# Hi-Light: A Path to high-fidelity, high-resolution video relighting with a Novel Evaluation Paradigm

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23167 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.23167/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [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)
- [VBench: Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17982/) (2023)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [Learning Physics-guided Face Relighting under Directional Light](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.03355/) (2019)
- [SwitchLight: Co-design of Physics-driven Architecture and Pre-training Framework for Human Portrait Relighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18848/) (2024)
- [Light-A-Video: Training-free Video Relighting via Progressive Light Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08590/) (2025)
- [SunStage: Portrait Reconstruction and Relighting using the Sun as a Light Stage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03648/) (2022)
- [TC-Light: Temporally Coherent Generative Rendering for Realistic World Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18904/) (2025)
- [IllumiCraft: Unified Geometry and Illumination Diffusion for Controllable Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03150/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Video relighting offers immense creative potential and commercial value but is hindered by challenges, including the absence of an adequate evaluation metric, severe light flickering, and the degradation of fine-grained details during editing. To overcome these challenges, we introduce Hi-Light, a novel, training-free framework for high-fidelity, high-resolution, robust video relighting. Our approach introduces three technical innovations: lightness prior anchored guided relighting diffusion that stabilises intermediate relit video, a Hybrid Motion-Adaptive Lighting Smoothing Filter that leverages optical flow to ensure temporal stability without introducing motion blur, and a LAB-based Detail Fusion module that preserves high-frequency detail information from the original video. Furthermore, to address the critical gap in evaluation, we propose the Light Stability Score, the first quantitative metric designed to specifically measure lighting consistency. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Hi-Light significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons, producing stable, highly detailed relit videos.
