# Exploring the Role of Explicit Temporal Modeling in Multimodal Large Language Models for Video Understanding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16786 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16786/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Video understanding with MLLMs, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 29 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jan 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Video understanding with MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/video-understanding-with-mllms/)
- Efficient LLM inference and serving / [Visual token pruning in multimodal models](https://mlsanity.com/inference/visual-token-pruning-in-multimodal-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05530/) (2024)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03326/) (2024)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [Qwen2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10671/) (2024)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [Video-LLaMA: An Instruction-tuned Audio-Visual Language Model for Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02858/) (2023)
- [Video-MME: The First-Ever Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark of Multi-modal LLMs in Video Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21075/) (2024)
- [Video-LLaVA: Learning United Visual Representation by Alignment Before Projection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10122/) (2023)
- [Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20330/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13549/) (2023)
- [VideoChat: Chat-Centric Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06355/) (2023)
- [VideoLLaMA 2: Advancing Spatial-Temporal Modeling and Audio Understanding in Video-LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07476/) (2024)
- [LLaVA-Video: Video Instruction Tuning With Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02713/) (2024)
- [LongVU: Spatiotemporal Adaptive Compression for Long Video-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17434/) (2024)
- [InternLM-XComposer2: Mastering Free-form Text-Image Composition and Comprehension in Vision-Language Large Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16420/) (2024)
- [PLLaVA : Parameter-free LLaVA Extension from Images to Videos for Video Dense Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16994/) (2024)
- [MLVU: Benchmarking Multi-task Long Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04264/) (2024)
- [Valley: Video Assistant with Large Language model Enhanced abilitY](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07207/) (2023)
- [MuirBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Robust Multi-image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09411/) (2024)
- [Oryx MLLM: On-Demand Spatial-Temporal Understanding at Arbitrary Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12961/) (2024)
- [Direct Preference Optimization of Video Large Multimodal Models from Language Model Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01258/) (2024)
- [Kangaroo: A Powerful Video-Language Model Supporting Long-context Video Input](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15542/) (2024)
- [MiniGPT4-Video: Advancing Multimodal LLMs for Video Understanding with Interleaved Visual-Textual Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03413/) (2024)
- [Decoder-Only or Encoder-Decoder? Interpreting Language Model as a Regularized Encoder-Decoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04052/) (2023)
- [Encoder vs Decoder: Comparative Analysis of Encoder and Decoder Language Models on Multilingual NLU Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13469/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Seeing the Arrow of Time in Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03340/) (2025)
- [MUSEG: Reinforcing Video Temporal Understanding via Timestamp-Aware Multi-Segment Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20715/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Applying Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) to video understanding presents significant challenges due to the need to model temporal relations across frames. Existing approaches adopt either implicit temporal modeling, relying solely on the LLM decoder, or explicit temporal modeling, employing auxiliary temporal encoders. To investigate this debate between the two paradigms, we propose the Stackable Temporal Encoder (STE). STE enables flexible explicit temporal modeling with adjustable temporal receptive fields and token compression ratios. Using STE, we systematically compare implicit and explicit temporal modeling across dimensions such as overall performance, token compression effectiveness, and temporal-specific understanding. We also explore STE's design considerations and broader impacts as a plug-in module and in image modalities. Our findings emphasize the critical role of explicit temporal modeling, providing actionable insights to advance video MLLMs.