The invention relates to a character recognition method based on human body contour outline, which particularly relates to a method for extracting human body contour outline information from single fixed video camera, and distinguishing people according to the characteristic information. The method includes the steps: (1) extracting human body contour outline foreground image in video of target character; (2) extracting height, width, gait period and other information from the human body contour outline image and zooming human body contour outline image; (3) synthesizing gait energy diagram; (4) evaluating gradient histogram of gait energy diagram; (5) carrying out principal component analysis and nearest neighbor matching. The invention has the advantages of easy realization, strong robustness, high accuracy, strong real time property or the like, and can reduce noise influence and show human body contour outline information simultaneously, so the method can be widely used in non-contact type long distance personal identification, intelligent monitoring, auxiliary criminal case solving, etc.