The present invention relates includes system and a method for automatically generating short segments of video (or video “cliplets”) from a larger source video. A cliplet has the properties that its length is determined prior to generation and that the cliplet ideally is semantically meaningful and contains a single short event or theme. Generally, the cliplet generation method processes a large source video and generates cliplet results for presentation (such as to a user). Specifically, the method processes the source video to determine editing points and then extracts cliplets from the source video based on the editing points. The extracted cliplets can overlap in time. Cliplet results then are presented, such as to a user. The cliplet generation system includes a video cliplet generator that processes a large source video and generates cliplets in accordance with the cliplet generation method.