Apparatus for an automatic identification of medically relevant video elements, the apparatus comprising a data input, configured to receive a data stream of image slices, wherein the data stream of image slices represents a temporal course of a view of image slices defined by a masking strip of video images from a video which has been recorded during a medical surgery on a patient an analysis apparatus configured to analyze the data stream of image slices via an analysis comprising at least one predefined analysis step for the presence of at least one sought-for feature and to output a result of the presence, and a processing device configured to output a start mark which indicates a correspondence between the presence and a position in the data stream of image slices if the result indicates the presence of the sought-for feature. Also, a corresponding method is disclosed.