Patent ID: 7116353

Claim:
A digital video recording system comprising: a camera directed at a scene of interest to view the scene and to continuously generate a plurality of video images thereof, each of said video images comprising a plurality of pixel elements; an image processor configured to process blocks of said pixels and to compare each of said blocks against a corresponding block from a previously established reference image of said scene to determine if any changes have occurred therein, said processor configured to identify which of said blocks in said video images have changed relative to the corresponding block in said previously established reference image; a memory associated with said image processor, said memory configured to store said reference image and said identified changed blocks in said memory; and said image processor is further configured to access said memory to retrieve said video images produced by said camera, said image processor accessing said memory at any desired memory location representing a time of interest so as not to have to sequentially scan a plurality of video images to locate a video image of interest, and said image processor configured to access said memory without interrupting said processing of currently acquired video images.