1. A method comprising: dividing a current video frame into a plurality of elements; determining at a video rate of a video stream whether an element in the plurality of elements is part of a background image or is part of a foreground image; determining the foreground image of a subsequent video frame based upon a combination of conducting a skin-color test and edge detection of the subsequent video frame and generating an object mask that limits the skin-color and edge detection to a portion of the subsequent video frame; and registering the background image of the subsequent video frame based on the foreground image, wherein the registering comprises: adjusting a plurality of histograms of the elements in the background image based on the foreground image so as to reduce memory usage associated with the histograms, where the adjusting results in a subsequent histogram utilizing less memory per element in relation to a previous histogram from which the subsequent histogram is generated; and minimizing false registration of still head and torso image portions as being part of the background image by adjusting the histograms such that a bin of a histogram corresponding with an element determined to be within the head and torso image portion is set to zero.