This work should be a useful reference for electrical engineers working in video; computer scientists researching or building multimedia databases; video system designers; students of video processing; video technicians; and designers working in the graphic arts. The book reviews relevant technologies and standards for content-based processing and their interrelations. Within this overview, the text focuses upon two problems at the heart of the algorithmic/computational infrastructure: video object extraction, or how to automatically package raw visual information by content; and video object representation, or how to automatically index and catalogue extracted content for browsing and retrieval. The book analyzes the designs of two working systems for content-based extraction and representation in the support of MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 video standards, respectively. Features of the book include: Overview of MPEG standards; a working system for automatic video object segmentation; a working system for video object query by shape; novel technology for a wide range of recognition problems; overview of neural network and vision technologies.