1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a computer program product for detecting a position of an image at which a scene changes or a position of a valid image from a sequence of images continuously taken or a sequence of frame images of moving images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various methods of detecting a position at which a scene changes from a continuous image sequence of, for example, moving images. For example, a method of detection by performing threshold processing on a change in a feature value between images close to each other is generally well known. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-54055 discloses a technology in which, after the number of images to be extracted is appropriately set, the level of importance of a scene contained in each image is obtained, a set number of images are displayed in order from images with higher levels importance and images with higher levels of importance are displayed for a long time. In the conventional technology, a difference between a time at which each scene appears and a time at which the subsequent image appears is obtained as the level of importance, and, the larger the difference is, the higher the level of importance is set.