1. A video surveillance apparatus comprising: a content analysis engine to receive video input and to perform analysis of said video input; a view engine coupled to said content analysis engine to receive at least one output from said content analysis engine selected from the group consisting of video primitives, a background model, and content analysis engine state information; a rules engine coupled to said view engine to receive view identification information from said view engine; and an inference engine to perform video analysis based on said video primitives and a set of rules associated with a particular view.