Behind Video Generation: Observations and Insights on Multimodal Understanding from Kling
Abstract
Video generation has progressed from isolated clips to coherent short-form audiovisual sequences, and the bottleneck is shifting from rendering to semantic control. This report summarizes the observations and insights on multimodal understanding gained from successive generations of Kling. We argue that generation quality is the projection of multimodal understanding through the entire data--conditioning--alignment--evaluation chain, and we examine this chain module by module. Kling-MLLM, a shared multimodal foundation model that unifies image, video, audio, synchronized audio--video, and interleaved inputs, is specialized for each downstream module. Because a DiT is trained on far fewer training samples than a language model, we treat captioning as a semantic contract that maximizes description density, and extend it to reference-grounded captioning that makes reference bindings explicit. Prompt enhancement translates user intent into this caption distribution: basic PE is derived from captions of compelling videos and refined with text-level and generator-in-the-loop reinforcement learning, while agentic PE refines the story and retrieves compelling examples. We show that a reliable text encoder comes from perceptual training rather than from stronger language ability, and that candidates can be screened from text alone before end-to-end training. Reward modeling pairs a general reward model for explainable, localized critiques with a decision reward model for fast multidimensional scoring, treating perceptual bandwidth as a first-class design parameter. Finally, we review task-specific automatic evaluation, focusing on protocols that expose scoring shortcuts and help trace failures to their upstream source. We hope these lessons offer practical guidance for building the understanding stack behind controllable video generation.
Figures & tables
| Modality | Conversion-time normalization and validation | Representative supervision |
| Text | Encoding & language checks, document deduplication, conversational turn normalization | Next-token prediction, instruction following, reasoning |
| Image | Decode & resolution checks, perceptual deduplication, aspect-ratio handling, OCR/metadata extraction | Short & dense captions, VQA, OCR, grounding, counting, pose |
| Video | Decode check, shot segmentation, timestamped frame selection, optional OCR; audio routed to sync branch | Temporal captioning, event & motion QA, camera understanding, multi-shot reasoning |
| Audio | Waveform/channel normalization, segmentation, VAD & signal-quality checks, transcript alignment | ASR, audio captioning & QA, acoustic-event reasoning, temporal grounding |
| Audio–video | Synchronization validation, shared timestamped token timeline construction | Joint transcription, cross-modal QA, grounding, captioning |
| Interleaved media | Document/dialogue order preservation, media-reference checking, cross-record deduplication | Contextual QA & reasoning over multiple heterogeneous media items |
| Model | LibriSpeech | WorldSense | TREA | LATBench | |||||
| clean | other | mIoU | [email protected] | [email protected] | [email protected] | FENSE | |||
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct | 1.32 / 1.22 | 2.66 / 2.48 | 46.03 | 71.0 | 14.8|15.8 | 21.4|26.4 | 12.4|16.0 | 7.0|7.0 | 28.4|31.0 |
| MiniCPM-o-4.5 | 1.54 / 1.4 | 3.79 / 2.8 | 44.99 | 54.8 | 3.0|5.2 | 4.0|7.4 | 2.1|3.7 | 0.8|2.0 | 41.1|41.9 |
| Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus (DashScope) | 1.32 | 3.14 | 63.90 | 87.7 | 60.2|51.2 | 81.1|71.1 | 63.2|54.5 | 40.5|33.8 | 64.2|53.5 |
| Doubao2.0-Lite (non-thinking) | 1.28 | 2.41 | 53.94 | 71.5 | 53.1|53.2 | 73.9|73.2 | 58.9|57.9 | 38.2|37.2 | 57.4|48.7 |
| Doubao2.0-Lite (thinking, high) | 1.35 | 2.55 | 66.77 | 79.2 | 52.6|55.1 | 72.4|77.5 | 59.1|61.9 | 39.0|37.8 | 58.7|42.1 |
| Model | OmniBench | video-SALMONN | UGC-VideoCap | OmniCap-IF | Multimodal interleaving | ||||
| Miss | Hallucination | Total error | CSR | ISR | IV-Bench | MVU-Eval | |||
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct | 60.35 | 36.32 | 16.87 | 53.20 | 80.01 | 65.87 | 9.06 | 35.02 | 56.41 |
| MiniCPM-o-4.5 | 52.04 | 33.37 | 15.35 | 48.72 | 78.45 | 70.84 | 11.69 | 24.70 | 47.81 |
| Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus (DashScope) | 67.61 | 17.47 | 21.67 | 39.13 | 87.78 | 75.90 | 18.95 | 53.31 | 60.64 |
| Doubao2.0-Lite (non-thinking) | 57.79 | 28.20 | 17.26 | 45.46 | 84.22 | 76.56 | 20.29 | 43.48 | 60.42 |
| Doubao2.0-Lite (thinking, high) | 70.18 | 19.47 | 19.97 | 39.45 | 91.05 | 78.21 | 21.62 | 61.41 | 63.71 |
| Model | MMBench | OCRBench | TextPecker | PerceptionBench | ||||
| EN (dev) | CN (dev) | EN + | EN - | CN + | CN - | |||
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct | 87.29 | 83.68 | 86.80 | 0.032 | 0.078 | 0.047 | 0.041 | 32.17 |
| MiniCPM-o-4.5 | 85.22 | 82.99 | 61.00 / 87.6 | 0.094 | 0.099 | 0.024 | 0.085 | 29.37 |
| Gemma-4-31B-IT | 87.11 | 87.11 | 84.70 | 0.252 | 0.054 | 0.187 | 0.072 | 47.23 |
| Qwen3-VL-32B | 87.63 | 86.17 | 84.80 / 89.5 | 0.159 | 0.166 | 0.171 | 0.069 | 33.97 |
| Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus (DashScope) | 91.24 | 88.75 | 85.20 | 0.106 | 0.060 | 0.072 | 0.038 | 37.50 |
| Model | LongVideo Bench | MVBench | MME- VideoOCR | VSI- Bench | ShortVid- Bench | DSI- Bench | Event- Bench | Motion- Bench | TimeLens | CameraMotion VQA | VidCapBench | |||
| Overall | Charades | QVHighlights | ActivityNet | |||||||||||
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct | 64.70 | 70.00 | 62.35 | 61.12 | 63.90 | 51.95 | 69.91 | 61.57 | 12.64 | 14.90 | 8.77 | 14.26 | 31.68 | 17.78|84.24 |
| MiniCPM-o-4.5 | 64.85 / 66.0 | 64.00 | 62.20 | 50.38 | 64.60 | 26.23 | 66.48 | 60.75 / 61.4 | 10.01 | 9.21 | 9.62 | 11.19 | 23.53 | 15.22|79.16 |
| Gemma-4-31B-IT | 61.78 | 64.40 | 68.25 | 48.10 | 68.50 | 55.23 | 65.11 | 61.05 | 51.98 | 46.66 | 61.80 | 47.49 | 28.09 | 16.64|90.17 |
| Qwen3-VL-32B | 67.61 | 73.65 / 72.8 | 75.25 | 64.16 / 61.5 | 67.30 | 53.36 | 74.89 | 67.32 | 52.16 | 52.79 | 55.71 | 47.99 | 26.71 | 20.01|87.49 |
| Qwen3.5-Omni-Plus (DashScope) | 69.26 | 80.37 | 79.20 | 60.67 | 70.10 | 59.36 | 76.62 | 71.55 | 33.31 | 43.14 | 25.92 | 30.88 | 37.70 | 18.29|92.60 |
| Information family | Required caption elements | Downstream failure if omitted or corrupted |
| Subject & action | Distinct entities, action phases, interaction objects, resulting states | Static posing, role swaps, unresolved actions |
| Space & composition | Left–right/front–back relations, entry/exit directions, framing, depth | Reversed motion, misplaced subjects, uncontrolled composition |
| Cinematography & light | Shot scale, viewpoint, camera motion, focal shift, light direction/quality, contrast, color temp. | Generic camera behavior, appealing but irreproducible style |
| Time & shots | Event order, state changes, shot boundaries, timestamps, recurring subjects | Frame-list descriptions, discontinuity, unintended cuts or freezes |
| Visible & audible text | Faithful OCR, dialogue/narration, env. & action sounds, music, time anchors | Misspelled text, hallucinated audio, misaligned A-V events |
| Aesthetics | Concrete texture, palette, medium, style, and finish (beyond composition/light) | Vague non-executable descriptors (e.g., “cinematic”) |
| Criterion | Characteristic shortcut | Downstream consequence |
| Factual accuracy | Omit uncertain or complex attributes | Underspecified condition dataset-prior fallback |
| Semantic coverage | Add plausible but unverified details | Hallucinated entities, actions, relations, or text |
| Beneficial diversity | Use uncontrolled synonyms or poetic terms | Fragmented TE distribution unstable control |
| Internal consistency | Reuse rigid templates; ignore local nuances | Lost dynamic state changes robotic generation |
| Model | VidCapBench | UGC-VideoCap | Motion (Internal) | Camera (Internal) | Sound (Internal) | |||||||||
| Acc. | Pre. | Cov. | Con. | Audio | Visual | Detail | Avg. | Pre. | Rec. | Pre. | Rec. | Pre. | Rec. | |
| Gemini-4-Argon | 16.20 | 51.66 | 85.63 | 10.69 | 79.80 | 87.69 | 85.67 | 84.38 | 64.62 | 45.78 | 40.83 | 76.22 | 79.74 | 29.38 |
| Doubao2.1-Lite (non-thinking) | 17.20 | 51.78 | 87.47 | 8.32 | 82.88 | 90.67 | 88.81 | 87.45 | 62.87 | 56.31 | 28.37 | 61.46 | 73.18 | 26.79 |
| Doubao2.1-Lite (thinking, high) | 20.23 | 56.44 | 94.15 | 3.36 | 90.37 | 96.10 | 94.97 | 93.81 | 64.15 | 59.02 | 32.89 | 64.61 | 77.56 | 31.69 |
| Kling-Captioner-35B-A3B | 21.84 | 59.28 | 94.81 | 3.56 | 92.83 | 96.46 | 95.90 | 95.06 | 67.28 | 64.75 | 52.18 | 80.93 | 78.52 | 55.83 |
| Kling-Captioner-397B-A17B | 21.70 | 60.51 | 96.05 | 3.19 | 93.41 | 96.70 | 96.38 | 95.50 | 68.11 | 67.42 | 54.82 | 83.43 | 80.21 | 58.11 |
| Product task | Typical references | Binding question | Residual target facts |
| Video editing | Source video, instruction, optional local ref. | Edited entity/region and protected properties | Requested state change, time span, secondary effects |
| Multi-reference generation | Character, object, scene, style, voice, or motion refs. | Reference governing each role, attribute, and modality | Target interaction, action, camera, timing, composition |
| Video continuation | Prefix video + optional entity or style refs. | Subjects, states, and scene geometry persisting across cut | Post-boundary events and causal link to prefix |
| Performance transfer | Driving video, pose, trajectory, or audio | Identity source and performance source | Target retargeting, camera behavior, synchronization |
| Requirement | What it guarantees | Characteristic shortcut and downstream failure |
| Scoped binding | Pointer binds to target entity, attribute, event, & interval | Property bound to wrong target spurious correlations |
| Residual sufficiency | All unreferenced target facts stated explicitly | Vague “same as ref” omits action/camera/time/audio underspecified |
| Authority consistency | Reference-governed traits kept unless scoped override | Verbose text contradicts ref. competing conditions |
| Reference | Typical authority | Main ambiguity | Caption-side response |
| Image | Identity, appearance, object detail, scene/style | Which entity and image subset should transfer | Bind explicit ID & scope; state target action, placement, camera, changes |
| Video | Motion, state, performance, continuity, camera | Time alignment; transfer vs. keep; cut boundary | Declare source interval & role; timestamp new events & preserved content |
| Audio | Voice, dialogue, rhythm, sound effects | Speaker/source assignment & A-V sync | Bind speaker/event IDs to visible actions; no unseen visual hallucination |
| Text | Edit instruction, script, names, constraints | Conflicts with sources or over-specifies details | Treat as typed change spec.; resolve authority at attribute level |
| Mixed set | Joint composition of the above | Overlapping authority, duplication, contradiction | Build attribute-level authority map before composing final caption |
| Model | ViDiC | MRVBench | |||||||
| Avg. | Diff. | Sim. | KP-Cov | VQA | Ref-Tag-R | Ref-Bind | Subj-F1 | MRVScore | |
| Gemini-4-Argon | 77.18 | 75.51 | 81.86 | 93.31 | 74.41 | 97.23 | 93.56 | 90.37 | 91.22 |
| Doubao2.1-Lite (non-thinking) | 69.24 | 65.27 | 80.33 | 89.45 | 68.09 | 75.43 | 93.35 | 49.45 | 78.10 |
| Doubao2.1-Lite (thinking, high) | 75.63 | 74.96 | 77.49 | 90.75 | 71.55 | 81.41 | 93.98 | 56.86 | 81.32 |
| Kling-RGC-35B-A3B | 77.57 | 75.59 | 83.06 | 94.12 | 76.01 | 94.80 | 92.88 | 84.51 | 88.57 |
| Kling-RGC-397B-A17B | 78.89 | 76.29 | 86.12 | 95.18 | 76.34 | 95.28 | 94.85 | 85.24 | 90.31 |
| Setting | Text metrics | Video metrics | ||||||||
| Faithfulness | Reasonableness | Vividness | StoryEval | T2AV- Compass | AVE- Compass | MultiRef- Compass | ||||
| Avg. | 4 (%) | Avg. | 4 (%) | Avg. | 4 (%) | |||||
| Basic PE | ||||||||||
| SFT, random-source captions | 4.02 | 75.42 | 3.95 | 69.17 | 3.72 | 62.33 | 65.42 | 70.15 | 56.2 | 4.6137 |
| + compelling-video sources | 4.00 | 74.92 | 3.92 | 68.08 | 4.03 | 72.58 | 66.87 | 70.60 | 56.7 | 4.6224 |
| + F/R/V data verification | 4.27 | 80.83 | 4.18 | 74.33 | 4.11 | 75.08 | 71.93 | 73.07 | 57.9 | 4.6591 |
| Kling-MLLM TE configuration | Overall | Instruction Following | Aesthetics |
| Multimodal adaptation | |||
| + Multi-granular conditioning | |||
| + Conditioning stability |
| Scenario | Model | Regime | Input | Output | Key constraint |
| DiT RL | DRM | Online | Rollouts of one prompt | Per-dimension rewards (GRPO); preference pairs (DPO) | Latency |
| PE RL | DRM | Online | Videos rendered from candidate rewrites | Per-rewrite reward on VQ, MQ, and TA | TA judged against the user prompt |
| Auxiliary machine evaluation | GRM | Offline | Single video with prompt or reference | Defect tags, intervals, boxes, and rationale | Verifiable evidence |
| Checkpoint selection | DRM & GRM | Offline | Videos from competing checkpoints | Per-dimension win rates; defect profiles | Low variance |
| Data filtering | DRM | Offline | Single clip | Calibrated defect probabilities for keep/drop | Throughput; low false positives |
| L1 Category | L2 Evaluation Dimension | Input | Representative L3/L4 Leaf Defects |
| 1. Visual Quality | 1.1 Image Clarity & Compression | Video | Low clarity/defocus blur, codec blockiness & mosquito noise |
| 1.2 Visual Content Integrity | Video | AI plastic/greasy skin, texture smearing, edge halo, text distortion, watermark, exposure | |
| 1.3 Visual Aesthetics | Video | Color/lighting harmony, spatial composition, material texture, subject styling, set design | |
| 2. Motion Quality | 2.1 Basic Motion Quality | Video | Anatomy, deformation/liquefaction, temporal drift, collision, physics, flicker |
| 2.2 Motion Aesthetics & Narrative | Video | Weak pacing, acting, editing, framing, camera path, or creativity | |
| 2.3 Motion Magnitude | Video | Insufficient motion amplitude, abnormal freezing |
| Avg | VQ | MQ | Consistency | TA | |||||||
| Model | Macro | Micro | Visual Content | Visual | Basic Motion | Motion Aesth. | Motion | Input Image | Multi-Shot | Basic Prompt | Multi-Shot |
| Integrity | Aesthetics | Quality | & Narrative | Magnitude | Consistency | Consistency | Following | Prompt Fol. | |||
| Prompting MLLM | |||||||||||
| Gemini-3.8-Flash † | |||||||||||
| Gemini-4-Argon † | |||||||||||
| Ours | |||||||||||
| Model | VideoScore-Bench-v2 | VideoPhy2-test | VideoGen-RewardBench |
| Prompting MLLM | |||
| Gemini-3.8-Flash | |||
| Gemini-4-Argon | |||
| Reward/Scoring Models for Video | |||
| VideoReward [ 28 ] | – | ||
| UnifiedReward [ 55 ] | |||
| Task | Core Objective | Main Failure Modes | Representative Tools |
| Video captioning | Accurate & consistent coverage of salient facts | Omissions, hallucinations, vague references, lost temporal structure | Keypoint QA, entailment judges, coreference metrics, downstream generation tests |
| T2V / T2AV | Prompt adherence & perceptual/physical plausibility | Missing attributes/events, implausible motion, visual artifacts, wrong/desynced audio | Checklist judges, DOVER++, aesthetic/audio quality models, CLIP/CLAP, Synchformer, lip-sync |
| Reference-conditioned | Identity/detail preservation, binding, & natural integration | Identity drift, entity swaps, attribute leakage, source mismatch, copy–paste | Detectors/segmenters, ID embeddings, face/speaker models, binding checks, anti-paste judges |
| Keyframe / storyboard | Prescribed frames in correct order, timing, & duration | Missed/reordered frames, hard cuts, flashes, freezes, repeats, static storyboard | DINO/SSIM/PSNR matching, Kendall rank correlation, window matching, camera/tracking |
| Video / A-V editing | Execute requested changes while preserving unedited content | Non-response, incomplete edit, total regeneration, collateral changes, A-V mismatch | Atomic edit checklists, response detection, source–target tracking/seg., SSIM/DINO |