MMOU: A Massive Multi-Task Omni Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Long and Complex Real-World Videos
Organizations: NVIDIA, USA · University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Abstract
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have shown strong performance in visual and audio understanding when evaluated in isolation. However, their ability to jointly reason over omni-modal (visual, audio, and textual) signals in long and complex videos remains largely unexplored. We introduce MMOU, a new benchmark designed to systematically evaluate multimodal understanding and reasoning under these challenging, real-world conditions. MMOU consists of 20,000 carefully curated questions paired with 11877 web-collected videos of varying length, spanning diverse domains and exhibiting rich, tightly coupled audio-visual content. The benchmark covers 13 fundamental skill categories, all of which require integrating evidence across modalities and time. All questions are manually annotated across multiple turns by professional annotators, ensuring high quality and reasoning fidelity. We evaluate 20+ state-of-the-art open-source and proprietary multimodal models on MMOU. The results expose substantial performance gaps: the best closed-source model achieves only 64.2% accuracy, while the strongest open-source model reaches just 46.8%. Our results highlight the challenges of long-form omni-modal understanding, revealing that current models frequently fail to apply even fundamental skills in long videos. Through detailed analysis, we further identify systematic failure modes and provide insights into where and why current models break.
Figures & tables
| Video Statistics | Annotation Statistics | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Test:Test-Mini | Test:Test-Mini | ||
| #Videos | 9038:2841 | #QAs | 15000:5000 |
| Major Categories | 10:10 | Skill Types | 13:11 |
| Subcategories | 35:30 | Avg. Skills per QA | 2.71:3.75 |
| Avg. Duration (s) | 522.9:754.8 | Avg. Question Len. (w) | 26.22:34.78 |
| Min. Duration (s) | 7.0:13.0 | Avg. Answer Len. (w) | 25.53:69.54 |
| Benchmarks | Modality | #Videos/Audios | Avg. Len. | #QA Pairs | #Skills | QA Type | Open domain |
| MMMU | I | N/A | N/A | 11500 | 32 | MC/Open | ✓ |
| MMVU | V | 1529 | 51.4 | 3000 | 27 | MC/Open | ✗ |
| MMAU | A | 9000 | 10.1 | 10000 | 27 | MC | ✓ |
| MMAU-Pro | A | 5787 | 123.8 | 5305 | 49 | MC/Open | ✓ |
| Video-MME | V | 900 | 1017.9 | 2700 | 30 | MC | ✓ |
| VideoMMMU | V | 300 | 506.2 | 900 | 30 | MC | ✗ |
| Video Domains | Video Durations (min) | Overall | ||||||||||||||
| Methods | Sports | Travel | Video Games | Daily Life | Academic | Film | Pranks | Music | Animation | News | 5–10 | 10–20 | 20–30 | Any | ||
| Random | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Human | 86.3 | 85.7 | 82.7 | 85.1 | 83.5 | 85.0 | 83.9 | 86.1 | 82.0 | 90.0 | 87.2 | 85.6 | 84.0 | 83.0 | 81.5 | 84.3 |
| Closed-Source Audio-Visual MLLMs | ||||||||||||||||
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 61.2 | 67.3 | 60.9 | 68.1 | 71.4 | 66.5 | 71.0 | 59.7 | 58.2 | 61.8 | 62.2 | 66.2 | 66.2 | 59.0 | 58.5 | 64.2 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 56.2 | 59.1 | 46.1 | 60.2 | 57.5 | 61.1 | 54.3 | 52.1 | 49.5 | 52.9 | 55.9 | 57.4 | 57.6 | 49.8 | 45.6 | 55.8 |
| Methods | Overall |
|---|---|
| Human | 82.60 |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 78.58 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 66.21 |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-Inst. | 54.10 |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-Think | 35.76 |
| Phi-4 Multimodal | 36.40 |
| Model | Correct. | Complete. | Faithful. | Clarity | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audio Flamingo 3 | 1.77 | 1.86 | 2.99 | 4.03 | 2.37 |
| Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct | 1.53 | 1.64 | 2.63 | 3.83 | 2.12 |
| Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct | 1.30 | 1.41 | 2.06 | 3.18 | 1.76 |
| Gemma 3n | 1.71 | 1.92 | 2.48 | 4.15 | 2.28 |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-Instruct | 2.27 | 2.34 | 3.36 | 4.62 | 2.86 |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-Think | 2.31 | 2.55 | 2.45 | 4.05 | 2.66 |
Appendix figures & tables16 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Category | Subcategory | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Academic Lectures | STEM | 701 |
| Medicine | 133 | |
| Law | 60 | |
| Business | 50 | |
| Animation | Comedy & Kids | 139 |
| Action & Fantasy | 45 |
| Task Type | Description | Question | Answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Object Interaction Reasoning | Object Interaction Reasoning asks questions about the effects of actions performed on objects, as well as track their transformations across contexts. It involves recognizing how interactions (lifting, applying, mixing, transforming) lead to different outcomes. | When a red saw is running, how and why does the pitch of the noise it makes change? | It shifts to a higher pitch because it starts shaving off pieces of wood. |
| Comparative | Comparative questions ask about key differences or similarities between two distinct audio-visual segments or presentations. | How does the character with the sword’s motion change when he says, "I’m always three steps ahead"? | He shifts from moving into a pose to being held in a freeze frame. |
| Needle | Needle-in-the-haystack questions are questions about a particular instance in a long video (including corresponding audio). | How does the orange character sound when reading off the jokes on a phone? | The orange character reads the jokes in a confused tone, with an uncertain, questioning inflection in his voice. |
| Counting | Counting questions ask about the count of a particular type of audio-visual event across the video – where one requires watching the entire video and understanding its content. | At the skate park we hear a horn start blaring. How many shadows can be seen on the the skate rink at that time? | There are 7 shadows visible on the skate rink when the horn starts blaring. |
| Audio-Visual Stitching | Audio-Visual Stitching asks questions about how separate clips or segments are combined to create a cohesive narrative or convey a specific message. It involves reasoning about editing choices, transitions, and thematic continuity across multiple sources. | How does splicing a clip of a yellow ride cart going through water relate to the voiceover? | The woman explains that you shouldn’t wear white clothing to amusement parks because water rides can make it see-through. |
| Tackling Spurious Correlations | These questions ask about surprising, unexpected, unnatural, or un-intuitive details that a text-only LLM would not naturally guess by statistically predicting. | What unexpected event occurs when "Jump Around" begins to play? | A woman walking down the street runs straight into a ladder, and her collision hits exactly on the beat when the song starts. |
| Task Type | Description | Question/Answer | Answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscene | Questions that would ask the model to caption a relevant and important part of a long video (including audio) that is preceded and succeeded by a particular set of events – or ask a question that requires specifically understanding the context of that part. | What is strange about the scene when the narrator says "They begin to employ their abilities to do something edgy"? | Potato chips are floating through the air directly into the guy’s mouth. |
| Sequential | Event-sequence questions ask the model about the order in which key audio-visual events occur across the timeline. | What is the order of events in this video? (A.) The commentator says, "once again does get that ball to shape away." (B.) Player 36, wearing a yellow uniform is pitching the ball, which goes in the air after the player hit it and crosses the white border line. (C.) The commentator says, "once again, back of the length played away, was in the air." (D.) Player 31, wearing a yellow uniform is pitching the ball, which goes in the air after the player hits it and lands past the white fence. | (A.) (D.) (B.) (C.) |
| Temporal Understanding | Temporal understanding questions ask about the order of particular audio-visual events in the video (including audio) or require an understanding of the order of audio-visual events. | What does the man in the blue shirt and orange pants do right after a person on the radio is heard saying, "so, my wife and I…"? | The man in the blue shirt and orange pants points his finger directly at a car right after the person on the radio says, "so, my wife and I…" |
| Referential Grounding | Referential grounding questions ask about the visuals referring to a particular event in the audio or vice-versa. | What purpose does the man in the white shirt and gold tie serve? Why isn’t he in every shot? | He is the translator for two of the men giving speeches and only appears when he needs to translate their words. |
| Context | Context-understanding questions ask about broader setting, background elements, or situational context that emerge only by integrating audio and visuals. | What do we hear in the background as the woman in the red dress smiles before the credits begin to roll? Why do we hear this? | We hear the audience applauding because she has just finished a very intense and beautiful concert with the orchestra, and they are applauding her performance. |
| Inference | Inference questions ask about unstated purposes, intentions, or outcomes that must be deduced from multiple audio-visual clues. | Why does the blonde man shocked in the scene when he says "it’s undone now"? | He thinks the room is haunted by the dead actress’s ghost, which he believes moved the cloth and used lipstick to write "Jack" on the silver tray. |
| Model | Audio-only | Video-only | Audio-Visual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 35.1 | 39.9 | 57.5 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 37.5 | 36.1 | 55.2 |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct | 35.6 | 36.3 | 36.3 |
| Model | Audio-only | Video-only | Audio-Visual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 1.99 | 2.20 | 3.74 |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B | 1.28 | 1.62 | 2.81 |
| Skill | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Qwen3-Omni-30B-Instruct | Phi-4 Multimodal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audio-Visual Stitching | 67.0 | 50.9 | 34.1 |
| Comparative | 66.4 | 53.0 | 36.4 |
| Context Understanding | 65.0 | 51.6 | 33.8 |
| Counting | 55.5 | 46.3 | 31.5 |
| General Holistic Reasoning | 67.1 | 55.1 | 40.9 |
| Inference | 67.6 | 53.9 | 36.0 |
| Category | Qwen2.5-Omni-7B | Qwen3-Omni-Inst. | OmniVinci | Random Baseline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prediction breakdown | ||||
| Correct | 4,695 (31.3%) | 6,900 (46.0%) | 3,705 (24.7%) | 10.0% |
| Wrong | 10,305 (68.7%) | 8,100 (54.0%) | 11,295 (75.3%) | 90.0% |
| Among wrong answers — distractor type selected | ||||
| In-Video wrong | 8,673 (84.2%) | 7,338 (90.6%) | 8,742 (77.4%) | 44.4% |
| Out-of-Video wrong | 1,632 (15.8%) | 0 762 (9.4%) | 2,553 (22.6%) | 55.6% |
| Model | Type | License | Reference |
| Closed-Source Audio-Visual MLLMs | |||
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | AV | Proprietary (API Terms of Service) | Comanici et al. [2025] |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | AV | Proprietary (API Terms of Service) | Comanici et al. [2025] |
| Open-Source Audio-Visual MLLMs | |||
| Qwen2.5-Omni-7B | AV | Apache 2.0 | Xu et al. [2025a] |
| Qwen3-Omni-30B-Instruct | AV | Apache 2.0 | Xu et al. [2025b] |