Patent ID: 7340151

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of high-speed searching for spatial regions of motion in stored digital video data, comprising: during storing of the digital video data, identifying spatial regions of motion in the digital video data and creating an indication of each identified spatial region of motion in the digital video data, wherein said creating an indication of each identified spatial region of motion in the digital video data includes: initializing a data structure having a series of bits each corresponding to a predetermined zone of the video image data; for each zone where motion was detected, setting the corresponding bit in the data structure to a first binary value; and for each zone where motion was not detected, setting the corresponding bits in the data structure to a second binary value; logically “OR'ing” a first plurality of the bits in the data structure so as to obtain a first zone motion summary data value; logically “OR'ing” a second plurality of the bits in the data structure so as to obtain a second zone motion summary data value; logically “OR'ing” the first zone motion summary data value and the second zone motion summary data value to obtain a video image zone motion summary data binary value; and searching for the identified spatial regions of motion in the stored video digital data, comprising searching the data structure to find the bits set to the first binary value based at least in part on the video image zone motion summary data binary value.