This paper addresses the challenge of recognizing dynamic
textures based on their observed visual dynamics.
Typically, the term dynamic texture is used with reference
to image sequences of various natural processes that exhibit
stochastic dynamics (e.g., smoke, water and windblown
vegetation); although, it applies equally well to images
of simpler dynamics when analyzed in terms of aggregate
region properties (e.g., uniform motion of elements
in traffic video). In this paper, a novel approach to dynamic
texture representation and an associated recognition
method are proposed. The approach pursued here
recognizes dynamic textures based on matching distributions
(histograms) of spacetime orientation structure. Empirical
evaluation on a standard database with controls to
remove the effects of identical viewpoint demonstrates that
the proposed approach achieves superior performance over
alternative state-of-the-art methods.