View Full Version : Glossary of Commonly Used Terms & Abbreviations


Greg Corke
February 8th, 2006, 01:57 AM
Don't no whether I'm gonna ruffle any feathers but I was thinking, How about making an Abbreviation Sticky. It seems we are creating a nomencature with these things that any poor new comer may think he just landed on Mars. What do you guys think. I'm gonna jot down a few. But if anyone wants to add anything with its meaning I'll try and collate into some meanigful index when I get the chance.

HD100 - in the context of this forum HD100 generally refers to the JVC GY-HD100U, GY-HD100E, and GY-HD101E
CA- chromatic aberration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_fringing)
PPRO - Adobe Premiere Pro
SSE - Split Screen Effect (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=59049&highlight=SSE)
FCP - Final Cut Pro
NLE - Non Linear Editor
DV - Digital Video
HD - High Definition
HDV - High Definition Video recorded to MPEG-2 transport stream on mini-DV tape.
SDI - Serial Digital Interface
HD-SDI - High definition - serial digital interface
FA - Focus Assist
AB - Anton Bauer

I know all of these are pretty basic but I would not of known a few months back what some of these were. Feel free to shout me down if you guys think its a bit newbie and dumb. I'm of to the videoforum fair, Earles Court, toady. Exciting.

Laters Duderinos

Andy Graham
February 8th, 2006, 02:25 AM
It would probably be good for people who are new to the forum.


Andy.

Tim Dashwood
February 8th, 2006, 02:29 AM
Thanks Greg.

I've made it sticky and edited/added to a few of your definitions.

Tim Dashwood
February 8th, 2006, 03:09 AM
Here's some additional format definitions:

AIC - Apple Intermediate Codec
TC - Time Code
DF - drop frame time code
NDF - Non-Drop Frame time code
NTSC - National Television Systems Committee - TV standard used in North America, Japan, Caribbean & other countries. 525-lines at 59.94 fields per second.
PAL- Phase Alternating Line - TV Standard widely used in Europe, S. America, Australia & Asia 625 lines at 50 fields per second.
SECAM - Sequential Colour á Mémoire - TV Standard used in France, Russia and much of Eastern Europe and middle East. Very similar to PAL, 625 lines at 50 fields per second.

60i - 59.94 interlaced fields per second (aka 30i or 29.97i) - frame/field rate of NTSC.
50i - 50 interlaced fields per second (aka 25i) - frame/field rate of PAL.
30P - 30 progressive frames per second.
23.98P - 23.976 progressive frames per second.
24P - 23.976 progressive frames per second or actual 24fps (in the case of HDCAM)
24Pn (normal) - 23.98 progressive frames written in a 60i file with a 2:3 pulldown pattern.
24PA (advanced) - 23.98 progressive frames written in a 60i file with a 2:3:3:2 pulldown pattern
24PsF - 24P within a segmented frame - used in 1080"P" recording to HDCAM 1080i48. Clocking at 48i doesn't require the use of pulldown on HDCAM.

480P60 - 720 x 480, 59.94fps
576P50 - 720 x 576, 50fps
720P24 - 1280 x 720, 23.98 fps (in the context of the HD100, 24fps in a 2:3 pulldown pattern within 60P video)
720P25 - 1280 x 720, 25
720P30 - 1280 x 720, 29.97 fps
720P60 - 1280 x 720. 59.94 fps (recording format of the JVC HD100, acquisition/recording format of HD200/250)
1080i - 1440 x 1080 (HDV) or 1920 x 1080 @ 59.94 fields per second or 50 fields per second. (or 48 fields per second in the case of HDCAM 1080PsF24)

Greg Corke
February 8th, 2006, 12:16 PM
Thanks Tim,

I just chucked a few down but you're a real workhorse you've made me feel lazy with my effort. You never know it may even make things a bit easier for your good self. I know I'm just as bad but a lot of us do target you and few others for questions that I'm sure you guys must find pretty frustrating sometimes. In particular stuff regarding abbreviations. Anyway hope all is well.

Regards Greg C

P.S. I got my Fs4pro hd 80 gig today so if I get time tomorrow I'll try and rattle of a quick frame or too so you can have a look at the repeat flag thing. Can I just e-mail you a file or will it be to big?

Tim Dashwood
February 8th, 2006, 11:36 PM
P.S. I got my Fs4pro hd 80 gig today so if I get time tomorrow I'll try and rattle of a quick frame or too so you can have a look at the repeat flag thing. Can I just e-mail you a file or will it be to big?
If you shoot a short clip under 10Mb you can email it to me. Please make sure it has some motion.

Diogo Athouguia
February 11th, 2006, 09:52 AM
DOF - Depth of Field
DP - Director of Photography
SD - Standard Definition
...

Jiri Bakala
February 11th, 2006, 12:25 PM
SECAM - Sequential Colour á Mémoire - TV Standard used in France, Russia and much of Eastern Europe and middle East. Very similar to PAL, 625 lines at 50 fields per second.
Interestingly, in eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia anyway) acquisition and post were done on PAL equipment and the signal was converted to SECAM at the transmission point. To my knowledge, there isn't much equipment manufactured in the Eastern European SECAM. Yes, the French SECAM is different to the Eastern European version. All of this was done mostly for political reasons during the cold war era. Since most of the early TV sets sold in communist countries were only capable of receiving SECAM, people were unable to watch the 'bad imperialist' western European broadcasting. Today, I believe, most of Europe is PAL all the way.

Daniel Patton
March 6th, 2006, 08:44 PM
My 2 cents...

CC - Color Correction
VF - View Finder

Diogo Athouguia
March 7th, 2006, 08:30 PM
JVC - Victor Company of Japan :)

Giuseppe Pugliese
May 31st, 2006, 02:05 PM
IMO = In my opinion.


That one actually took me a day to figure out when I first go on here haha.

Perry Shumway
June 3rd, 2006, 03:30 PM
Could anyone tell me what ENG and GOP mean, and any other similar acronyms? Thanks!

Matthew McKane
June 3rd, 2006, 03:47 PM
Could anyone tell me what ENG and GOP mean, and any other similar acronyms? Thanks!


ENG= electronic news gathering
GOP= group of pictures

Paolo Ciccone
June 3rd, 2006, 04:22 PM
RTFM -> Read The Funny Manual

Stephan Ahonen
June 3rd, 2006, 11:06 PM
NTSC - Never The Same Color
PAL - Picture Always Lousy
SECAM - System Essentially Contrary to the American Method
ATSC - Analog Tools Superceded by Crap

Wait, you wanted the real acronyms? My bad.

K. Forman
June 16th, 2006, 09:34 PM
You forgot FUBAR, for those butter finger moments on a boat, tall buildings...

Andreas Griesmayr
June 17th, 2006, 03:01 AM
reading through this: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67127&highlight=GOP thread I'd need many more abbriviations explained ( though reading through that thread does explain some )
AVC
H.264
Linear PCM
GOP ( vs. no-gop resp. framebased format )
AVCHD
AVC-Intra
DVCPROHD
IPTV
XDCAM
COREAVC

Guy Barwood
June 17th, 2006, 10:10 PM
SSE implies it is a desired effect, try

SSF = Split Screen Fault

Justin Deming
July 30th, 2006, 10:47 AM
Might I add

ROFLMAO (Rolling On Floor Laughing MY $@% Off)
PCB (Pre Constructed Building) - Where I Live
DFAC (Dining Facility) - Where I Eat
OC (Operations Center) - Where I work
HMMWV (Highly Maneuverable Mobile Wheeled Vehicle) - What I Drive

OK, it's not related to video.

Seriously though, thanks for the defenitions, some people like me are overloaded with acronyms. I use to be a computer engineer too, so I have all that stuff inn my brain too! (IDE, SCCI, RAM, ROM, TCP/IP, BITS BYTES, Etc...)

What a complicated world we have created!

Daniel Patton
October 29th, 2006, 11:04 PM
Lets not forget...

WTF?!

You figure it out, I like my posting privileges. ;)

Werner Wesp
November 16th, 2006, 04:32 AM
RTFM -> Read The Funny Manual

Read The 'Funny' Manual? aha... :-)

Justin Ferar
December 13th, 2006, 08:06 PM
Well since I live here out on the west coast in casual California...

NIFOC = naked in front of computer

Perrone Ford
December 13th, 2006, 08:16 PM
On a more serious note, I'd LOVE to see a glossary of all the three letter codes used by people involved with film, particularly the camera, lighting, and cinematography folk.

Simon Duncan
February 1st, 2007, 03:48 PM
On the new JVC HD200 one of its features states: 14 bit A/D?

Sorry guys what is the A/D referring to here?

Thanks

Guy Barwood
February 1st, 2007, 04:57 PM
A/D= Analogue to Digital converter

The light hits the sensor. At each pixel the light generates a voltage (think of a solar cell). This voltage is an analogue measure of the amount of light hitting the sensor.

This voltage is measured by the A/D converting it from an analogue voltage level into a Digital value (eg 1 volt).

The more accurate the A/D process the more accurate the digital value of the original voltage. Generally speaking the more bits the better. Just like with the number of colours in a digital photo (8bit = 256 colours, 16bit = 16million colours).

12bit (HD100 I think) generated a voltage with 4096 possible values
14bit (HD200/250) generates a voltage reading with 16,384 possible values.

As you can see, each bit increase in sampling doubles the resolution. The 2 bit difference is quite significant.

William Osorio
February 21st, 2007, 12:39 AM
BTW::::: By the way

Lance Russell
August 1st, 2007, 10:22 AM
On another thread Steve Mullin referred to "OIS" as in; "At the price point it attracted point-and-shooters who loved its sexy look, but care only about low-light and OIS."

And speaking of "low light", I'm in the dark. What does "OIS" mean.

Daniel Patton
August 1st, 2007, 12:33 PM
OIS = optical image stabilizer or stabilization

David Beisner
September 4th, 2008, 07:23 AM
reading through this: AVCHD -- new HD format from Sony & Panasonic - The Digital Video Information Network (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67127&highlight=GOP) thread I'd need many more abbriviations explained ( though reading through that thread does explain some )
AVC
H.264
Linear PCM
GOP ( vs. no-gop resp. framebased format )
AVCHD
AVC-Intra
DVCPROHD
IPTV
XDCAM
COREAVC

These never got answered, so I'll answer a few...

H.264 a compression scheme used for video delivery on the web (and possibly other places as well, I'm not sure)
GOP--Group of Pictures. It's the way HDV compresses video, taking 6 frames at a time and compressing them together. More efficient compression (smaller files) but it also takes longer to edit and render since your NLE has to work with the frames adjacent to the one you're trying to effect.
AVCHD--A compression scheme used in some of the cameras which record to flash media. I think this is the most "efficient" of the HD codecs, since it runs at around 13MB/s
DVCProHD--Panasonic's HD codec.
XDCAM--codec used by Sony