In a multimedia framework, digital image sequences (videos) are by far the most demanding as far as storage, search, browsing and retrieval requirements are concerned. In order to reduce the computational burden associated to video browsing and retrieval, a video sequence is usually decomposed into several scenes (shots) and each of them is characterized by means of some key frames. The proper selection of these key frames, i.e. the most representative frames in the scene, is of paramount importance for computational efficiency. In this contribution a novel key frame extraction technique based on the wavelet analysis is presented. Experimental results show the capability of the proposed algorithm to select key frames properly summarizing the shot.