A digital video camera system that provides a video summary using a method that includes: specifying reference data, wherein the reference data indicates a feature of interest; capturing a video sequence of the scene using the image sensor, the video sequence including a time sequence of image frames; processing the captured video sequence using a video processing path to form a digital video file; during the capturing of the video sequence, analyzing the captured image frames using a feature recognition algorithm to identify a subset of the image frames that contain the feature of interest; forming the video summary including fewer than all of the image frames in the captured video sequence, wherein the video summary includes at least part of the identified subset of image frames containing the feature of interest; storing the digital video file in the storage memory; and storing a representation of the video summary in the storage memory.