A circuit and method for detecting a vertical cut in a sequence of digital video images. Each pixel of a video frame is filtered then compared to a filter threshold. If the threshold is met, a current pixel bit is set as active. A delayed pixel bit is generated from the current pixel bit, and a changed pixel bit is generated if either but not both of the current pixel bit and the delayed pixel bit is active. Active pixels are counted. The count of active pixels in the current image and the count of active pixels in the delayed image are used to weight the active pixel count of the changed image. The counts are used to determine a change value for the current image. The change value may be a large positive value, a large negative value, or neither. A predefined pattern of the change values over a sequence of frames indicates a vertical cut in the sequence.