Abstract: A video traffic monitor and method for counting people using video imaging provides an inexpensive hardware implementation for analyzing real-time video where the operational environment presents a reasonably restricted traffic flow, such as in the entryway of a building. The video traffic monitor utilizes a windowed subsample of an image frame, and the image frame is further subdivided into gates. The video traffic monitor processes this windowed area to highlight the objects moving through the gates. The gates are then analyzed to determine a direction of movement for the people and support the logic for noise elimination and object discrimination. The video traffic monitor counts the detected people and records the count according to the direction of movement of the people.