/) (2021)
- [DeeperForensics-1.0: A Large-Scale Dataset for Real-World Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.03024/) (2020)
- [CelebV-HQ: A Large-Scale Video Facial Attributes Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12393/) (2022)
- [Spatial-Phase Shallow Learning: Rethinking Face Forgery Detection in Frequency Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01856/) (2021)
- [The Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC) Preview Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08854/) (2019)
- [WildDeepfake: A Challenging Real-World Dataset for Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01456/) (2021)
- [UCF: Uncovering Common Features for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13949/) (2023)
- [Self-supervised Learning of Adversarial Example: Towards Good Generalizations for Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12208/) (2022)
- [Two-branch Recurrent Network for Isolating Deepfakes in Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03412/) (2020)
- [Exploring Temporal Coherence for More General Video Face Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06693/) (2021)
- [FakeCatcher: Detection of Synthetic Portrait Videos using Biological Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02212/) (2019)
- [PSCC-Net: Progressive Spatio-Channel Correlation Network for Image Manipulation Detection and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10596/) (2021)
- [Multi-task Learning For Detecting and Segmenting Manipulated Facial Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06876/) (2019)
- [Leveraging Real Talking Faces via Self-Supervision for Robust Forgery Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07131/) (2022)
- [DF40: Toward Next-Generation Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13495/) (2024)
- [Transcending Forgery Specificity with Latent Space Augmentation for Generalizable Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11278/) (2023)
- [Orthogonal Subspace Decomposition for Generalizable AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15633/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generalizing deepfake detection to unseen manipulations remains a key challenge. A recent approach to tackle this issue is to train a network with pristine face images that have been manipulated with hand-crafted artifacts to extract more generalizable clues. While effective for static images, extending this to the video domain is an open issue. Existing methods model temporal artifacts as frame-to-frame instabilities, overlooking a key vulnerability: the violation of natural motion dependencies between different facial regions. In this paper, we propose a synthetic video generation method that creates training data with subtle kinematic inconsistencies. We train an autoencoder to decompose facial landmark configurations into motion bases. By manipulating these bases, we selectively break the natural correlations in facial movements and introduce these artifacts into pristine videos via face morphing. A network trained on our data learns to spot these sophisticated biomechanical flaws, achieving state-of-the-art generalization results on several popular benchmarks.