Patent ID: 7302004

Claim:
A computer-implemented process for characterizing a sequence of video frames, comprising: a deriving step for deriving from the sequence of video frames a separate value indicative of the intensity of the motion depicted over the sequence in each of a plurality of frame regions, said deriving step comprising, (a) an inputting step for inputting the next frame in the sequence that has not been input before, (b) an extracting step for extracting and storing motion vector data from the last-input frame, (c) a computing step for computing a motion energy flux that takes into account all the motion vector data of all the inputted frames, (d) a determining step for determining whether the motion energy flux exceeds a prescribed flux threshold, (e) whenever the motion energy flux does not exceed the threshold, a second determining step for determining whether there are any remaining previously un-inputted frames of the sequence containing motion vector information, whenever there are such remaining frames, repeating (a) through (e), (f) whenever the flux threshold is exceeded by the motion energy flux, or whenever there are no remaining previously un-inputted frames of the sequence containing motion vector information, a second computing step for computing a mixture energy value for each of the prescribed frame regions, said mixture energy reflecting both object motion and camera motion components of the motion intensity, and (g) a removing step for removing the camera motion component associated with each mixture energy value, thereby leaving just the object motion portion of the mixture energy value, to produce a perceived motion energy (PME) value for each frame region which represents said value indicative of the intensity of the motion in the region; and a generating step for generating an image wherein each pixel of the image has a level reflecting the value indicating the intensity of motion, relative to all such values, associated with the region containing the corresponding pixel location.