jit.spill Data

Hi, I'm very very new to maxMSP/Jitter and currently in a class for it. In there I am trying to accomplish a sort of visiual audio instrument. Here is what the program can do so far.

1) Grab live video
2) Turns it into a black and white image
3) Distorts it to the point of it being only black, gray and white lines. (Part of the Jitter examples found on this site)
4) Goes into a pwindow
5) Spills out data from window into a 320 multislider with a min of 0 and max of 1

A few things I am trying to understand and accomplish here. First off the data that is spilled from the video, it is a list of some kind. How do is it set up, so that I can read values from it.

Second, in this list wish to find "humped" regions in the value. For example, if I were to put up 2 fingers in the camera view in the multislider there were be 2 regions showing a brightness increase. So I wish to have the program go though the numbers see these humps then sudden dips and say: "Hey there are two humps, there for I shall play two note..." So is there any way to store and move though these values? My professor told me of Javascripting...would that be possible to use?

And last and for most, how would I "normalize" any kind of disturbance. I plan to have the camera aimmed at a black felt of something and there would be refected areas. Is there anyway to sample it for a few seconds, then lower the average of the all the brightness lines. This would make it easier to dectect and read motions.

I thank you very very much to any and all who read this. Any form of help would be most appreciated. Thank you

NeoSpawn