Hi, I'm also very interested in the tools he used, and I think I got some progress.
About the UV step - I think it's only necessary when you have a geometry - some poly geo,
I don't think he uses the UV in the curves example simply because - the curveU attribute already gives values from 0-1, although I must say it's possible I'm wrong
Another interesting thing is - when you resample a curve - the curveU attrib outputs from 0-1 only in "straigh edge" mode - using "subdivision curve" (as in the presentation video) outputs some strange numbers way below zero (e.g. 5.23545454*e^5)
You can see in this VOP scheme - my take on it - it simply creates a 0-1 float value from the frame range you input and adds it to the curveU - hence offsetting the value to the point from white to black (0-1) and binds it to the
morph attribute, I don't have the hip file atm but, it's pretty straight forward to recreate it.
Also I'm offsetting this value to each prim with random and fitrange nodes.
Let me say I'm pretty new to Houdini, so if anything I'm just as interested as you what the experienced users think on the subject.