The 'Video Streamer' works in two simple modes: flowing for capture and paused for review. When the Streamer is flowing, the video source, which can come from broadcast, from a camera, or from videotape, is arranged as a three-dimensional solid, stacking the picture frames in a block much like the pages in a flip book. As new frames enter, they push the older frames towards the upper left of the display, further away in distance and in time.

The sides of this block, formed by the edges of hundreds of video frames, reveal a number of temporal attributes of the stream. Shot boundaries and editing rhythm are clearly visible along the sides of the block, as are many camera motions.
By pausing the Streamer, the user can review the contents of the block of frames. Using a mouse or a stylus, individual frames are selected for display by placing the pointer over the edges of those frames in the extrusion block. Moving the cursor quickly across many frames displays those frames in motion, similarly to thumbing through a flip book. As you stroke across each frame edge in the Streamer block, its image appears in the viewer, and its accompanying sound is played. Some people liken this to 'scratch' in hip-hop music, only here you are scratching across both pictures and sound. (Edward Elliott)