A real time algorithm is proposed for the detection of abrupt scene change in uncompressed as well as compressed video. The proposed algorithm is based on the dual (one big and one small) sliding windows. The big window is used for selecting the probable positions of abrupt scene change

and the small window whose center is at the probable position selected is used for determining the real positions of abrupt scene change. The decision made in the small window is helped by a combination of double side checking and a single side checking. This algorithm can effectively avoid the false detection and miss detection caused by the violent motion of camera and/or large objects. The effectiveness of our algorithm has been demonstrated using five video clips (about 9000 frames

98 abrupt scene changes)

the recall rate is 100% and the precision rate is 96%.