There is a common characteristic for fade-in, fade-out and dissolve, and it is a linear gradual process in shot change. It is important to detect the gradual shot change in order to improve the video background process and allow automatic parsing of the video for the purpose of editing and database indexing. In this paper, a data - drive method of gradual shot change recognition, such as fade-in, fade-out and dissolve, is given. A model is built for gradual shot change, and then a recognition algorithm based on frame - difference statistical characteristics is presented, finally, evaluations and experimental results are presented.