A system and method is provided for identifying popular intervals in online hosted videos. To determine popular intervals associated with a video, a plurality of votes for one or more intervals of the video are collected and organized into a plurality of groups. Each group includes votes for intervals of the video that are similar to each other. A group having the highest number of votes is identified, and a most popular clip of the video is formed based upon the intervals in the group with the highest number of votes. This process can be carried out to determine the groups having the second and third highest number of votes in a single video to form the second and third most popular clips in that video, as well as across numerous videos to identify the most popular clips within different videos.