# DTG-Restore: Training-Free Diffusion Refinement for Generative Video Super-Resolution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30431 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30431/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 48 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [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)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Tune-A-Video: One-Shot Tuning of Image Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11565/) (2022)
- [ModelScope Text-to-Video Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06571/) (2023)
- [VideoCrafter2: Overcoming Data Limitations for High-Quality Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09047/) (2024)
- [Latte: Latent Diffusion Transformer for Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03048/) (2024)
- [VideoCrafter1: Open Diffusion Models for High-Quality Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19512/) (2023)
- [EDVR: Video Restoration with Enhanced Deformable Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02716/) (2019)
- [Sora: A Review on Background, Technology, Limitations, and Opportunities of Large Vision Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17177/) (2024)
- [Panda-70M: Captioning 70M Videos with Multiple Cross-Modality Teachers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19479/) (2024)
- [I2VGen-XL: High-Quality Image-to-Video Synthesis via Cascaded Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04145/) (2023)
- [LAVIE: High-Quality Video Generation with Cascaded Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15103/) (2023)
- [BasicVSR++: Improving Video Super-Resolution with Enhanced Propagation and Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13371/) (2021)
- [OpenVid-1M: A Large-Scale High-Quality Dataset for Text-to-video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02371/) (2024)
- [BasicVSR: The Search for Essential Components in Video Super-Resolution and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02181/) (2020)
- [Show-1: Marrying Pixel and Latent Diffusion Models for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15818/) (2023)
- [VRT: A Video Restoration Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12288/) (2022)
- [Recurrent Video Restoration Transformer with Guided Deformable Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02146/) (2022)
- [Investigating Tradeoffs in Real-World Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12704/) (2021)
- [Upscale-A-Video: Temporal-Consistent Diffusion Model for Real-World Video Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06640/) (2023)
- [ScaleCrafter: Tuning-free Higher-Resolution Visual Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07702/) (2023)
- [Video Super-Resolution with Recurrent Structure-Detail Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00455/) (2020)
- [RAVE: Randomized Noise Shuffling for Fast and Consistent Video Editing with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04524/) (2023)
- [Infinity-RoPE: Action-Controllable Infinite Video Generation Emerges From Autoregressive Self-Rollout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20649/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Alignment in Video Super-Resolution Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08494/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent progress in video diffusion models has enabled remarkable generative fidelity, yet leveraging these priors for restoration remains limited by the strong coupling between conditional and unconditional branches in standard classifier-free guidance. We introduce a training-free framework that enhances distorted and low-resolution videos by decoupling these signals in time. Our proposed Decoupled Time Guidance (DTG) evaluates the unconditional branch at a cleaner diffusion timestep, providing a lookahead prior that preserves geometry while suppressing replication of warped content. This temporal bias is annealed throughout sampling, allowing the model to transition from structure correction to detail refinement without retraining. Combined with any off-the-shelf restoration module in a plug-and-play manner, our approach improves perceptual coherence and restores plausible structure in AIgenerated and real-world videos alike. To facilitate evaluation, we curate GenWarp480, a benchmark of 4,400 distorted 480p videos synthesized from diverse text-to-video models. GenWarp480 focuses on characteristic generative degradations such as warped faces, body misalignments, and spatial artifacts, providing a purpose-built testbed for assessing robustness to generative errors. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves significant improvements in structural fidelity and temporal stability without any model training.
