Enhanced Multimodal Video Retrieval System: Integrating Query Expansion and Cross-modal Temporal Event Retrieval

Abstract: Multimedia information retrieval from videos remains a challenging problem. While recent systems have advanced multimodal search through semantic, object, and OCR queries - and can retrieve temporally consecutive scenes - they often rely on a single query modality for an entire sequence, limiting robustness in complex temporal contexts. To overcome this, we propose a cross-modal temporal event retrieval framework that enables different query modalities to describe distinct scenes within a sequence. To determine decision thresholds for scene transition and slide change adaptively, we build Kernel Density Gaussian Mixture Thresholding (KDE-GMM) algorithm, ensuring optimal keyframe selection. These extracted keyframes act as compact, high-quality visual exemplars that retain each segment's semantic essence, improving retrieval precision and efficiency. Additionally, the system incorporates a LLM to refine and expand user queries, enhancing overall retrieval performance. The proposed system's effectiveness and robustness were demonstrated through its strong results in the Ho Chi Minh AI Challenge 2025.