1. A computer-implemented method for identifying shot transitions in a video sequence, comprising: receiving a first frame and a second frame from the video sequence; determining a first multiple of blocks in the first frame, each of the first multiple of blocks associated with a block value; determining a second multiple of blocks in the second frame, each of the second multiple of blocks associated with a block value; determining a first ordering of the first multiple of blocks in the first frame based upon the block values of the first multiple of blocks; determining a second ordering of the second multiple of blocks in the second frame based upon the block values of the second multiple of blocks; determining a distance between the first frame and a second frame based upon a permutation of the first ordering of the first multiple of blocks so as to correspond to the second ordering of the second multiple of blocks; and determining the existence of a shot transition based, at least in part, upon the distance.