Patent ID: 6995805

Claim:
A method for automatically detecting scene changes within a digital video sequence including a succession of frames, comprising: computing metrics for each of a plurality of frames from a digital video sequence, the metric of a frame being a measure of distance between the frame and a given frame; identifying a candidate frame from the plurality of frames for which the metric of the candidate frame differs from the metric of the predecessor frame to the candidate frame, by at least a first threshold; determining whether the metrics of successive ones of each of a first plurality of frames, successively following the candidate frame, differ from one another by less than a second threshold; further determining whether the metrics of each frame of a second plurality of frames, successively preceding the candidate frame, are larger than a third threshold; and marking the candidate frame as a scene change when the determining determines that the metrics of successive ones of each of the first plurality of frames differ from one another by less than the second threshold, and when the further determining determines that the metrics of each frame of the second plurality of frames are larger than the third threshold; and repeating each of the method operations for a next candidate frame.