Abstract: By analyzing the known techniques of frame extraction, a new method of key frame extraction (KFE) is proposed based on sub-shot clustering in this paper. Using the features of color histogram between successive frames, the key frames could be extracted via sub-shot detection and clustering after the relocation of the shot boundary. Experimental results show that, the proposed method is adaptable, accurate, and effective. The improvement of key frame extraction lies in the fact that it not only reduces the complexity of extracting process, but also avoids redundancies of key frames effectively.