Patent ID: 8345750

Claim:
A method for detecting a scene change in encoding one or more digital pictures, comprising: a) calculating a statistical quantity for a given section in a current picture; b) defining a window of one or more sections around a co-located section in a previous picture; c) calculating a statistical sum over the one or more sections in the window; d) calculating a difference between the statistical sum and the statistical quantity for the given section; e) using the difference between the statistical sum and the statistical quantity for the given section to determine whether the given section is a scene-change section; f) determining a number of scene-change sections for the current picture; g) determining whether the current picture is a scene-change picture from the number of scene change sections; and h) storing or transferring information indicating whether or not the current picture is a scene-change picture, wherein c) includes determining a weight for each section in the window, wherein the statistical sum is a weighted sum given by a sum of products, wherein each product in the statistical sum is a product of a weight and a corresponding statistical value for a given section of the one or more sections, wherein the statistical sum is taken over all sections in the window.