Methods and apparatus for detection and identification of duplicate or near-duplicate videos using a perceptual video signature are disclosed. The disclosed apparatus and methods (i) extract perceptual video features, (ii) identify unique and distinguishing perceptual features to generate a perceptual video signature, (iii) compute a perceptual video similarity measure based on the video edit distance, and (iv) search and detect duplicate and near-duplicate videos. A complete framework to detect unauthorized copying of videos on the Internet using the disclosed perceptual video signature is disclosed.