RIFT: Residual-Informed Flow Transfer for One-Step Generative Video Compression

Recent advances in video generation have enabled generative video compression to reconstruct details lost during coding using pretrained spatiotemporal priors. However, a substantial gap remains between codec-induced degradation and the perturbation trajectories learned by flow-matching models. In this paper, we identify a compression-dependent directional mismatch that degradation-strength-based timestep calibration alone cannot resolve. Compressed latents remain strongly aligned across codec operating points, while their reconstruction residuals vary substantially in magnitude and direction. To bridge this gap, we propose RIFT, a Residual-Informed Flow Transfer framework for one-step generative video compression. At its core, RIFT introduces a Residual Geometry Inducer (RGI) that converts the pretrained flow prediction into a content-adaptive restoration update using decoder-visible codec cues. RGI integrates flow-timestep conditioning with a learned full-band residual-strength estimate and content-conditioned direction and gain modulation, aligning the orientation and magnitude of the update with the compression-dependent residual geometry. Extensive experiments on three public video compression benchmarks show that RIFT outperforms competing generative video compression methods.