Patent ID: 7460149

Claim:
A method of storing video data, associated meta-data, and associated attribute weights from a video surveillance system, the method comprising: capturing video data from one or more surveillance cameras; generating meta-data by performing video analysis on the video data from the surveillance cameras, the meta-data representing events detected in the video data; determining attribute weights, representing information about the relevance of the meta-data; generating intersections of two or more subsets of the meta-data to generate intersection meta-data; determining attribute weights associated with the intersection meta-data by multiplying the attribute weights for each subset of meta-data; generating unions of two or more subsets of the meta-data to generate union meta-data; determining attribute weights associated with the union meta-data by adding the attribute weights for each subset of meta-data and subtracting a multiple of the attribute weights of each subset of meta-data; changing the attribute weights based on external events by computing future attribute weights from past attribute weights by composing past attribute weights with external event weights; storing the video data in a video storage area; storing the meta-data, indexed by date and time stamp to the video data, in a meta-data storage area; and storing the attribute weights in an attribute storage area, wherein attribute weights for the intersection meta-data is calculated using the equation: W ( M 1 ∩M 2 )= W ( M 1 )· W ( M 2 ), wherein attribute weights for the union meta-data is calculated using the equation: W ( M 1 ∪M 2 )= W ( M 1 )+ W ( M 2 )− W ( M 1 )· W ( M 2 ), and wherein M 1 and M 2 are two subsets of meta-data, W(M 1 ) is an attribute weight associated with subset M 1 , W(M 2 ) is an attribute weight associated with subset M 2 , W(M 1 ∪M 2 ) is a calculated attribute weight associated with the intersection meta-data of subset M 1 and subset M 2 , and W(M 1 ∪M 2 ) is a calculated attribute weight associated with the intersection meta-data of subset M 1 and subset M 2 .