In this paper, firstly, several video shot detection technologies have been discussed. An edited video consists of two kinds of shot boundaries have been known as straight cuts and optical cuts. Experimental result using a variety of videos are presented to demonstrate that moving window detection algorithm and 10-step difference histogram comparison algorithm are effective for detection of both kinds of shot cuts. After shot isolation, methods for shot characterization were investigated. We present a detailed discussion of key-frame extraction and review the visual features, particularly the color feature based on HSV model, of key-frames. Video retrieval methods based on key-frames have been presented at the end of this section. This paper also present an integrated system solution for computer- assisted video parsing and content-based video retrieval. The application software package was programmed on Visual C++ development platform.