Towards a Theory of Movie Database Queries

Abstract

We present a data model for movies and movie databases. A movie is considered to be a 2-dimensional semialgebraic figure that can change in time. We give a number of computability results concerning movies: it can be decided whether a frame of a movie is only a topologically transformation of another frame; a movie has a finite number of scenes and cuts and these can be effectively computed. Based on these computability results we define an SQLlike query language for movie databases. This query language supports most movie editing operations like cutting, pasting and selection of scenes.