Object classification based on shape features for video surveillance has been a research problem for number of years. The object classification accuracy depends on the type of classifier and the extracted object features used for classification. Excellent classification accuracy can be obtained with an appropriate combination of the extracted features with a particular classifier. In this paper, we propose to use an online feature selection method which gives a good subset of features while the machine learns the classification task and use these selected features for object classification. This paper also explores the impact of different kinds of shape features on the object classification accuracy and the performance of different classifiers in a typical automated video surveillance application. 10th International Conference on Information Technology 0-7695-3068-0/07 $25.00 © 2007 IEEE DOI 97 10th International Conference on Information Technology 0-7695-3068-0/07 $25.00