Cross-Category Highlight Detection via Feature Decomposition and Modality Alignment

Learning an autonomous highlight video detector with good transferability across video categories, called Cross-Category Video Highlight Detection(CC-VHD), is crucial for the practical application on video-based media platforms. To tackle this problem, we first propose a framework that treats the CC-VHD as learning category-independent highlight feature representation. Under this framework, we propose a novel module, named Multi-task Feature Decomposition Branch which jointly conducts label prediction, cyclic feature reconstruction, and adversarial feature reconstruction to decompose the video features into two independent components: highlight-related component and category-related component. Besides, we propose to align the visual and audio modalities to one aligned feature space before conducting modality fusion, which has not been considered in previous works. Finally, the extensive experimental results on three challenging public benchmarks validate the efficacy of our paradigm and the superiority over the existing state-of-the-art approaches to video highlight detection.