A compressed domain generic object tracking algorithm offers, in combination with a face detection algorithm, a low-compu-tational-cost solution to the problem of detecting and locating faces in frames of compressed video sequences (such as MPEG-1 or MPEG-2). Objects such as faces can thus be tracked through a compressed video stream using motion information provided by existing forward and backward motion vectors. The described solution requires only low computational resources on CE devices and offers at one and the same time sufficiently good location rates.