1. A computer assisted method of detecting and analyzing events occurring within a region of interest of a video monitoring system, the method comprising the steps of: providing a video monitoring system including a user interface having a display, the display displaying event condition details in a first portion of the display and action response details in a second portion of the display; defining one or more user-specified events using the event condition details in the first portion of the user interface of the video monitoring system; the video monitoring system storing the one or more user-specified events; the video monitoring system extracting information regarding one or more objects located within the region of interest; the video monitoring system analyzing the extracted information to detect an occurrence of one or more of the one or more user-specified events within the region of interest; defining one or more action responses using the second portion of the user interface of the video monitoring system; and the video monitoring system performing the one or more action responses upon the detection of the occurrence of one or more of the one or more user-specified events.