As raw video streams are unstructured data, searching in a huge video archive by VCR functionality is a time-consuming and very expensive task.
Digital video allows faster and more sophisticated access to speci c parts of video streams.
The thesis mainly focuses on two areas concerning the processing of digital video streams. First, several recent content-based indexing techniques are discussed, enabling the search for videos or some parts of videos by speci c content conditions. In this context, a number of segmentation algorithms for automatically detecting shot and scene transitions are discussed. It is also analyzed, which of these algorithms are suitable for the medical or the sport application domains. Second, the thesis deals with questions concerning the search, transfer and presentation of video story units.