Video image processing appliance manager

A video monitoring system including a video image- processing appliance manager adapted to provide an interface for one or more monitoring devices is disclosed. A video monitoring system in accordance with an illustrative embodiment of the present invention may include a host application including one or more monitoring devices, a video image-processing appliance manager called by the host application, and one or more appliance modules called by the appliance manager and adapted to run a number of video image- processing algorithms or routines that can be used to detect the occurrence of events within a region of interest. Methods of interfacing with one or more monitoring devices within a video monitoring network are also disclosed herein.