Vidu, the flagship product of ShengShu Technology and a pioneer in generative AI video, today announced a major update to its latest Vidu Q1 model, offering a new advanced ‘Reference-to-Video’ feature, powered by semantic understanding, which in an industry-first can generate videos at scale from up to seven image inputs.
Producing complex, multi-character films with AI is quickly becoming a reality. But until now, maintaining visual consistency across multiple scenes and videos has been one of the field’s most difficult challenges. Characters would shift subtly between shots, objects would change, and continuity would break down entirely from one video to the next.
Vidu Q1 changes that with its Reference-to-Video feature. This breakthrough allows creators to preserve a high level of consistency from the first video to the videos generated thereafter, from character appearance and behavior to background elements and props. The model understands and tracks visual identity across frames, so new additions to a scene won’t disrupt the continuity of what’s already been established.
This profound capability directly underpins how this update to Vidu’s dynamic Q1 generative video model marks a transformative milestone. Scenes that once required tens of millions of dollars and months of production can now be cut down to hundreds of dollars and a matter of minutes. In fact, generating a 5-second 1080p video clip with Vidu Q1’s Reference-to-Video feature can cost as little as $0.14. This is less than the cost of a can of soda for a high-definition video.
Imagine recreating the iconic Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Lord of the Rings, which originally took 120 days and hundreds of actors and extras. Vidu Q1 brings us closer to achieving a similar scale on a shoestring production budget, and all within the comfort of your home. It signals a paradigm shift: AI models are becoming sophisticated and perceptive enough to synthesize cinematic-scale detail with minimal human input and visual cues, redefining the boundaries of what’s possible in filmmaking.
