DisTime: Distribution-based Time Representation for Video Large Language Models

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Hauptverfasser: Zeng, Yingsen, Huang, Zepeng, Zhong, Yujie, Feng, Chengjian, Hu, Jie, Ma, Lin, Liu, Yang
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Zeng, Yingsen
Huang, Zepeng
Zhong, Yujie
Feng, Chengjian
Hu, Jie
Ma, Lin
Liu, Yang
author_facet Zeng, Yingsen
Huang, Zepeng
Zhong, Yujie
Feng, Chengjian
Hu, Jie
Ma, Lin
Liu, Yang
contents Despite advances in general video understanding, Video Large Language Models (Video-LLMs) face challenges in precise temporal localization due to discrete time representations and limited temporally aware datasets. Existing methods for temporal expression either conflate time with text-based numerical values, add a series of dedicated temporal tokens, or regress time using specialized temporal grounding heads. To address these issues, we introduce DisTime, a lightweight framework designed to enhance temporal comprehension in Video-LLMs. DisTime employs a learnable token to create a continuous temporal embedding space and incorporates a Distribution-based Time Decoder that generates temporal probability distributions, effectively mitigating boundary ambiguities and maintaining temporal continuity. Additionally, the Distribution-based Time Encoder re-encodes timestamps to provide time markers for Video-LLMs. To overcome temporal granularity limitations in existing datasets, we propose an automated annotation paradigm that combines the captioning capabilities of Video-LLMs with the localization expertise of dedicated temporal models. This leads to the creation of InternVid-TG, a substantial dataset with 1.25M temporally grounded events across 179k videos, surpassing ActivityNet-Caption by 55 times. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DisTime achieves state-of-the-art performance across benchmarks in three time-sensitive tasks while maintaining competitive performance in Video QA tasks. Code and data are released at https://github.com/josephzpng/DisTime.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_24329
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DisTime: Distribution-based Time Representation for Video Large Language Models
Zeng, Yingsen
Huang, Zepeng
Zhong, Yujie
Feng, Chengjian
Hu, Jie
Ma, Lin
Liu, Yang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Despite advances in general video understanding, Video Large Language Models (Video-LLMs) face challenges in precise temporal localization due to discrete time representations and limited temporally aware datasets. Existing methods for temporal expression either conflate time with text-based numerical values, add a series of dedicated temporal tokens, or regress time using specialized temporal grounding heads. To address these issues, we introduce DisTime, a lightweight framework designed to enhance temporal comprehension in Video-LLMs. DisTime employs a learnable token to create a continuous temporal embedding space and incorporates a Distribution-based Time Decoder that generates temporal probability distributions, effectively mitigating boundary ambiguities and maintaining temporal continuity. Additionally, the Distribution-based Time Encoder re-encodes timestamps to provide time markers for Video-LLMs. To overcome temporal granularity limitations in existing datasets, we propose an automated annotation paradigm that combines the captioning capabilities of Video-LLMs with the localization expertise of dedicated temporal models. This leads to the creation of InternVid-TG, a substantial dataset with 1.25M temporally grounded events across 179k videos, surpassing ActivityNet-Caption by 55 times. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DisTime achieves state-of-the-art performance across benchmarks in three time-sensitive tasks while maintaining competitive performance in Video QA tasks. Code and data are released at https://github.com/josephzpng/DisTime.
title DisTime: Distribution-based Time Representation for Video Large Language Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24329