Feature Request: Zone-Based Pixel Change Search in Recordings

[AnWalt1974]

💡 Feature Request: Zone-Based Pixel Change Search in Recordings
🎯 Short Description

Implement a search function directly within the Recording View that allows users to search video recordings for significant pixel changes within a specific area, simply by drawing a rectangle (window/ROI) on the video frame.

✨ Motivation

This feature is highly valuable for forensic analysis of static scenes, such as:

Theft of static objects (e.g., a package disappearing from a corner)

Vandalism occurring at a fixed location (e.g., a wall being spray-painted)

A simple, visual search function based on retrospective pixel-change analysis is essential to efficiently and quickly perform these forensic searches across event thumbnails and recordings—without manually scrubbing through hours of footage.

⚙️ Detailed Functionality

1. Intuitive ROI Definition

A “Pixel Search” button is activated within the Recording View.

The user draws a rectangle (or an arbitrary mask) directly over the area of interest in the video frame (e.g., the corner where the package was placed).

2. Background Analysis

After defining the search area, Frigate scans the recording (within the currently displayed time range or a user-selected range).

The analysis focuses solely on pixel changes occurring within the defined ROI, ignoring changes outside the selected window.

3. Timeline Visualization

The timeline or histogram bar of the recording view is updated accordingly.

Sections of the timeline are highlighted or marked to show the exact moments when pixel changes occurred inside the search area.

Users can then jump directly to these marked events.

🌟 Benefits

High Usability: Quickly drawing a search window replaces complex configuration files.

Targeted Forensics: Ideal for finding theft events (object disappears) or vandalism (object appears/changes).

Best regards Andreas

[kirsch33]

i found myself wanting this feature this week as well (or something similar)

the situation is that i stepped in dog poop literally RIGHT outside my truck door and would love to be able somehow to goto frigate, draw a polygon on a camera, specify a timeframe to search and object of interest (and maybe loitering time), and have it show me ALL detected objects that entered that zone with the specified constraints.

would have alot of other use cases too other than my pettiness.