View handling in video surveillance systems

A video surveillance apparatus comprising:

• a content analysis engine to receive video input and to perform analysis of said video input;
• a view engine coupled to said content analysis engine to receive at least one output from said content analysis engine selected from the group consisting of video primitives, a background model, and content analysis engine state information;
• a rules engine coupled to said view engine to receive view identification information from said view engine;
• and
• an inference engine to perform video analysis based on said video primitives and a set of rules associated with a particular view.