Strefer: Empowering Video LLMs with Space-Time Referring and Reasoning via Synthetic Instruction Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zhou, Honglu, Peng, Xiangyu, Kendre, Shrikant, Ryoo, Michael S., Savarese, Silvio, Xiong, Caiming, Niebles, Juan Carlos
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Zhou, Honglu
Peng, Xiangyu
Kendre, Shrikant
Ryoo, Michael S.
Savarese, Silvio
Xiong, Caiming
Niebles, Juan Carlos
author_facet Zhou, Honglu
Peng, Xiangyu
Kendre, Shrikant
Ryoo, Michael S.
Savarese, Silvio
Xiong, Caiming
Niebles, Juan Carlos
contents Next-generation AI companions must go beyond general video understanding to resolve spatial and temporal references in dynamic, real-world environments. Existing Video Large Language Models (Video LLMs), while capable of coarse-level comprehension, struggle with fine-grained, spatiotemporal reasoning, especially when user queries rely on time-based event references for temporal anchoring, or gestural cues for spatial anchoring to clarify object references and positions. To bridge this critical gap, we introduce Strefer, a synthetic instruction data generation framework designed to equip Video LLMs with spatiotemporal referring and reasoning capabilities. Strefer produces diverse instruction-tuning data using a data engine that pseudo-annotates temporally dense, fine-grained video metadata, capturing rich spatial and temporal information in a structured manner, including subjects, objects, their locations as masklets, and their action descriptions and timelines. Our approach enhances the ability of Video LLMs to interpret spatial and temporal references, fostering more versatile, space-time-aware reasoning essential for real-world AI companions. Without using proprietary models, costly human annotation, or the need to annotate large volumes of new videos, experimental evaluations show that models trained with data produced by Strefer outperform baselines on tasks requiring spatial and temporal disambiguation. Additionally, these models exhibit enhanced space-time-aware reasoning, establishing a new foundation for perceptually grounded, instruction-tuned Video LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_03501
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Strefer: Empowering Video LLMs with Space-Time Referring and Reasoning via Synthetic Instruction Data
Zhou, Honglu
Peng, Xiangyu
Kendre, Shrikant
Ryoo, Michael S.
Savarese, Silvio
Xiong, Caiming
Niebles, Juan Carlos
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
Next-generation AI companions must go beyond general video understanding to resolve spatial and temporal references in dynamic, real-world environments. Existing Video Large Language Models (Video LLMs), while capable of coarse-level comprehension, struggle with fine-grained, spatiotemporal reasoning, especially when user queries rely on time-based event references for temporal anchoring, or gestural cues for spatial anchoring to clarify object references and positions. To bridge this critical gap, we introduce Strefer, a synthetic instruction data generation framework designed to equip Video LLMs with spatiotemporal referring and reasoning capabilities. Strefer produces diverse instruction-tuning data using a data engine that pseudo-annotates temporally dense, fine-grained video metadata, capturing rich spatial and temporal information in a structured manner, including subjects, objects, their locations as masklets, and their action descriptions and timelines. Our approach enhances the ability of Video LLMs to interpret spatial and temporal references, fostering more versatile, space-time-aware reasoning essential for real-world AI companions. Without using proprietary models, costly human annotation, or the need to annotate large volumes of new videos, experimental evaluations show that models trained with data produced by Strefer outperform baselines on tasks requiring spatial and temporal disambiguation. Additionally, these models exhibit enhanced space-time-aware reasoning, establishing a new foundation for perceptually grounded, instruction-tuned Video LLMs.
title Strefer: Empowering Video LLMs with Space-Time Referring and Reasoning via Synthetic Instruction Data
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03501