[HN Gopher] Paper2video: Automatic video generation from scienti...
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       Paper2video: Automatic video generation from scientific papers
        
       Author : jinqueeny
       Score  : 84 points
       Date   : 2025-10-11 23:32 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
        
       | ks2048 wrote:
       | Project page (links to both github and arxiv):
       | https://showlab.github.io/Paper2Video/
        
       | anothernewdude wrote:
       | This is the opposite of what I want. I'd rather turn videos into
       | articles.
        
         | Lerc wrote:
         | People a different, I would prefer paper to video, but this
         | iimplentation is not yet sufficient for what I would use. But
         | as Doctorcarolorangyfaheer says maybe a few more papers down
         | the line
        
       | ninesnines wrote:
       | Ah I guess if you're very bad at presentations, then this could
       | be beneficial. However, scientific presentations are meant to be
       | communicating science and making things stick to your audience
       | (no matter if it's scientists or children you're presenting to).
       | This does not fix that problem at all. For anyone thinking of
       | using this: please watch:
       | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY and maybe a talk from
       | Jane Goodall on how to engagingly show your science. I would hate
       | to see a lot of conference presentations be made with this
       | generator.
       | 
       | Another thing that improved my personal presentation skills was
       | noting down why I liked a presentation or why I didn't - what
       | specific things a person did to make it engaging. Just paying
       | attention to that improved my presentation skills enormously
        
       | sebastiennight wrote:
       | Very interesting project, and I found two things particularly
       | smart and well executed in the demo:
       | 
       | 1. Using a "painter commenter" feedback loop to make sure the
       | slides are correctly laid out with no overflowing or overlapping
       | elements.
       | 
       | 2. Having the audio/subtitles not read word-for-word the detailed
       | contents that are added to the slides, but instead rewording that
       | content to flow more naturally and be closer to how a human
       | presenter would cover the slide.
       | 
       | A couple of things might possibly be improved in the prompts for
       | the reasoning features, eg. in `answer_question_from_image.yaml`:
       | 1. Study the poster image along with the "questions" provided.
       | 2. For each question:          * Decide if the poster clearly
       | supports one of the four options (A, B, C, or D). If so, pick
       | that answer.          * Otherwise, if the poster does not have
       | adequate information, use "NA" for the answer.       3. Provide a
       | brief reference indicating where in the poster you found the
       | answer. If no reference is available (i.e., your answer is "NA"),
       | use "NA" for the reference too.       4. Format your output
       | strictly as a JSON object with this pattern:          {
       | "Question 1": {              "answer": "X",
       | "reference": "some reference or 'NA'"            },
       | "Question 2": {              "answer": "X",
       | "reference": "some reference or 'NA'"            },
       | ...          }
       | 
       | I'd assume you would likely get better results by asking for the
       | reference first, and then the answer, otherwise you probably have
       | quite a number of answers where the model just "knows" the answer
       | and takes from its own training rather than from the image, which
       | would bias the benchmark.
        
       | fsh wrote:
       | The samples from the authors' GitHub are just some text vomited
       | onto slides, and the AI voice reading them point by point.
       | Exactly the opposite of a good presentation.
        
         | mattjenner wrote:
         | This might likely develop faster than your typical researcher's
         | presentation skills. It could also increase access more
         | generally. Science communication is a skill, plus an interested
         | reader's ability to get to a conference (or watch the
         | recordings) is limited. If this expands access to science, I'm
         | for it.
         | 
         | (and I generally think AI-produced content is slop).
        
           | davidsainez wrote:
           | IMO this seems like exactly the use cases where AI fails
           | consistently: engaging storytelling and finding the simplest
           | solution to a problem. For example, LLMs are really good at
           | generating walls of code that will run but don't really have
           | good taste in architecting a solution. When I use them for
           | coding I will spend time thinking of a good high-level
           | approach and then use LLMs to fill in the more boilerplate
           | style code
        
       | hirenj wrote:
       | This is great - now I can get the authentic conference experience
       | of a disengaged speaker reading out the slides in a monotone,
       | without all the hassle of international travel and scheduling.
       | 
       | In all seriousness, there could be more utility in this if it
       | helped explain the figures. I jumped ahead to one of the figures
       | in the example video, and no real attention was given to it. In
       | my experience, this is really where presentations live and die,
       | in the clear presentation of datapoints, adding sufficient detail
       | that you bring people along.
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | There's porn site (is it even porn if it's just nudity) which
         | niche is women reading the news while taking off their clothes.
         | 
         | For papers, it doesn't have to go that far, but I imagine a
         | polished AI girl (or guy) reading the summary would be more
         | engaging.
         | 
         | Hah, "SteveGPT, present your PowerPoints like Steve Jobs did!"
        
           | a99c43f2d565504 wrote:
           | Besides just porn or nudity, maybe we could also add violence
           | into the arsenal of engagement. For example, maybe the viewer
           | could use a virtual sword or shotgun on some key concepts in
           | the presentation to initiate a tangent going on a deep dive
           | on the concept, and then come back to the presentation once
           | done with the rabbit hole.
        
             | rft wrote:
             | A VR interactive thesis defense/sword fighting crossover
             | game sounds just weird enough to work. Maybe base it on the
             | fight mechanics of Until You Fall [1], we could call it
             | "Until You Graduate" (I will see myself out for that one)
             | or "Thesis Offense" [2].
             | 
             | [1]
             | https://store.steampowered.com/app/858260/Until_You_Fall/
             | 
             | [2] https://xkcd.com/1403/
        
             | anarticle wrote:
             | Feels like the theme of Videodrome coming back:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXkIGVwgB4
             | 
             | Add sex and violence to your boring paper reading sessions
             | more exciting!
        
               | mtillman wrote:
               | I was just thinking about this movie on Friday while at a
               | concert. Lorna Shore, awesome show. Anyways, the person
               | in front of me was watching an overweight person (purpose
               | of the niche I suspect which is why I mention it) do
               | their daily chore routine (laundry, cleaning, etc) on
               | tiktok. After the video was finished, my fellow concert
               | attendee quickly went to Amazon and purchased the iron in
               | the video. No links clicked, just serious chore fomo
               | leading to a purchase. All while standing 3 feet from a
               | circle pit/wall of death/etc while Lorna Shore was
               | playing 20 ft from their face.
        
           | sebastiennight wrote:
           | Upon first reading I thought you were suggesting a "polish"
           | AI presenter for a second...
        
         | IanCal wrote:
         | If it doesn't cram text at a tiny point size and introduce a
         | slide with "you can't see this but" then it's likely better
         | than the majority of scientific presentations I've seen.
        
       | tobwen wrote:
       | Hrhr, I'd love to have automatic CODE generation from Scientic
       | Papers :D
        
         | anarticle wrote:
         | You're in luck! Paper2Agent + Paper2Code do just that:
         | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17192
         | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06917
        
       | progbits wrote:
       | Damn, they automated Karoly Zsolnai-Feher
        
       | rhl314 wrote:
       | Shameless plug: I have been working on a tool that lets you
       | create whiteboard explainers.
       | 
       | It also works with research papers.
       | 
       | Here is an explainer of the famous Attention is all you need
       | paper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x_jIK3kqfA
       | 
       | (You can try it here https://magnetron.ai)
        
         | alfonsodev wrote:
         | wow! you are almost there, if you made a version that was only
         | drawings, or drawings first titles later, would be awesome,
         | right now titles take too long to write a title, making the
         | filling and meanwhile the pace is lost with the narration, then
         | it makes a cool drawing super fast, so it feels like with a bit
         | of tweaking in the pace you'll be able to get an outstanding
         | result.
         | 
         | Congratulations on this cool idea and results.
         | 
         | Where can I follow the progress or get notified ?
        
           | rhl314 wrote:
           | Thanks for the feedback. Working on the making the video and
           | narration sync better.
           | 
           | > Where can I follow the progress or get notified ?
           | 
           | I send out product updates once a week or so. Will keep you
           | posted.
        
       | tummler wrote:
       | At last, they've come for Two Minute Papers.
        
       | ks2048 wrote:
       | While the TTS sounds very good, it is interesting how some subtle
       | prosody issues make it sound very unnatural.
       | 
       | example: Geoff Hinton saying "Forward-forward Algorithm" with a
       | long pause after the first "forward".
       | 
       | (first few seconds in the first demo on
       | https://showlab.github.io/Paper2Video/)
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-12 23:01 UTC)