arXiv Computation and Language By Igor Sterner, Mirella Lapata, Alex Lascarides, Frank Keller

What, When, and How: Audio Description as Constrained Global Optimization

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The paper presents a new approach to automatic audio description (AD) that treats the task as a constrained global optimization problem. It jointly decides what visual content is narratively important, when it can be spoken without overlapping dialogue, and how to phrase it within time limits. Using large language models for salience estimation and a mixed‑integer linear program for scheduling, the system outperforms prior methods on the REFRAMED benchmark, especially in temporal placement and narrative relevance.

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