1. A method for content based video sequence identification comprising: determining preliminary active regions in frames of a video sequence filtered to reduce noise wherein preliminary inactive regions in a selected video frame are determined by selecting frame boundary lines, each line having a normalized average brightness level that is less than a programmed percentage of a total normalized average brightness for the selected video frame; computing a gradient based activity measure in the preliminary inactive regions to adjust the programmed percentage of the total normalized average brightness for the selected video frame, wherein the active regions are determined based on the adjusted programmed percentage of the total normalized average brightness for the selected video frame: selecting a set of video frames in response to temporal statistical characteristics of the determined active regions; extracting spatial video features from the selected set of video frames; and generating multi-dimensional content based signatures based on the extracted spatial video features to identify the video sequence.