1. In a computing environment, a method performed on at least one processor comprising: (a) processing a target dataset containing video data into a background model; (b) processing the background model into a current action model by processing a source dataset containing video data including action of interest data and at least some labeled video data comprising labels for actions of interests, using the action of interest data in the source dataset as a prior, and employing maximum a posterior estimation to adapt the background model to the target dataset; (c) searching the target dataset using the current action model to find one or more subvolumes containing similar action of interest data, including estimating locations of the actions of interest in the target dataset and differentiating between spatial-temporal interest points in the background model and spatial-temporal interest points for the action of interests; (d) updating the action model into an updated current action model based at least in part on the one or more subvolumes found in (c); and (e) refining the updated current action model by repeating steps (c) and (d) for a plurality of iterations.