Routing Before Looking: Query-Adaptive Evidence Acquisition for Long-form Video Understanding
Updated 2 h ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026
paper_01M294H3KMZR9HPF73YTWNE2RH
- Published
- 11 Sept 2026
- T1 · 2 h ago
- arXiv
- 2608.20805
- T1 · 2 h ago
- Category
- cs.CV
- T1 · 2 h ago
Abstract
Long-form video understanding remains challenging for video agents due to the mismatch between query demands and evidence acquisition strategies. Although recent planning-before-perception methods outperform query-agnostic pipelines, they often rely on a single dominant strategy, either generation-based strategy or retrieval-based strategy, limiting their ability to handle diverse query demands. We propose Route2Look, a lightweight and model-agnostic framework for query-adaptive evidence acquisition in long-form video understanding. Route2Look operates in a Route-Look-Memorize loop with three tools: Global Browse for holistic context, Temporal Ground for explicit temporal cues, and Semantic Retrieve for semantic search. The core component is a routing policy that dynamically selects evidence acquisition tools based on the query. To build this policy, Route2Look adopts a two-stage design: first distilling the routing skill from differential contrastive analysis between generation-based and retrieval-based trajectories, and then applying the distilled skill with hard routing rules and continue-or-stop criteria during inference. Experiments on challenging long-video benchmarks show that Route2Look achieves state-of-the-art performance while maintaining strong frame efficiency across datasets and query types. Oracle routing analysis further reveals the potential of query-adaptive evidence acquisition for future long-form video understanding.
Authors 10
Tianyue Wang, Xuying Wu, Yuxiang Ma, Ruiming Liang, Jiaxuan Kang, Yanchao Hao, Zheng Wei, Leigang Qu, Haiyun Guo, Jinqiao Wang
Specification
- Official page
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
- Arxiv announce type
- replace
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
- arXiv id
- 2608.20805
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
- Categories
- cs.CV
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
- Primary category
- cs.CV
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
- Published
- 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
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T19
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2 h ago
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- Authors
- Tianyue Wang, Xuying Wu, Yuxiang Ma
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Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →
- New paperPaperRouting Before Looking: Query-Adaptive Evidence Acquisition for Long-form Video Understanding
New paper: Routing Before Looking: Query-Adaptive Evidence Acquisition for Long-form Video Understanding
arxiv
| Source | Document | Type | Tier | Last observed | Snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arXiv (Atom API + RSS) | rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.CV | feed | T1· Official | 2 min ago | 1 |
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