A method detects events in multimedia. Features are extracted from the multimedia. The features are sampled using a sliding window to obtain samples. A context model is constructed for each sample. The context models form a time series. An affinity matrix is determined from the time series models and a commutative distance metric between each pair of context models. A second generalized eigenvector is determined for the affinity matrix, and the samples are then clustered into events according to the second generalized eigenvector.