Abstract: A system and methods are described for high speed searching of digital video data 20 to find regions that have motion, for example in a scene monitored by a security camera system. Conventional video motion detection is used to find zones 28,29 and/or times in the video data where motion is detected, either in real time or post-processing. Relatively small data structures 30,50 are created that store metadata or “motion data,” as distinguished from the underlying video data, in which regions of detected motion are indicated compactly, for example using one bit 32 per zone or one bit 52 per field, to enable fast searching to find motion by searching the motion data structure rather than the digital video record.

Abstract: A system and methods are described for high speed searching of digital video data 20 to find regions that have motion, for example in a scene monitored by a security camera system. Conventional video motion detection is used to find zones 28,29 and/or times in the video data where motion is detected, either in real time or post-processing. Relatively small data structures 30,50 are created that store metadata or “motion data,” as distinguished from the underlying video data, in which regions of detected motion are indicated compactly, for example using one bit 32 per zone or one bit 52 per field, to enable fast searching to find motion by searching the motion data structure rather than the digital video record.