Patent ID: 7532256

Claim:
A method of detecting one or more scenes in a video medium, the video medium defining an array of pixels for displaying its video content and comprising a sequence of video frames, each video frame having a set of pixel data values for representing an image on the array of pixels, each pixel data value being associated with a pixel in the array, the method comprising the steps of: (a) selecting a plurality of video frames from the video medium, the selected video frames having a sequential order related to the order in which they occur in the video medium]; (b) obtaining the pixel data values of a subset of pixels of each selected video frame, the pixel subsets of at least one pair of successive selected video frames having a difference in the selection of pixels; (c) generating a dispersion signal representative of the dispersion in the obtained pixel data values over a group of sequential selected video frames; (d) generating a scene-detection signal having a first state indicating the presence of a scene and a second state indicating the absence of a scene, the scene-detection signal being generated as a function of at least the dispersion signal and a threshold level; and wherein step (c) comprises: (e) generating a first video content value for each selected video frame as a first function of the obtained pixel data values for the selected video frame and a second video content value for each selected video frame as a second function of the obtained pixel data values for the selected video frame; (f) generating the first dispersion signal as a third function of the first video content values over the group of sequential selected video frames; and (g) generating a second dispersion signal as a fourth function of the second video content values over the group of sequential selected video frames; and wherein step (d) comprises the step of generating the scene-detection signal in its second state when both the first and second dispersion signals are below respective threshold levels, and the step of generating the scene-detection signal in its first state when one or more of the dispersion signals are above their respective threshold levels; and further comprising (h) providing the scene-detection signal to indicate the presence and absence of the scene.