3ivX - Video format based on MPEG-4 video standard with certain modifications. 3ivX can be compared pretty easily to DivX ;-) format,
but in this comparision 3ivX unfortunately loses in quality (at least currently, 10/2001). 3ivX is pretty popular format among Apple MacIntosh
users, because of its extensive support for Mac. In other hand, Windows users have stayed away from this format because in its original format,
3ivX had to be stored in QuickTime file structure instead of AVI file structure -- most of the Windows-based video editing tools don't support
QuickTime, but either AVI or ASF instead 3GP - 3GP is the MPEG4 based video format used mostly in mobile terminals, such as mobile phones. This file format is designed for
3rd generation mobile devices. 3GPP is defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project and 3GPP is defined by 3rd Generation Partnership
Project 2. They are the worldwide standards for the creation, delivery and playback of multimedia over 3rd generation. These standards
seek to provide uniform delivery of rich multimedia over newly evolved, broadband mobile networks (3rd generation networks) to the latest
multimedia-enabled wireless devices, such as cell phones 4:1:1 - this is a set of sampling frequencies in the ratio 4:1:1, used to digitize the luminance and color difference
components (Y, R-Y, B-Y) of a video signal. The four represents 13.5 MHz, the sampling frequency of Y, and the ones each 3.75
MHz for R-Y and B-Y 4:2:0 - a sampling system used to digitize the luminance and color difference components (Y, R-Y, B-Y) of a video signal.
The four represents the 13.5 MHz sampling frequency of Y, while the R-Y and B-Y are sampled at 6.75 MHz-effectively between
every other line only (one line is sampled at 4:0:0, luminance only, and the next at 4:2:2) 5C - see Digital Transmission Content Protection A:B:C notation - the a:b:c notation for sampling ratios, as found in the CCIR-601 specifications, has the following meaning:
4:2:2 means 2:1 horizontal downsampling, no vertical downsampling. (Think 4 Y samples for every 2 Cb and 2 Cr samples in a
scanline.)4:1:1 ought to mean 4:1 horizontal downsampling, no vertical. Downsampling (Think 4 Y samples for every 1 Cb and 1 Cr
samples in a scanline.) It is often misused to mean the same as 4:2:0.4:2:0 means 2:1 horizontal and 2:1 vertical downsampling.
(Think 4 Y samples for every Cb and Cr samples in a scanline.)Not only is this notation not internally consistent, but it is
incapable of being extended to represent any unusual sampling ratios, eg different ratios for the Cb and Cr channels ABR - ABR stands for Average Bitrrate and is basically just one form of Variable Bitrate where the encoder tries to maintain specific
average bitrate for the file so that the actual size of the resulting file could be estimated more easily. To achieve a situation where you
tell the encoder that you wish to use a specific ABR and that the encoder would actually do exactly that requires usage of multi-pass encoding
technology. As there aren't currently any audio encoders available that can use multi-pass encoding, true respect-the-ABR-I-want-to type of
encoding is possible only with video encoding. On the other hand, ABR can also simply state the average bitrate of a VBR encoded video
or audio clip AC coefficient - any DCT coefficient for which the frequency in one or both dimensions is non-zero Arithmetic Coding - perhaps the major drawback to each of the Huffman encoding techniques is their poor performance when
processing texts where one symbol has a probability of occurrence approaching unity. Although the entropy associated with such
symbols is extremely low, each symbol must still be encoded as a discrete value.Arithmetic coding removes this restriction by
representing messages as intervals of the real numbers between 0 and 1. Initially, the range of values for coding a text is the
entire interval [0, 1]. As encoding proceeds, this range narrows while the number of bits required to represent it expands.
Frequently occurring characters reduce the range less than characters occurring infrequently, and thus add fewer bits to the
length of an encoded message ASF (Advanced Streaming Format) - ASF is a highly compressed file format that contains streaming video, audio. When an ASF file is palyed
back, content is deliverd to you as a continuous flow of data. You no longer have to wait for the whole video and audio file to fully download
before you start to view them. So, this file format is specially designed to run on networks. When an AVI file is compressed and converted to
an .asf file, the file begins playing after only a few seconds. ASF files can be played back with the Windows Media Player (provided the
appropriate codecs are installed), streamed with Windows Media Services or optionally packaged with Windows Media Rights Manager. You can
click here to find more information about ASF format and view ASF to MP3 Converter and ASF to AVI MPEG Converter ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) - Advanced Simple Profile is one of the video encoding layers of MPEG-4. It is best understood as an
addition to MPEG-4's Simple Profile video encoding. ASP adds the following technologies over SP, but is otherwise exactly like SP:
B-frames, Q-pel motion compensation, extra quantization tables and global motion compensation Aspect ratio - There are currently two standard TV aspect ratios in the U.S., 1.33 (4:3) and 1.78 (16:9). The 1.52 aspect ratio set is sort
of a compromise in the transition from one system to another. They alter picture geometry to get either 1.33 or 1.78 to show up on the 1.52 screen.
In the DTV world we’ll see a bit of 1.55 or 14:9 as another option in the compromise. That’s what will be done to 1.33 images as they are
upconverted to a raster that is defined as 1.78. Some of the top and bottom of the 1.33 image will be cut off so that the image can appear to be
wider on the 1.78 set. There will still be slight black bars on the left and right edges of the image.
Several manufacturers are advocating 1.85 because it's a common aspect ratio for many American movies. The Director's Guild has called for a study
of making 2:1 the shape of new video displays. It is also possible that some day the high definition active picture area will be redefined as 2.35
from its current 1.78 aspect ratio. This is just another extension of defining the 1.33 aspect ratio of standard definition television to 1.78 in
the DVD format.
If the future of television is widescreen, is one aspect ratio better than another? Knowing that we will have to accommodate the 1.33 aspect ratio
for some time to come, the question becomes how wide can we go and still deal with the 1.33 image in the center? The resolution of current display
technology would suggest that 1.78 is the upper limit of our current capability. The 1.33 image is compromised by only being able to use the
resolution in the center of the display and images wider than 1.78 can’t use the resolution available at the top and bottom of the display.
Some of these problems can be partially resolved by the use of high quality scalers and displays that far exceed the resolution of the source
signal. That gets tough to accomplish as the resolution of our source signals goes up. It looks as if the 1.78 imager has a long life ahead of
it as a compromise between 1.33 and all of the wider aspect ratio pictures ASX (Advanced Stream Redirector) - An asx file is used to store information on servers and media files for streaming video and audio over the
Internet, such as multimedia web sites. The .asx file is a simple text file that contains server and media information, so you can easily find
out the name of the file and server address of the streaming content with a text editor ASV (Audio Still Video) - A still picture on a DVD-Audio disc ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) - The technical group that defined the high definition TV standard for US terrestrial
transmission audio/video codec - An audio/video codec is a computer program that compresses/decompresses digital audio/video data according to a
given audio/video file format or streaming audio/video format. Most codecs are implemented as libraries which interface to one or more
multimedia players, such as VLC, Winamp or Windows Media Player Audio/Video compression - is a form of data compression designed to reduce the size of audio/video data files. Audio/Video compression
algorithms are typically referred to as audio/video codecs. As with other specific forms of data compression, there exist many algorithms
to achieve the compression effect Audio/video editing - audio/video editing is the process of taking recorded sound and changing it directly on the recording medium Audio/video effects - sound/visual effects or audio/video effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds/visuals, or sound/visual
processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of movies, video games, music, or other media Audio/video filters - An audio/video filter is a type of filter used for processing audio/video signals. Many types of filters exist for
applications including graphic equalizers, synthesizers, sound effects, CD players and virtual reality systems Audio/video format - An audio/video format is a medium for storing audio and video. The term is applied to both the physical medium and
the format of the content - in computer science it is often limited to the file format, but its wider use usually refers to the physical
method used to store the data AUDIO_TS - If you look at the files on a DVD, you will notice that most DVDs have both a VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folder, but the AUDIO_TS
folder is usually empty. DVD-Audio would be stored in an AUDIO_TS folder but is a separate format to DVD-Video Authentication - Before a movie can be played the player and the disc have to establish a secured communication line on which they can
transfer the actual movie. Before they can establish that line they need to make sure that the right "person" is on the other side - this
is done via several key exchanges, verifications, etc. Authoring - Authoring means, in video world, a process where already-encoded video files are transferred into a specific format that
describes how the data should be kept on storage media, such as CD or DVD. Most common use of the term is when speaking of DVD authoring,
using a separate DVD authoring software that allows users to create menus, chapter selections, etc to the disc's layout in addition to the
actual video file(s) and transfer this structure to filesystem that can then be burned to a DVD. Other authoring processes include VCD
authoring and SVCD authoring. In both processes, authors can create menus and chapter selections and various other tasks before the structure
is ready for CD burning, pretty much like in DVD authoring (just in more limited scale) AVC (Advanced Video Codec) - Otherwise known as MPEG4, part 10 this is the codec that most of the world's broadcasters are moving to
for HD transmissions AVI (Audio/Video Interleaved) - A file format for storing and playing back movie clips with sound on Windows-based PCs. An AVI file is
organized into alternating ("interleaved") chunks of audio and video data. AVI is a container format, meaning that it specifies how the data
will be organized, but is not itself a form of audio or video compression.
AVI is the type of file that's created when DV clips are imported from a digital camcorder to a PC. (These clips are often referred to as
"DV-AVIs" because they contain full-quality digital video content.) B-Y R-Y - The human visual system has much less acuity for spatial variation of colour than for brightness. Rather than conveying RGB,
it is advantageous to convey luma in one channel, and colour information that has had luma removed in the two other channels. In an analog system,
the two colour channels can have less bandwidth, typically one-third that of luma.
In a digital system each of the two colour channels can have considerably less data rate (or data capacity) than luma.
Green dominates the luma channel: about 59% of the luma signal comprises green information.
Therefore it is sensible, and advantageous for signal-to-noise reasons, to base the two colour channels on blue and red.
The simplest way to remove luma from each of these is to subtract it to form the difference between a primary colour and luma.
Hence, the basic video colour-difference pair is (B-Y), (R-Y) [pronounced "B minus Y, R minus Y"].The (B-Y) signal reaches its extreme values
at blue (R=0, G=0, B=1; Y=0.114; B-Y=+0.886) and at yellow (R=1, G=1, B=0; Y=0.886; B-Y=-0.886).
Similarly, the extrema of (R-Y), +-0.701, occur at red and cyan. These are inconvenient values for both digital and analog systems.
The colour spaces YPbPr, YCbCr, PhotoYCC and YUV are simply scaled versions of (Y, B-Y, R-Y) that place the extrema of the colour difference
channels at more convenient values Baseband - video and audio signals are considered to be "prime", or baseband. Video and audio can be broken down into more
basic elements, but those elements no longer constitute the desired signal as a single element. Baseband video and audio signals
are often AM or FM modulated onto a carrier frequency, so that more than one set of "prime" signals can be transmitted or
recorded at the same time BetaMax - "The better format". You can still hear this from people who used to have BetaMax videos in 1980s and who are now forced to move
to VHS compatible VCRs or to digital VCRs because lack of blank tapes, etc... BetaMax was developed in 1970's by Sony to offer consumers the
same possibility for video recording as they did have for audio recording. BetaMax was the first one to offer certain functions that we nowadays
take as granted -- they provided first HiFi videos, first "tape remaining" counters, peek search, Automatic Program Search (in VHS systems
nowadays called as "indexing"), etc... BetaMax also had better resolution than rival formats, because it used more tape for each second than
other formats. This was also the flaw that eventually gave VHS the winning edge -- American consumers didn't give a shit about quality of their
recordings, but instead they wanted to fit as much video as possible into one tape. In Europe currently all the VHS systems have SP/LP options
that allows you to choose double recording time (and obvisouly, reduced quality) -- in U.S. all the VCRs have also XP or EP option that allows
users to fit triple the recording time to one tape (means: already crappy VHS quality/resolution is divided by three).
BetaMax and its "big brother", BetaCam, are nowadays de facto in professional TV companies, producing companies and other video editing companies,
although digital video is finally killing this format (just like it is killing all the other analogue formats), but that will take many, many years.
For more information about BetaMax, please check out this site Bicubic filtering - Resampling method which usually gives better results than bilinear filtering. Bicubic uses a 4x4 area instead of the
2x2 that bilinear uses, and maps cubic functions to the points instead of lines. Bicubic filtering is especially better at blowing up images,
as opposed to shrinking them Bilinear filtering - A better way to process images when they must be sub- or supersampled. The fastest way to sample an image is to pick
the closest pixel to the point being examined; bilinear filtering improves on this by grabbing the four closest pixels and adding them together
in a weighted average, based on how close the point is to each of the four pixels. Bilinear filtering is most commonly associated with image
resizing and texture mapping BIN - is an image from a CD. Great for distributing a VCD on the web. BIN is the main file to create VCD by burning it to CD-R(W) with a
burn program Bit Budget - the total amount of bits available on the media being used. In DVD, the bit budget of a single DVD-R disk is
approximately 4.7 GB Bitrate - With audio compression, the average amount of data required to store one second of music (expressed in kilobits per second, or
Kbps). Some codecs like MP3, WMA, and AAC allow files to be encoded at different bitrates. Generally, as bitrate decreases, so does the sound
quality of the resulting file, as well as the amount of memory required to store it Black & White - monochrome or luminance information. Monochrome means one color. In the color television system the Black &
White portion of the picture has to be one "color"; gray, D6500, 6500°K as defined by x and y values in the 1931 CIE color
coordinate system. The black and white signal in the S or Component video path is separate from the color information BMP (Windows Bitmap Image) - A standard format used for storing images on Windows-based PCs. BMP images can either be compressed or
uncompressed. This type of file also sometimes appears with the ".DIB" extension BT.601 - See ITU-R BT.601-2 BT.656 - See ITU-R BT.656 BUP file - A bup file is a Back UP file of an IFO file. These files are commonly found on DVDs B-VOP (Bi-directional VOP) - A frame (image) encoded by non-causal prediction relatively to previous or next frame Byte aligned - a bit in a coded bitstream is byte-aligned if its position is a multiple of 8-bits from the first bit in
the stream Cam - In this particular case, with Cam we mean a specific method how movie pirates create illegal bootleg copies of original movies.
Cam method is basically just a guy who uses either regular or professional camcorder to shoot the movie either from TV or actually inside
a movie theatre (in some Cam copies of movies you can actually see audience as well :-). These bootleg copies are normally then encoded
into VCD, SVCD or DivX format and distributed illegally over the Internet CATV (Community Antenna Television) - Cable TV - In its early form cable television was an antenna system that served a community CBR (Constant Bit Rate) - Basically it is a term that describes how video or audio is encoded -- constant bitrate means that the bitrate
doesn't vary during the video or audio at all, but is same through the clip. CBR bitrates are very easy to use in calculations -- if you have
an MP3 file that has CBR of 128kbit/sec and it lasts for 3 minutes, the amount of HDD space it takes can be calculated easily:
128kbit = 128 x 1024 bits
1 byte = 8 bits
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes
3 minutes = 180 seconds
180 x 128 x 1024 / 8 / 1024 / 1024 = 2.81MB Cell (ID) - A cell is the smallest video unit on a DVD. Normally used to contain a chapter it can also be used to contain a smaller unit
in case of multiangles or seamless branching titles CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) - First color-graphics standard for PC platform, developed by IBM back in 1981. Offered a resolution of 300x200
and four colors Channel Coding - Data encoding and error correction techniques used to protect the integrity of data that is being transported through
a channel. Typically used in channels with high bit error rates such as terrestrial and satellite broadcast and videotape recording Chroma Bandpass - In a NTSC or PAL video signal, the luma (black and white) and the chroma (color) information are combined together.
If you want to decode an NTSC or PAL video signal, the luma and chroma must be separated. A chroma bandpass filter removes the luma from
the video signal, leaving the chroma relatively intact Chrominance - The color of an area, ignoring its brightness (luminance) Chrominance subsampling - Encoding chrominance information at a lower resolution than luminance information, due to the fact that the human
eye senses brightness detail better than color detail. Chrominance subsampling is often the first step in video compression, since it cuts out
a good part of the data without sacrificing much quality. MPEG uses 2:1 subsampling in both horizontal and vertical directions, cutting out 25%
of the data. Each 2x2 square of pixels thus has its own brightness, but share the same color. Intel Indeo goes farther, using 4:1 subsampling in
each direction, cutting out 43% of the data. Chrominance subsampling is the major reason high-quality video codecs are often cause “color bleeding”
around sharp edges of computer generated video CMS (Content Management System) - A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating
collaborative creation of documents and other content Codec (COder/DECoder) - Short for compressor / decompressor, a codec is any technology for compressing and decompressing data. Basically
it is a piece of software or a driver that adds a support for certain video/audio format for your operating system. With codec, your system
recognizes the format the codec is built for and allows you to play the audio/video file (=decode) or in some cases, to change another
audio/video file into that format (=(en)code). The word "codec" is a portmanteau of any of the following: 'Compressor-Decompressor',
'Coder-Decoder', or 'Compression/Decompression algorithm'. Codecs encode a stream or signal for transmission, storage or encryption and decode
it for viewing or editing Color Component - See Color Difference Color Difference - All of the color spaces used in color video require three components. These might be R'G'B', Y'IQ,
Y'UV or Y'(R' - Y')(B' - Y'). In the Y’ (R' - Y')(B' - Y') color space, the R' - Y' and B' - Y' components are often referred
to as color difference signals for obvious reasons. They are made by subtracting the luma (Y') from the red and blue components.
I and Q and U and V are also color difference signals since they are scaled versions of R' - Y' and B' - Y'. All the Ys in each
of the Y'IQ, Y'UV and Y'(R' - Y')(B' - Y') are basically the same, although they are slightly different between SDTV and HDTV Color Space - The color range between specified references. Typically references are quoted in television: RGB, Y, R-Y,
B-Y, YIQ, YUV and Hue Saturation and Luminance (HSL). Moving pictures between these are possible but require careful attention
to the accuracy of processing involved. Operating across the media--print, film and TV, as well as between computers and TV
equipment will require conversions in color space Color Space Conversion - The translation of color value from one color space to another. Since different media types, like
video and computer graphics, use different color spaces, color space is often performed on the fly by graphics hardware Component Digital - A digital representation of a component analog signal set, most often Y, B-Y, R-Y Composite Digital - A digitally encoded video signal, such as NTSC or PAL video that includes horizontal and vertical
synchronizing information. A digital representation of a component analog signal set, most often Y, B-Y, R-Y Compression Artifacts - Compacting of a digital signal, particularly when a high compression ratio is used may result in
small errors or "artifacts" when the signal is decompressed Conditional Access - Digital video signals can be scrambled in such a way that a conventional decoder cannot understand them.
Only when unscrambled by a special system can the viewer see the original. This allows capability to add new services like Container - A container is, like the name says, a construct to contain data - in this case video and audio date and possibly subtitles
and navigational information. For instance, you would like to put a soundless video stream and the audio track together in one file. To do
that you need a container format. Examples of container formats are: AVI, ASF, OGM, Quicktime, VOB and MPG Container format - A container format is one that holds different kinds of data within its file. Container formats, such as RealAudio and
TIFF, are gaining in popularity because of their multimedia applications, as well as their cross-platform compatibility. For example, a single
container file can hold chapter information, hyperlinks and subtitles, as well as different kinds of codecs that enable various types of
players to read the file CSS (Content Scrambling System) - In DVD-Video, an encryption scheme designed to protect copyrighted material that resides on a disc by
periodically scrambling the data using encryption keys. A tool named Decss can allow users to circumvent it. Although Decss didn't exactly
crack the CSS, but instead used leaked decryption keys DAR - stands for Display Aspect Ratio and indicates the dimension of a screen. Most PC screens have a DAR of 4:3, meaning that the
horizontal size is 4/3 as large as the vertical size. For TVs we have a lot of old 4:3 displays and more and more 16:9 displays. As you
can guess from the numbers 16:9 displays are broader than 4:3 displays having the same diagonal size. 16:9 screens are more suited to
display Hollywood movies which are usually shot with an aspect ratio of 1:2.35 or 1:1.85 (meaning that the horizontal size of the picture
is 1.85 times as wide as the vertical size) DAT - DAT can mean lots of things -- often it is used to refer to a certain tape backup format. In a/v terminology it normally refers
(at least most questions are focused on this one) to files that VideoCD has in its SEGMENT or MPEGAV directiories. These DAT files are
basically MPEG-1 files with an additional information and certain specific file structure -- they are NOT "real" MPEG-1 files and you need
to convert them back to "real" MPEG-1 files in order to edit them even that most of the software players treat them as regular MPEG-1 files DCT - Discrete Cosine Transform is used for JPEG and MPEG Decimation Filter - a decimation filter is a low pass filter designed to provide decimation without the aliasing artifacts
associated with simply throwing data away Deinterlace - The process of restoring a progressive video stream out of an interlaced one is called deinterlacing Demultiplexing - The opposite of multiplexing. In this process a combined audio/video stream will be separated into the number of streams
it consists of (a video stream, at least one audio stream and a navigational stream). Every VOB encoder demultiplexes the VOB files before
encoding (FlaskMpeg, mpeg2avi, dvd2mpg, ReMpeg2) and every DVD player does the same (audio and video are being treated by different circuits,
or decoded by different filters on a PC) Demux - Demuxing / demultiplexing basically means, when speaking of video formats, splitting the file that contains both audio and video
data (and possible other data streams as well, like subtitles), into separate files, each containing one element of the original file.
Demuxing file doesn't weaken the video nor audio quality, it doesn't do anything for these data streams, it just simply saves them into
separate files. Opposite of demux is muxing, which basically joins the datastreams back together Depth of Focus - see Depth of Field Descrambling - DVDs are usually CSS scrambled - imagine you decide to give a number to each letter, starting with 1 for a, etc. A sentence
would become a couple of digits - that's what we call scrambled. Of course CSS is much better than that but it's still quite easy to crack.
Descrambling means reversing the scrambling process, rendering our digits to a sentence again, or making our movie playable again - you can
try to copy a movie to your hard disk when you've authenticated your DVD drive and play it, you'll get a garbled picture because it's still
scrambled. Common CSS descramblers either use a pool of known descrambling keys (DeCSS or DODSrip - they contain a large number of keys but
not all of them) or try to derive the key by a cryptographic attack (VobDec - that's why it works on most disc since it's not dependent on
a pool of discs) Descrambling - DVDs are usually CSS scrambled - imagine you decide to give a number to each letter, starting with 1 for a, etc. A sentence
would become a couple of digits - that's what we call scrambled. Of course CSS is much better than that but it's still quite easy to crack.
Descrambling means reversing the scrambling process, rendering our digits to a sentence again, or making our movie playable again - you can
try to copy a movie to your hard disk when you've authenticated your DVD drive and play it, you'll get a garbled picture because it's still
scrambled. Common CSS descramblers either use a pool of known descrambling keys (DeCSS or DODSrip - they contain a large number of keys but
not all of them) or try to derive the key by a cryptographic attack (VobDec - that's why it works on most disc since it's not dependent on a
pool of discs) Digital8 - Digital camcorder tape format developed by Sony. Uses the same cassettes as analog Hi8 format, just digitally DirectX - DirectX is an application program interface developed by Microsoft, first for Windows 95, for creating and managing graphic images
and multimedia effects in applications such as games and active Web pages. It includes the DirectDraw API for direct access to video memory Digital Video (DV) - Digital video is usually compressed since it'd take Terabytes - thousands of Gigabytes or for the mathematicians among
you : 10^12 Bytes) to store a movie uncompressed. Since standard loss less compression is insufficient for video, the video codecs have to
get rid of unimportant information - stuff the human eye won't see or is unlikely to see. Since that is still not enough modern compression
algorithms use keyframes, I and P frames in order to save space DivX ;-) - DivX ;-) was developed by bunch of hackers, most notably a guy called gej and it is based on Microsoft's version of MPEG-4
encoding technology, called as Windows Media Video V3. Basically Microsoft's encoders didn't allow users to save MPEG-4 streams into AVI
structure format, but forced users to use ASF instead. It also had some other limitations -- and those limitations were overriden in DivX ;-).
It also added a support for other than Windows Media Audio audio encoding technology, allowing users to have MP3 audio on their movies.
In 2001, original "developers" of this hacked (and therefor illegal) codec released a new legal version of DivX ;-), called DivX (without
smiley). DivX (without smiley) supports old DivX ;-) movies and also adds new features and better compression quality than "original" DivX ;-).
The name, DivX ;-), comes from now defunct CircuitCity pay-per-view DVD format called DIVX. With DivX ;-), you can store 50-120 minutes of
relatively good quality video to one CD (740MB) (==most of the movies can be stored in one CD, unlike in VCD or SVCD). Only negative aspect
DivX ;-) has when it's compared to VCD is the fact that VCDs can be played with regular stand-alone DVD players and DivXs can't DivX - DivX was developed by DivX, Inc., to compress a great deal of video content into relatively small files and still retain reasonably
good image quality when played back. DivX is based on MPEG-4, and is a popular choice for sending video files over the Internet DIVX (original) - Now de-funct pay-per-view version of DVD-Video standard developed by Circuit City, an American consumer electronics
retailer. System was developed to compete against DVD-Video format. Each movie disc had to be activated and each playback worked pretty
much like a movie rental -- the player "dialed" to CircuitCity's servers when movie was being watched and checked if user had any "credits"
left to watch the movie. If not, device would allow user to purchase more credits to watch the movie DMCA - An American legislation, called Digital Millennium Copyrights Act that outlaws distribution, sale, use and advertising of tools
that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms. Legislation also includes various other amendments to existing copyright legislation,
such as "cease and desist" letter format for copyright holders when they wish to warn a website that hosts material on their site that
violates copyright holder's rights DMDK (Digital Media Development Kit) - generic name for an ATEME family of development boards such as DMDK 642 DRC - Dynamic Range Compression. AC3 Tracks contain a much larger dynamic range that most audio equipment can handle, therefore most
standalone and software DVD player will compress the dynamic range somewhat, according to the actual dynamic range. In layman terms the
volume will be augmented dymanically, e.g. explosions won't become louder or only a bit louder, whereas in normal dialogues the volume will
be augmented quite a bit. Since your player will do the same this is the way to go to have augmented volume DMEK (Digital Media Evaluation Kit) - generic name for an ATEME family of development boards such as DMEK 6414, DMEK 642 DMIF (Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework) - transparent control interface and procedures for the delivery of MPEG
streams irrespective of the source site being a remote interactive terminal on a network broadcast or file system DRM - DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and it is now (spring 2002) the hot topic among content owners and technology companies alike.
DRM doesn't mean just basic copy-protection of digital content (like ebooks, MP3s or DivX videos), but it basically means full protection for
digital content, ranging from delivery to end user's ways to use the content. If we speak about music DRM, companies wish to develop a product
which would allow record labels to sell copy-protected audio tracks over the Internet, so that only the buyer could be allowed to listen the
tracks. This is technically difficult, because traditionally, national laws require content owners like record labels, to grant "fair use"
rights for products consumers buy. This means that user has to be allowed to make personal copies of the purchased music, in order to use the
music in car, in portable digital audio player, in his/her laptop computer, etc. So, somehow DRM system needs to know when the copying is
allowed and when not -- users also have rights to make copies to their closest relatives, etc. So, normally this has been solved by allowing
"hops" -- original file can be copied, but the copy of the original file cannot be copied any further. Obviously this also causes problems,
if user accidentally deletes the original file, but still has the legal copy of the file :-) DSM CC (Digital Storage Media Command and Control data) - DTCP (Digital Transmission Content Protection) - an encryption method for protecting intellectual property of multimedia content DTS (Digital Theater Systems Digital Sound) - DTS is a product of DTS, Inc., DTS is a multichannel audio compression format similar
to Dolby Digital/AC3 used in DVD-video discs, DVD-audio, 5.1 channel audio CDs, and some movie theaters. DTS differs from Dolby Digital
in that it generally uses higher data rates and many have the opinion that DTS is better quality. DTS can only be on a DVD-video disc if
accompanied by a Dolby Digital or LPCM track (for North America ) or mpeg audio and LPCM (European Community) to ensure compatibility,
because DVD players are only required to decode those standards in those regions DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) - the term used in Europe to describe the broadcast of digital television services using terrestrial
frequencies DTTR (Digital Television Tape Recorder) - see Digital Video Tape Recorder DTV - DTV stands for Digital Television, which simply defines that the broadcast signal is being transmitted in digital form (normally
in either MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 format). The term itself doesn't define how the signal is being transmitted or which resolution it should use. In
"real life", Europe has chosen to use existing PAL resolution in digital broadcasting, but Americans and most notably Japanese, have opted
to use the "subset" of DTV, called HDTV in their broadcasts which offers native 16:9 aspect ratio and higher video resolution. In Europe,
three transmission standards are being used, DVB-T, DVB-C and DVB-S DV (Digital Video) - DV is the format used by many digital camcorders, usually on Mini DV cassettes. Though the DV format employs a form
of lossy video compression (applied in real-time as you record with your camera), it's still memory-intensive. When transferred to a computer,
a DV clip requires roughly 1 GB of storage per 5 minutes of video. (Clips are usually stored on the computer as QuickTime or .AVI files.)
Despite its use of compression, DV can provide a clean image with up to 520 lines of resolution. DV uses a type of compression known as
"intraframe" - that is, it encodes video at the full standard frame rate of 30 frames per second. This allows frame-by-frame editing. In
contrast, video codecs like MPEG1 or MPEG2 tend to handle a video sequence by reducing the number of full frames per second and encoding
the differences between frames, making precise editing more difficult. These are known as "interframe" forms of compression DV (Digital Video) - DV - video captured to a PC from a digital camcorder. There are two methods of storing DV video data, that is, type-1
and type-2. Both are stored usually in AVI files. Any DV stored as type-1 cannot be used with VfW-based editors. Microsoft provides DV encoder
and decoder filters for DirectShow only, and will not provide support for encoding or decoding DV video data for VfW DV Type-1 Method - The native DV interleaved stream that is produced and consumed in I/O with a DV device contains DV compressed video
and pulse code modulated (PCM) audio data. This single interleaved stream can be stored in an AVI file as "ivas" stream (for interleaved
video/audio stream). Microsoft refers to this format as a type-1 DV AVI file.
Because the type-1 format stores data as a single AVI stream, type-1 DV AVI files are not compatible with VfW. DirectShow, however, easily
handles type-1 data streams by routing the streams to a DV Splitter filter that produces a DV-encoded video stream and one or more PCM
audio streams for playback or subsequent processing DV Type-2 Method - Interleaved DV data can also be split into a single video stream and one to four audio streams within an AVI file.
Microsoft refers to this format of storing DV data as type-2. This format has the advantage of being backward compatible with VfW, because
it contains a standard video stream and at least one standard audio stream.
The type-2 file format requires a small amount of additional processing to split and multiplex the DV stream during the functions of capture
and transmit to IEEE 1394 DV devices DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) - DVB Project is an industry organization that develops technologies for the digital TV. The three most
widely used DVB's transmission protocols are DVB-C, DVB-S and DVB-T. All of these digital platforms are widely used, although mostly in Europe.
DVB developes not just transmission protocols, but also interactive standards for digital TV set-top boxes, etc. Various other DVB's protocols
include MHP (multimedia home platform, also dubbed as DVB-MHP), DVB-M (standard for measuring DVB-S/T/C transmissions, etc), DVB-H (an "upgrade"
of DVB-T standard that would allow using terrestial network to deliver DVB-T digital stream to mobile devices), etc. DVB's homepage is
here DVI (Digital Video Interface) - is a specification created by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG). The DVI specification has
created an uniform connector that can accommodate both, digital and analog video signal. DVI has three subsets: DVI-A, for analog signals,
DVI-D, for digital signals, and DVI-I (integrated), for both analog and digital signals DVI-A - see DVI instead DVI-I (Digital Video Interface - Integrated) - DVI-I and means a DVI connector that can transmit both analog and digital video data EL (Electro Luminescent) - display technology based on the same technology than the LED that show up on many electronic devices.
Allow building flat displays. Competitor for CTR, LCD and Plasma Encode - Encoding is opposite of decoding. Encoding means that a file, whether it is an audio, video or picture file, is compressed to
another format that normally takes up less physical drive space than the previous format. Common video encoding methods are DivX, MPEG-1,
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 -- most common audio encoding method or format is MP3 Encoding (Audio/Video) - The process of converting an audio/video file from one format to another using audio/video codecs Encryption - the process of coding data so that a specific code or key is required to restore the original data. In broadcast,
this is used to make transmissions secure Error Detection - checking for errors in data transmission. A calculation is made on the data being sent and the results are
sent along with it. The receiver then performs the same calculation and compares its results with those sent. If an error is
detected the affected data can be deleted and retransmitted, the error can be corrected or concealed, or it can simply be reported ES (Elementary Stream) - An elementary stream is a single (video or audio) stream without container. For instance a basic MPEG-2 video
stream (.m2v or .mpv) is an MPEG-2 ES, and on the audio side we have AC3, MP2, etc files that are ES. Most DVD authoring program require
ES as input Exif (EXchangeable Image File format) - Basically, Exif file format is the same as JPEG file format. Exif inserts some of image/digicam
information data and thumbnail image to JPEG in conformity to JPEG specification. Therefore you can view Exif format image files by JPEG
compliant Internet browser/Picture viewer/Photo retouch software etc. as a usual JPEG image files. Tiff files can have the same Exif data.
exif tags list FastTrack - A decentralized P2P network that powers P2P applications such as Kazaa, Grokster and (at least partially as of now, Oct/2003)
iMesh. Used to be the backbone of Morpheus as well, but Morpheus switched to use Gnutella network instead in beginning of 2002 Field - Interlaced video streams contain fields rather than frames FireWire - FireWire is a friendlier, "marketing" name for technology known as IEEE.1394. FireWire is basically a competitor to USB
technology, beating the original USB1.x hands down in transfer speeds, etc. FireWire is widely used in Apple computers and also virtually
all of the digital camcorders are equipped with FireWire ports. The technology is currently (03/2003) getting more and more popular in
Intel-based PCs as well Firmware - Sort of a "operating system of the hardware", an embedded instruction set built-in or flashed into a hardware equipment, such
as a router, CDR drive, DVD-ROM drive, washing machine, etc Forward compatibility - a new coding standard is forward compatible with an existing coding standard if new decoders
(designed to operate with the new coding standard) continue to be able to decode bitstreams of the existing coding standard Forward motion vector - A motion vector that is used for motion compensation from a reference picture at an earlier time in
display order FourCC - FourCC stands for four character code and is a code that uniquely identifies a video data stream format. A movie player will look
up the FourCC code then look for the codec associated to the FourCC code in order to play a certain video stream. A few examples: DIV3 = DivX
Low-Motion, DIV4 = DivX Fast-Motion, DIVX = DivX4 FTYP - is a four letter code (sometime including blanks) that is used to identify the "type" of encoding used, the "compatibility", or the
"intended usage" of a media file. It only pertains to MP4 or newer QuickTime (.mov) container file formats. It is somewhat analogous to the
so-called fourcc code, used for a similar purpose for media embedded in the AVI container format.
The four letter code "ftyp" itself is the atom type (in QuickTime terminology) or box type (in MP4 terminology). An atom/box with this label
contains data comprised of certain identifier(s). The table created for this website is an attempt to compile a list of all such identifiers
one might find Frame - The basic source of a movie. One frame represents one image. A movie usually runs at 24 frames per seconds, so it has 24 different
images per second. Imagine 24 images with a bird on it, in the first image it's on the left, then it gradually movies somewhat to the right.
On the 24th frame the bird is on the right end of the image. Imagine these 24 images being played in sequence fast enough and it looks like
a bird would fly from left to right to the human eye Framerate - Defines how many pictures eg. frames one second of video or audio contains, normally used acronym for framerate is fps -
frames per second. Human eye can't see picture changes after the framerate is more than ~24fps. In American TV system NTSC the framerate is
appx. 29.97fps and in European PAL system the framerate is 25fps Frameserving - Frameserving is the process of sending a video frame from one application to another, without intermediary files. Say you
want to process an existing video in application A (for instance remove the black bars from the picture), and then encode it to another format
in application B. The traditional way is to export the video from application A to an imtermediary file. In order not to loose quality, you'd
have to use a lossless format (meaning huge files, about 100 GB for a 2h movie). You'd then import that intermediary video file into
application B. Frameserving allows you to export the video in uncompressed format frame by frame from application A, and import those frames
into application B, without the intermediary file. Popular ways to frameserve are AviSynth or VFAPI Gamma - the transfer characteristics of most cameras and displays are nonlinear. For a display, a small change in amplitude
when the signal level is small produces a change in the display brightness level, but the same change in amplitude at a high
level will not produce the same magnitude of brightness change. This nonlinearity is known as gamma Ghost Cancellation Reference - a reference signal on (M) NTSC scan lines 19 and 282 and (B, D, G, H, I) PAL scan line 318 that
allows the removal of ghosting from TVs GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) - A format for storing digital images, commonly used for bullets, icons, and other graphics on the Web.
The GIF format is limited to 256 colors, so it's not as commonly used as JPEG for storing digital photos. A single GIF file can combine
several frames together for basic animated motion H.221 - "Frame Structure for a 64 to 1920 Kbit/s Channel in Audiovisual Teleservices" defines the usage of P B-channels to transmit
multiplexed audio, video, other data and control signals H.261 - "Video Codec for Audiovisual Services at P x 64 Kbit/s" has been known informally as "P x 64" because it defines video coding based
on P 64,000-bit per second channels. (P is typically two or more.) H.263 - "Video Coding for Low Bit Rate Communication" is the coding method designed for H.324, using the techniques of H.261 plus significant
enhancements H.264 - A new video encoding layer of MPEG-4, called nowadays officially as AVC. MPEG-4 itself contains various encoding methods, called
"subsets" or "layers", and the H.264 is a latest standardized layer in the MPEG-4 standard, launched in late 2002. Other MPEG-4 layers include
Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile that most MPEG-4 encoders nowadays use, including DivX and RealVideo 9 H.320 - "Narrowband Visual Telephone Systems and Terminal Equipment" is the summary ITU-T recommendation for standard videoconferencing using
ISDN or similar telephone circuits H.323 - "Visual Telephone Systems and Terminal Equipment for Local Area Networks which Provide a Non-Guaranteed Quality of Service" (ver. 2 -
"Packet-based multimedia communication systems") is the summary ITU-T recommendation for standard videoconferencing with conventional local-area
networks H.324 - "Terminal for Low Bit Rate Multimedia Communication" is the summary ITU-T recommendation for standard videoconferencing using POTS HD (High Definition) - This refers to a video picture size higher than SD (see below) and typically one of the set of resolutions
defined by ATSC such as 1080i (1920x1080), 720p (1280x720) or 480p (720x480) HDTV - HDTV stands for High-Definition Television and as its name suggests, it specifies a higher resolution to the viewable TV image than
the existing widely-used "standard" TV formats, such as NTSC and PAL. Term HDTV is very often confused with the term DTV which simply stands
for digital TV, but doesn't actually define higher resolution than the existing resolutions of PAL and NTSC. This "normal" DTV standard is
widely used in Europe with normal PAL resolution of 704x576. European-wide standardization of HDTV specs is still largely under discussion
and it is likely that Europe will switch to digital without actually changing the resolution to a higher one. The specified HDTV resolutions
that are used in United States and most notably in Japan, are called 1080i, 720p and 720i. HDTV's native aspect ratio is 16:9 -- same as with
anamoprhic DVD-Video discs, but in HDTV the resolution is "really" in 16:9 and not achieved by strecthing the pixels to be wider, like in
anamorphic DVD-Video discs Hi8 - One of the best analog video camcorder formats, developed by Sony in late 1990's. Hi8 uses the same cassettes as Digital8 and normally
all D8 digital camcorders can also play Hi8 analog recordings Horizontal Sync - this is the portion of the video signal that tells the display where to place the image in the left-to-right
dimension. The horizontal sync pulse tells the receiving system where the beginning of the new scan line is HSI (Hue, Saturation and Intensity) - HSync - see Horizontal Sync HTT (Hyper Threading Technology) - Hyper-Threading Technology provides thread-level-parallelism (TLP) on each processor resulting in
increased utilization of processor execution resources. As a result, resource utilization yields higher processing throughput.
Hyper-Threading Technology is a form of simultaneous multi-threading technology (SMT) where multiple threads of software applications can
be run simultaneously on one processor. This is achieved by duplicating the architectural state on each processor, while sharing one set of
processor execution resources. Hyper-Threading Technology also delivers faster response times for multi-tasking workload environments. By
allowing the processor to use on-die resources that would otherwise have been idle, Hyper-Threading Technology provides a performance boost
on multi-threading and multi-tasking operations for the Intel NetBurst® microarchitecture. HTT optimizations of Morgan codecs increase
performance in the range of 15-30% (Average 22%). HTT capable: CPU - Intel (Pentium 4 HT, Xeon HT); Windows: versions (Windows NT/2000/2003
Server/XP, Vista) HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol) - Application layer protocol using TCP/IP communication protocol for requesting file.
Used between Web browser and web servers to request HTML pages and files I and P Frames - Frame describing only the differences to the frame before (this is less than accurate but I think you'll get the picture
that way). Say we have a keyframe with a bird before a cloudy sky. Then we can use I frames which say something like this : move the bird an
inch to the left and one inch to the bottom iDCT - The video information inside MPEG files is stored in the frequency domain rather than in the spatial domain (the images we see).
That way, the information gets compacted and that compactation can be used to compress (reduce) the amount of information you have to send
over the transmission channel. MPEG uses the DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) to translate spatial information into frequency information.
To bring back the spatial information from the MPEG stream you have to apply the iDCT, that is, the Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform, that
undoes the DCT that was used during encoding.
DCT and iDCT are basically the same as DFT (discrete fourier transforms) but the results are integers rather than complex reals you get in
i/DFT. For more info please refer to a university-level book about DSP, communication systems or similar IEK (Imaging Evaluation Kit) - generic name for an ATEME family of development boards such as IEK C6416 IETF - Internet Engineering Task Force - Organism that coordinates the normative works on the protocol and applications
concerning the Internet IFO - In video editing, IFO normally refers to a file on DVD-Video disc and stands for InFOrmation. While the main content of DVD-Video disc
are the VOB files which contain the actual MPEG-2 audio, video and subtitle streams, the IFO files provide information for DVD player where
DVD-Video disc's chapters start, where certain audio tracks are located, etc.. IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) - IFPI, the organization that represents music biz's big boys internationally,
while RIAA does the same job in the U.S. Virtually all western national copyright organizations (such as RIAA in States, Teosto in Finland,
etc) are members of IFPI Interlace - Method of smoothening the video picture moving by having double the amount of frames than the video's fps value suggests.
Basically, how the interlacing is done, let's say in PAL format, is that each frame is split into two separate pictures, which both are
missing half of the picture information. The split is done by its horizontal lines. The PAL video contains 576 horizontal lines -- let's
say that the numbering of these lines begins from the top of the frame being the line number 1. The frame is being split to half-frame A and
half-frame B -- the half-frame A would contain lines 1, 3, 5, 7, ... and the half-frame B would contain horizontal lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ...
So, when the video is shown with PAL that has frame frequency (fps) of 25fps, there are 50 "half frames" per second that are being updated.
First comes the first full frame's "half A" that fills horizontal lines 1, 3, 5, .. leaving other ones blank (assuming that we start from a
"zero state" that output doesn't have anything shown before we start counting this). Then comes first full frame's "half B" that fills the
missing lines 2, 4, 6, ... and leaves the existing "half A"'s lines showing as well -- now we have the frame no.1 fully shown on screen.
Then comes frame no.2's "half A" that then wipes off the frame no.1's "half A", but leaves the frame no.1's "half B" showing. So, now we
have a mixture where lines 1, 3, 5, 7, .. are being filled by frame no.2 and lines 2, 4, 6, .. are being filled by frame no.1 Interlaced - Interlaced is a video storage mode. An interlaced video stream doesn't contain frames (pictures as we know them) but fields
with each field containing half of the lines of one frame (all even or all odd lines). More info in video storage modes and interlacing can
be found in video basics Interleaving - Imagine gluing together the audio and the video track at defined points, that's about it. The player will recognize the interleave
points and make sure that both audio and video are played in a manner that the "glued" points match through the movie.
A more detailed explanation: Imagine we have 10 seconds of video and 10 seconds of audio. Let each second of video be represented by a V and each
second of audio by an A. If you have an interleaving setting of 10 seconds the file on the disc will look like this: VVVVVVVVVVAAAAAAAAAA. Now if
you have an interleaving setting of 1 second instead here's what you get: VAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA Inverse Telecine - The inverse of Telecine. Process where video editing tools reverse telecine process. Basically inverse telecine (or
IVTC as it is also called) brings back movie's original framerate from NTSC's 29.97fps to 24fps ISO - Apart from being one of the leading standards organizations, ISO refers also to a CD or DVD image (not picture..) file with an
extension of .iso. Just like other CD/DVD image formats, ISO is a file that contains full content of the disc, including every single track,
directory, file and information about the structure of the disc (i.e. ISO files can't be used as they are, but they need to be either "mounted"
with tools like Daemon Tools or burned to CD or DVD in order to see what files the disc image actually contains). Normally ISO files are being
used to replicate existing CD/DVD discs, transfer those discs over the network to other location (or to other person) and burn back to CD/DVD
which then would be an identical replica of the original disc "ISO" - "ISO" is a word derived from the Greek isos, meaning "equal". It is the root of the prefix "iso-", as in "isometric" (of equal
measure or dimensions) or "isonomy" (equality of laws, or of people before the law). The choice of "ISO" as the name for the organization
implies "equal" or "standard". It also avoids the plethora of acronyms resulting from the translation of the actual name of the organization,
"International Organization for Standardization". (It would be IOS in English and OIN in French; Organisation Internationale de Normalisation).
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 130 countries, one from
each country. ISO is a non-governmental organization established in 1947. Its mission is to promote the development of standardization and related
activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres
of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity.
ISO's work results in international agreements that are published as International Standards.
The scope of ISO covers all technical fields except electrical and electronic engineering, which is the responsibility of IEC. A joint ISO/IEC
technical committee carries out the work in the field of information technology ITU-R BT.601-2 - this international standard defines the encoding parameters of digital television for studios. It specifies
how analog video signal should be digitized, what sampling frequencies should be used, what range of values should be used for
luminance and chrominance components ITU-R BT.656 - this international standard defines how synchronization information should be embedded into a BT.601 digital
video data stream IVTC - See Inverse Telecine JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) - JPEG is a lossy codec for storing and transferring full-color digital images that's often used
to post photography and artwork on the Web. JPEG compression takes advantage of the human eye's inability to see minute color changes, removing
portions of data from the original picture file. When creating a JPEG file, varying amounts of compression can be selected, depending on the
desired file size and image quality
A form of this codec known as Motion JPEG is used by some digital cameras and camcorders for storing video clips of relatively small file size.
With Motion JPEG, each frame of video is captured separately and reduced in size using JPEG compression JPEG XR - is the tentative name for a brand new JPEG format from Microsoft. Formerly referred to as the HD Photo file format, Microsoft
have now submitted it to the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG). If approved, JPEG XR will offer better image fidelity, higher image
compression efficiency and flexible editing features Keyframe - A complete frame but heavily compressed Letterbox - Movies, for instance, are almost always made in widescreen format. A widescreen movie needs to be displayed on a screen with
different aspect ratio from the original film, the picture frame needs to be letterboxed. Letterboxing means adding black borders above and
below the original frame. The size of the borders depends on the difference between aspect ratios. For instance displaying a 2.35:1 widescreen
picture on a conventional 4:3 TV screen requires borders that cover 40 per cent of the screen.
See Henrik Herranen's page for a more in-depth explanation to
film to video conversions, and example images Letterbox(ing) - The process of letterboxing consists of taking a movie frame (as shot by the camera of the camera guy on a Hollywood
movie set), resize it so that it fits on a 4:3 screen without stretching, then add black bars on top and bottom to fill the entire screen.
Here's a more visual explanation of the process Level - a defined set of constraints on the values which may be taken by some parameters within a particular profile. A
profile may contain one or more levels Live-streaming - Streaming media that is broadcast to many people at a same time. Also see: On-demand streaming Lossless data compression - As the name implies, lossless compression retains all of the data of the original file as it's converted to a
smaller file size. When a lossless file such as a TIFF is opened, algorithms restore all compressed information, creating a duplicate of the
source file. Lossless compression is generally preferred for creating high-quality or professional-grade audio and video files where it's
important to retain fine detail Lossy data compression - With this kind of compression, some of the source file's information is discarded to conserve space. When the
file is decompressed, this information is reconstructed through algorithms, usually resulting in some loss of sound quality or image detail
when compared to the original. Generally, the higher the resolution of the compressing file, the less the degradation. An MP3 file with a
resolution of 256 Kbps, for example, tends to sound more like the source file than one made at 64 Kbps M-JPEG (Motion-JPEG) - M-JPEG is a video format that uses JPEG picture compression in each frame of the video. Frames of the video don't
interact with each other in any way (like they do in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, etc..) which results in much bigger filesize, but in other hand, it makes
the video editing easier because each of the frames has all of the information they need stored in them.
M-JPEG is used in very high quality video captures -- normally as the raw data format which is edited and compressed into another format after
the editing process is completed. Unfortunaly M-JPEG is not a standard or even standardized -- each vendor has their own codecs and normally
M-JPEG files created with one codec cannot be read with other vendor's codecs.
M-JPEG is the format that we recommend you to use in your video capture process as a raw data format. Editing this videostream is extremely
easy and encoding the edited M-JPEG stream into final format (such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or Divx ;-)) gives normally the best possible video quality m1v/m2v - These two terms are used as extensions for MPEG-1 respectively MPEG-2 video data (video only, without any audio) M3U - M3U was originally developed in late 1990s as a standard playlist format for MP3s, although its use has since then expanded beyond MP3s.
The .m3u files are basically just textfiles that list one MP3 or other media file on each line, normally with full path or URL to the file. If
the .m3u file is loaded to an MP3 player, the player normally plays the list of media files in the order they are listed in the playlist (unless
options such as "randomize" have been selected in the MP3 player) M4IF (MPEG-4 Industry Forum) - It is an independent industry forum -- most of the companies working with digital video are members of this
industry body. M4IF defines the standards for MPEG-4 audio and video. It is a subsdiary of MPEG organization Macroblock - The four 8 by 8 blocks of luminance data and the two (for 4:2:0 chroma format), four (for 4:2:2 chroma format) or eight (for
4:4:4 chroma format) corresponding 8 by 8 blocks of chrominance data coming from a 16 by 16 section of the luminance component of the picture.
Macroblock is sometimes used to refer to the pixel data and sometimes to the coded representation of the pixel values and other data elements
defined in the macroblock header. The usage should be clear from the context Macrovision - American company that develops various copy-protection schemes for audio and video purposes. Is best known to have their
copy-protection mechanism for VHS tapes bundled with virtually every sold pre-recorded VHS tape in the world. Also, every DVD player sold in
the U.S. has Macrovision copy-protection mechanism built-in which prevents DVDs to be recorded to VHS cassettes without hacking either the DVD
player or the VCR. They have recently also developed various audio CD protection mechanisms and record labels have already introduced few
commercial audio CDs that have Macrovision's CDDA copy-protection mechanism MC (Multipoint Controller) - An entity that provides for the control of three or more terminals in a multipoint conference MD5 - MD5 is a data integrity validation mechanism, just like SFV and is used in similar ways. MD5 data is most commonly distributed as
separate .md5 files alongside the main file download files and can be used to check whether the download was complete and whether the data
remained uncorrupted during the download process.
MD5 data is created by a algorithm that examines the original file and creates a short(-ish) checksum data string out of the original file's
characteristics. When the file and the .md5 file are downloaded, the .md5 file can be used with a specific MD5 file checker application to
check whether the downloaded file is identical to the original file. If not, it typically means that the download is not complete or that
the downloaded file was corrupted during the data transfer miniDV - is the most popular digital camcorder format at the moment. miniDV is a video cassette designed for use in miniDV digital
camcorders. The picture quality of digital video (DV) recorded on a miniDV cassette is basically identical or better to the quality of
DV recorded on a Hi8 or 8mm cassette by a Digital8 camcorder. miniDV can have up to 530 lines of video resolution for some camcorder
models. However, miniDV tapes are smaller which allows for smaller camcorders. miniDV tapes are available in lengths of 30 and 60
minutes (plus, recording in LP mode lets you extend total recording time with a 60-minute tape to 90 minutes) MOV - .mov is a file extension used by the QuickTime-wrapped files. QuickTime Content (.mov, .qt), developed by Apple Computer, is a file
format for storing and playing back movies with sound. This flexible format isn't limited to Macintosh operating systems. It's also commonly
used in Windows systems, and other types of computing platforms. View MOV Converter MP (Multipoint Processor) - An entity that provides for the processing of audio, video, and/or data streams in a multipoint conference.
The MP provides for the mixing, switching, transcoding, or other processing of media streams under the control of the MC MP4 - MP4 is a new container format, a container format allows you to combine different multimedia streams into one single file.
Multimedia containers are for example the well known AVI, MPEG , Matroska, OGM. MP4 is the global file extension for the official container
format defined in the MPEG-4 standard. MP4 is streamable and supports all kinds of multimedia content, multiple audio-, video-,
subtitlestreams, pictures, variable-framerates, -bitrates, -samplerates...) and advanced content like 2D and 3D animated graphics, user
interactivity, DVD-like menus MPAA (Movie Picture Association of America) - MPAA represents major movie studios in the U.S. Organization has pretty much the same kind of
role as music business's RIAA has -- it tries to fight against piracy, lobbies congressmen to extend laws that would limit "fair use" rights, etc. MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) - a committee that sets international standards for the digital encoding of movies and sound. There
are several audio/video formats which bear this group's name. In addition to their popularity on the Internet, several MPEG formats are used
with different kinds of A/V gear: MPEG1. This format is often used in digital cameras and camcorders to capture small, easily transferable video clips. It's also the
compression format used to create Video CDs, and commonly used for posting clips on the Internet. The well-known MP3 audio format (see definition
below) is part of the MPEG1 codec MPEG2. Commercially produced DVD movies, home-recorded DVD discs, and most digital satellite TV broadcasts employ MPEG2 video compression to
deliver their high-quality picture. MPEG2 is also the form of lossy compression used by TiVo-based hard disk video recorders. It can rival the DV
format when it comes to picture quality. Because MPEG2 is a "heavier" form of compression that removes a larger portion of the original video signal
than DV, however, it's more difficult to edit with precision. The MPEG2 codec allows for selectable amounts of compression to be applied, which is
how home DVD recorders and hard disk video recorders can offer a range of recording speeds. MPEG2 is considered a container format MPEG4. A flexible MPEG container format used for both streaming and downloadable Web content. It's the video format employed by a growing
number of camcorders and cameras MPEG1 - MPEG1 format is often used in digital cameras and camcorders to capture small, easily transferable motion video clips. It
is also the compression format used to create Video CDs. In addition, The well-known MP3 audio format is part of the MPEG1 codec. View
DVD to MPEG1 Ripper MPEG2 - MPEG2 format, a video standard developed by MPEG group, is often used in digital TVs, DVD movies and in SVCDs. It is not a
successor for MPEG1, but an addition instead. both of these formats have their own purposes in life. MPEG1 is meant for medium-bandwidth
usage and MPEG2 is meant for high-bandwidth/broadband usage. View DVD to SVCD Ripper MPEG4 - MPEG4, the latest compression method standardized by MPEG group, is used for both streaming and downloadable web content,
and is also the video format employed by a growing number of portable video recorders. One of the best-known MPEG4 encoders is DivX
which since version 5 has been fully standard-compliant MPEG4 encoder. View DVD to MPEG4 Ripper and MPEG4 to MP3 Converter MPEG7 - MPEG7 doesn't itself offer any new encoding features and it is not meant for representing audio/video content, unlike its
siblings MPEG1, MPEG2 and MPEG4. Instead, it offers metadata information for audio and video files, allowing searching and indexing of
audio/video data based on the information about the content instead of searching the actual content bitstream.
MPEG7 is based on XML and therefor is universal and all the existing tools that support XML parsing should be able to read the data as
well, provided that they can ignore binary parts of the file.
MPEG7 is not used at the moment, but it is under serious development and standardization process at the moment and hopefully we see
first fully featured MPEG-7 tools within few years Multiangle - Multiangle is a special feature of the DVD format, allowing the viewer to switch between different views of the same scene.
For instance, let's assume your favorite sport on TV is hockey. You've certainly noticed that there are many cameras recording a hockey game.
And while the game is interrupted, you usually get to see slowmo scenes from different angles, be it of a goal scene, a foul or whatnot. While
watching the game on TV, you only get the see the picture from the camera that the guy in the cutting room wants you to see. Now, if you get
your favorite Stanley Cup final on DVD, the disc could include not only the game as seen on TV, but using the multiangle feature, contain the
games from all the different perspectives it was recorded from (camera from the ceiling, cameras on the side, cameras from behind the goal),
and while you're watching the game, you can press the Angle button on your remote to switch from one camera to another, or in DVD language,
switch from one angle to another, and that's what multiangles is all about Multipass encoding - Before you read on: Currently true multipass encoding is available only for WM8 and MPEG-2 (SVCD & miniDVD). M4C is
not true multipass encoding (and read the M4C guide to find out what it is and how it works). An encoder that supports multipass will in a
first pass analyze the video stream to be encoded and write down a log about everything it encounters. Let's assume that we have a short clip
which starts out in a dialog scene where we have few cuts and the camera stays static. Then it leads over to a karate fight with lots of fast
cuts and a lot of action (people flying through the air, kicking, punching, etc). In regular CBR encoding every second gets more or less the
same bitrate (it's hard to stay 100% CBR but that's a detail) whereas in multipass VBR mode the encoder will use the bitrate according to its
knowledge about the video stream, that is the dialog part gets of the available bitrate and the fighting part gets more bitrate. The more
passes the more refined will the bitrate distribution be. In single pass VBR the encoder has to base his decisions on where to use how much
bitrate solely on the knowledge of the stuff it previously has encoded Multiplexing - Usually video and audio are encoded separately. Then you have to join both of them to make a movie that you can play
(you can of course play audio and video separately in two players but to get synch would be rather hard). During multiplexing the audio
and video track are combined to one audio/video stream. The audio and video stream will be like woven together and navigational information
will be added so that the player can example fast forward/backward and still retain synch audio/video Nearest neighbor - The quickest and dirtiest way to sample an image, particularly for resizing or texture mapping. When you need a pixel
that lies between ones you actually have, pick the closest one. This is fairly acceptable for integral enlargements, but looks bad when
shrinking images or when the scale values aren’t integers. On the other hand, nearest neighbor is extremely fast compared to bilinear or
bicubic methods Normalizing - Normalizing consists of finding the volume peak of a soundtrack, then increase the rest of the soundtrack to the same level.
This is usually done at WAV level, that is all variables are integers so the precision is not as good as in DRC. Hence DRC is to be preferred
over Normalizing NPT (Normal Play Time) - Indicates the stream absolute position relative to the beginning of the presentation. The timestamp consists of
a decimal fraction (logical equivalent of SMPTE time code). Temporal addressing scheme created for DSM-CC NTSC (National Television System Committee) - NTSC is a color TV standard developed in the United States in 1953 by National Television
System Committee. NTSC is used in most of the American continent countries and in various Asian countries. Rest of the world uses either
some variety of PAL or SECAM standards. NTSC runs on 525 lines/frame and it's vertical frequency is 60Hz. NTSC's framerate is 29,97 frames/sec NuppelVideo - NuppelVideo is a simple low consuming and fast capture program for bttv-cards and for the slower computers (200MHz)
with MMX capability. It uses the very fast RTjpeg2.0 codec. It has its own file format and a simple player, and is fast enough to
capture audio and video in real time. There is also a nuv2divx and a patched version of the well-known mpeg2_movie that can read
the *.nuv format and make nice movies from it. OGM - OGM stands for OGg Media which is the name of the Ogg container implementation by Tobias Waldvogel. OGM can be used as an alternative
to the AVI container and it can contain Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and AC3 audio, all kinds of video formats, chapter information and subtitles Overlay - Video overlay enables the display of full-motion video on monitor screen without the constraints of the video BUS speed.
The overlay can be either digital (eg. an .AVI-file or DVD-Video) or analog (eg. real-time NTSC or PAL video from a video capture board).
The analog signal is first decoded to a digital format by the capture board, stored into a frame buffer, and then fed directly to the graphics
processor's RAMDAC. When using video overlay the CPU does not have to process any of the video information saving valuable processing power for
actual applications Oversampling - sampling data at a higher rate than normal to obtain more accurate results or to make it easier to sample PAL - PAL, was introduced in the early 1960's in Europe , stands for Phase Alternating Line. It has better resolution than in NTSC,
having 625 lines/frame, but the framerate is slightly lower, being 25 frames/sec
PAL is used in most of the western European countries (except France, where SECAM is used instead), Australia, some countries of Africa,
some countries of South America and in some Asian countries Pan & Scan - As you know from going to the movie theater, movies are not shot in the format of your traditional computer screen (I say
computers on purpose because in many European countries, the widescreen 16:9 TVs outsell traditional 4:3 format TVs these days - something
which is not yet the case for computer screens). When movies are prepared for DVD or video (especially video), they can be presented either
in the original widescreen 16:9 format, which leaves large black bars on top and bottom of the picture (but looks much better on widescreen
TVs), or the picture can be resized and cut at the sides so that it will fill a 4:3 screen. The process of turning the original widescreen
movie into one that fits your 4:3 screen is called pan & scan. For a more visual example on how pan & scan works, check out
this document Picture - A source image or reconstructed data for a single frame or two interlaced fields. A picture consists of three rectangular matrices
of eight-bit numbers representing the luminance and two color difference signals Picture Frequency - Film or video pictures are "flashed" on the screen. Film is a parallel format, where the entire film frame is flashed at
once. Video is a serial format, where the picture is usually drawn on the screen, one pixel at a time. Newer fixed array types of displays, such
as the DLP or D-ILA technology, are parallel imagers. Flashing information on a screen creates flicker. In basic terms, if the flicker rate is
fast enough light from the picture is perceive as steady. Depending on duty cycle and brightness of light, something in the order of 50 flashes
per second is the threshold of what many human beings consider steady. Something faster than that will improve perception of a steady state, up
to a point. In most light output conditions the upper limit is somewhere between 72 and 75 Herz Pixel Clock - The pixel clock is used to divide the horizontal line of video into samples. The pixel clock has to be stable (a very small
amount of jitter) relative to the video or the image will not be stored correctly. The higher the frequency of the pixel clock, the more
samples per line there are PGC - PGC stands for ProGram Chain. It is a term often used in DVD authoring and represents basically one concurrent playback item.
For instance the main movie has its own PGC, each trailer on a DVD usually has its own PGC. The studio logo that comes up when you enter
the disc has its own PGC, etc. Both SmartRipper in Movie mode and DVD Decrypter in IFO mode will show you all PGCs a DVD has. For more
info about PGCs visit MPUCoder's DVD information site. http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/DVD/ Podcasting/Vodcasting - Podcasting is the method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio/video programs or music videos, over
the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. The term podcast,
like 'radio', can mean both the content and the method of delivery. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
Podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their files; a podcast however is distinguished by its ability to be
downloaded automatically using software capable of reading RSS or Atom feeds. Podcasting with video files is called Vodcasting Point-to-Multipoint - An arrangement, either permanent or temporary, in which the same data flows or is transferred from a single origin to
multiple destinations; the arrival of the data at all the destinations is expected to occur at the same time or nominally the same time Predictor - A linear combination of previously decoded pixel values or data elements Program Stream (PS) - A program stream is a combination of elementary video and audio streams (ES). An MPEG-1 program stream contains
MPEG-1 video and MPEG1 layer 2 audio (mp2) whereas an MPEG-2 program stream contains MPEG-2 video and MPEG1 layer 2 audio (mp2) Progressive - Progressive or progressive scan is basically an opposite to interlaced picture. In standard, interlaced analog TV, the picture
on TV is changed 50 or 60 times (50Hz in Europe/PAL systems and 60Hz in most NTSC systems, including the American one), but the picture contains
only every other horizontal line and the line between is left "empty" -- and the next frame then contains only the horizontal lines missed in the
last frame. So, therefor in interlaced picture, at 50Hz frequency, the picture actually changes only 25 times per second (so its framerate is 25fps).
But in progressive scan technology, every picture contains everything, so therefor 50Hz progressive scan video changes the picture 50 times per
second, having the framerate of 50fps PUO - PUO means Prohibited User Operations. It's a feature of the DVD format, allowing the person doing the authoring to prevent the
user from executing certain functionality. For instance, you could activate a PUO that prevents people from fast forwarding / skipping
an FBI warning before the main movie starts. Or, it could be used to force you to use the menu of the disc to change the audio language,
by setting the PUO for audio switching (so the audio button on your remote won't do anything) QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) - This digital frequency modulation technique is primarily used for sending data downstream over a
coaxial cable network. 64QAM is efficient, supporting up to 28-Mbps peak transfer rates over a single 6 MHz channel. By comparison, 8-VSB will
only support about 19.5 Mbps in terrestrial broadcast applications. QAM's susceptibility to interfering signals makes it well suited to noisy
transmissions QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) - It is a digital frequency modulation technique used for sending data over coaxial cable networks.
Since it's both easy to implement and fairly resistant to noise, QPSK is used primarily for sending data from the cable subscriber upstream to
the Internet Quantized DCT coefficients - DCT coefficients before dequantization. A variable length coded representation of quantized DCT coefficients
is stored as part of the compressed video bitstream Quantizer - To truly understand this term you'd have to take a course in signal processing. In laymen's terms it means compression
factor. The higher this value the more compressed an image is (and therefore a high quantizer means low quality picture and small size
whereas low quantizers means high quality picture and larger size) QuickTime - is a file format for storing and playing back movies with sound. Though developed and supported primarily by Apple,
Inc., this flexible format isn't limited to Macintosh operating systems - it's also commonly used in Windows systems and other types of
computing platforms. In Windows, QuickTime files usually appear with the ".MOV" filename extension
Since 2002, Apple has started using MPEG4 video encoding on its QT streams, producing much better, if not excellent, video quality. View
QuickTime Converter. View MOV to AVI MPEG Converter R'-Y' - In video, the red-minus-luma signal, also called a color difference signal. When added to the luma (Y') signal, it produces the red
video signal RA (Real Audio) - RA is a Real Media audio file extension, indicating a file readable by the RealOne Media Player. View RA to MP3 Converter RAMDAC (Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter) - The part of the video card which converts digital intensity levels for RGB to
analog voltages sent to monitor. A DAC can have RAM to store look-up-table (LUT) information - hence RAMDAC. The speed of the RAMDAC (eg. 220,
250, 300, 350MHz) tells the maximum master clock rate, or video clock rate (VCLK) the image can be displayed at. You can calculate the maximum
refresh rate for a resolution using a simple formula: VCLK/(height*width) = refresh rate RAW - An image file of minimally processed data received from a digital camera. Most camera manufacturers have their own proprietary
version of the RAW image format, and their own file suffixes. Canon, for example, uses ".crw" or ".cr2" for their version of RAW. Nikon's
RAW files end in ".nef," while Sony uses ".arw" and ".srf" suffixes.
Professionals prefer shooting in RAW because the additional information these large files contain allows greater flexibility in
post-production editing. Because the image is basically unprocessed (as compared to a JPEG image), RAW files can retain very subtle
color variations and fine detail. Color changes, contrast adjustments, and other manipulations of a RAW image yield significantly
fewer digital artifacts than the same changes made to a comparable JPEG file RCE - RCE means Region Code Enhancement. Using the programming options that the DVD format offers (reading and writing to a number
of registers available in all players), RCE is a more advanced version of region codes. It's a way studios try to prevent you from
playing discs that are not sold in your region (don't have a matching region code). Old regionfree hardware players might have problems
with RCE discs, but most modern regionfree players have no trouble playing such discs. Currently, discs using RCE use RCE-3 but I don't
know if this means it's the 3rd version, or if the 3 has another meaning RealMedia - One of the most popular formats for streaming content on the Internet, RealMedia includes the RealAudio codec for
sound clips and RealVideo codec for movies. RealAudio and RealVideo files are often given the common RealMedia ".RM" file extension.
RealMedia is a container format that's often heavily compressed for streaming over dial-up Internet connections. RealMedia variable
bitrate (RMVB) has been developed for VBR streaming files RealVideo - RealVideo is a streaming video format developed by RealNetworks. RealVideo is probably the most popular streaming video
format in the world, although its quality is horrible if you compare it to MPEG4-based formats like DivX or WMV Region codes - Region codes in this instance mean flags implemented in DVD-Video discs that determine the geographic area where the
DVD-Video disc is being sold and where it can be watched. These codes ensure that one country doesn't get a DVD movie before the same movie
is out in that country's theatres. In their corporate omniscience, movie studios have carved the planet into regions with each region having
a specific code.
All DVD players and discs have region codes. A DVD player and disc must be of the same region or the disc will not play. If you want to watch
movies from other countries, you need a multiregion DVD player. This will allow you to play any disc from any region.
The region controls are also implemented in PC's DVD-ROM drivers, normally in three levels. First of all, if the DVD-ROM driver is manufactured
after 1st of January, 2000, the driver itself has physical locks implemented in it to permit playback of only specific region code. Secondly,
all newer operating systems, including Windows 2000 and Windows XP, have region control measurements built-in. And finally, the DVD player
software, such as WinDVD or PowerDVD, have region control measurements built-in Resolution (Horizontal) - Horizontal resolution is the number of white-to-black and black-to-white transitions that can be seen from the
left to the right of the picture. For digital displays, the maximum number is the number of active pixels used by a scan line. For both analog
and digital displays, the actual horizontal resolution may be less due to processing, overscanning, or limited by the source. When the
resolution of a TV display is given as N TV-line, that specifies the maximum number of white vertical lines on block background that can be
drawn and visible on the display. Thus it more or less a shortcut for half of the horizontal resolution Resolution (Vertical) - Vertical resolution is the number of white-to-black and black-to-white transitions that can be seen from the top
to the bottom of the picture. The maximum number is the number of active scan lines used by the image. The actual vertical resolution may be
less due to processing, interlacing, overscanning, or limited by the source. rff/tff flags - RFF means repeat first frame, it's a technique used to make the necessary 29.97 frames per second out of a 24 frames
per second source - the movie like it was recorded with a traditional movie camera used by Hollywood. The rff flag tells the player to
repeat one field of the video stream. Tff means top field first and is also used to perform a telecine to make a 24fps movie into
29.97fps. You can read more about film to video transfer in Robshot's article on synch RGB (Red Green Blue) - a method of describing colours commonly used in PC graphics Ripping - Lots of confusion about that one. Basically ripping means copying a DVD movie to your hard disk. This includes the
authentication process for the DVD Drive (try to copy a file off a DVD and you'll get a message that this operation is not supported
if your drive hasn't been authenticated) and the actual CSS Descrambling. CSS (Content Scrambling System) is a copy protection scheme
designed to prevent unauthorized copying of DVD movies, although many argue that it was also designed to control where DVD movies can
be played since without a CSS license you essentially have to crack the encryption to play a DVD movie - and I quite agree with that.
The term "ripping" is also often used (even on this site) to describe the whole process of descrambling a DVD, then convert the audio
and video into another - lesser - format RM (Real Media) - Real Media is one of the most popular formats for streaming content on the Internet, RealMedia includes the RealAudio
codec for sound clips and RealVideo codec for movies. RealAudio and RealVideo files are often given the common RealMedia ".RM" file extension.
RealMedia files are often heavily compressed so they can stream over dial-up Internet connections. View RM to MP3 Converter and RM to AVI MPEG
Converter RMVB (Real Media Variable Bitrate) - RMVB is commonly used to contain Real Video 9 and RA (Real Audio). View RMVB to AVI or DVD Converter RPC (Remote Procedure Call) - A mean for a computer to activate an execution of a software procedure on a remote machine SBC - Smart Bitrate Control. A new kind of DivX encoder called Nandub can modify many internal codec parameters on the fly during
compression, giving you better quality and a lot more control over the encoding session. More information can be found in the SBC guide
in the DivX guides section SBR - SBR stands for Spectral Bandwidth Replication is an audio enhancement technology designed especially for low bitrate audio and
speech codecs. It improves the perceived audio quality by increasing the bandwidth at a low bitrate, and by increasing the coding efficiency
of the underlying codec by limiting its bandwidth. SBR method can be used with any codec capable of producing an acceptable audio quality at
the given level. The codec transmits the lower frequencies of the spectrum, and the SBR algorithm takes care of the higher frequencies. The
SBR decoder generates the frequencies mostly by analyzing the lower frequencies, with a little help from low-datarate guidance information.
SBR has applications wherever bandwidth is limited. For example in Internet radio broadcasts, and mobile audio communications. It can be
used for mono, stereo, or even multi-channel audio.
You can find a very informative description of SBR at Coding Technologies Scalability - Scalability is the ability of a decoder to decode an ordered set of bitstreams to produce a reconstructed sequence. Moreover,
useful video is output when subsets are decoded. The minimum subset that can thus be decoded is the first bitstream in the set which is called
the base layer. Each of the other bitstreams in the set is called an enhancement layer. When addressing a specific enhancement layer, lower
layer refer to the bitstream which precedes the enhancement layer Scalable Coding - The ability to encode a visual sequence so as to enable the decoding of the digital data stream at various spatial and/or
temporal resolutions. Scalable compression techniques typically filter the image into separate bands of spatial and/or temporal data. Appropriate
data reduction techniques are then applied to each band to match the response characteristics of human vision Scalable Video - Refers to video compression that can handle a range of bandwidths, scaling smoothly over them Scan Line - A scan line is an individual line across the display. It takes 525 of these scan lines to make up a NTSC TV picture and 625 scan
lines to make up a PAL TV picture Scrambling - To transpose or invert digital data according to a prearranged scheme in order to break up the low-frequency patterns associated
with serial digital signals. Also see: Encryption Screener - One of the multiple terms used by movie pirates to describe the source material/copying method that was used to make a
bootlegged VCD, SVCD or DivX copy of a movie. Screener normally refers to a copy made from either VHS tape or from DVD-Video disc that are
sent to movie critics and censors before the movie is available to public through video rental chains. Normally refers to a very good
quality bootlegged copy SD (Standard Definition) - The size of a typical video image for a "legacy" TV system. In the US, this will typically describe an image
with 480 lines (and one of a number of widths, 720 being the maximum, 480, 640 and 704 being other common choices). In Europe (and other
areas which use PAL TV standards), SD refers to an image with 576 lines of resolution SDDI (Serial Digital Data Interface) - A way of compressing digital video for use on SDI-based equipment proposed by Sony. Now incorporated
into Serial digital transport interface. See: Serial digital transport interface SDTI (Serial Digital Transport Interface) - Allows faster-than-real-time transfers between various servers and between acquisition tapes,
disk-based editing systems and servers SECAM (Sequential Couleur Avec Memoire or Sequential Colour with Memory (or System Even Crappier than the American Method ;-)) - color TV
standard was introduced in the early 1960's and implemented in France. SECAM uses the same bandwidth as PAL but transmits the colour
information sequentially. SECAM runs on 625 lines/frame with the same framerate as the PAL does, 25fps. SECAM is used in France, former French
colonies and in former communist countries in Europe. Because of its similiarity with PAL (same resolution, same framerate), all of the modern
video systems, such as DVD, VCD and SuperVHS use PAL internally (for storing the data in the storage media, etc) and just change the color
encoding to SECAM when outputting the signal back to SECAM TV Sequence - A coded video sequence that commences with a sequence header and is followed by one or more groups of pictures and is ended by
a sequence end code Serial Digital - Digital information that is transmitted in serial form. Often used informally to refer to serial digital television signals Serial Interface - A digital communications interface in which data is transmitted and received sequentially along a single wire or pair of
wires. Common serial interface standards are RS-232 and RS-422 Serializer - A device that converts parallel digital information to serial SFV (Simple File Verification) - Some of the downloaded files in the Net come bundled with a file that has an extension of .sfv -- this
file is simply a verification file for the downloaded file itself.
SFV is basically a mathematical short checksum number based on the original file. When user downloads the original file and the .sfv file,
user can use dedicated SFV check programs that use the SFV data to check the status of the downloaded file. If the SFV's checsum data doesn't
match to the data that the validation program gets from the downloaded file, it typically means that the downloaded file is not complete or
that the downloaded file has been corrupted during the transfer and needs to be downloaded again SI (System Information) - Set of information tables related to a MPEG stream defined as a superset of PSI. Standardized by DVB Signaling Rate - The bandwidth of a digital transmission system expressed in terms of the maximum number of bits that can be transported
over a given period of time. The signaling rate is typically much higher than the average data transfer rate for the system due to software
overhead for network control, packet overhead, etc. Simple Profile - Simple Profile in this context is one of the video encoding layers available in MPEG-4 standard and is probably the most
widely used. Popular MPEG-4 codecs such as DivX and XviD use Simple Profile and also Advanced Simple Profile for video encoding Simulcast - To broadcast the same program over two different transmission systems. Currently, some AM and FM stations simulcast the same
program for part of the day, and some radio stations simulcast the audio from televised music events Slice - A series of macroblocks. A slice is the basic synchronizing unit for reconstruction of the image data and typically consists of all
the blocks in one horizontal picture interval - typically 16 lines of the picture SNR - SNR stands for Signal-to-Noise ratio SNR scalability - A type of scalability where the enhancement layer(s) contain only coded refinement data for the DCT coefficients of the
base layer Spatial scalability - A type of scalability where an enhancement layer also uses predictions from pixel data derived from a lower layer
without using motion vectors. The layers can have different frame sizes, frame rates or chroma formats SPTS (Single Program Transport Stream) - MPEG-2 Stream made of only one program (or service) as opposed to MPTS Square Pixels - A "square pixel" display is a display in which the same number of pixel horizontally and vertically displays a figure of
the same dimension (ie a square of 100 x 100 pixels will look like a square on the screen). Computers and HDTV use square pixels Streaming - Sending live or on-demand video or audio broadcast over the Internet. Popular streaming video formats include RealVideo,
QuickTime and WMV STN (Super Twisted Nematics) - An inexpensive technology of LCD Streaming media - Streaming media is media that is consumed (read, heard, viewed) while it is being delivered. Streaming is more a property
of the delivery system than the media itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over computer networks; most
other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (books, video cassettes, audio/video
CDs). The word "stream" is also used as a verb, meaning to deliver streaming media Streamlist - A streamlist is an ASCII test file that contains the pathnames and filenames of your VOB files, one file on every line.
Here's a small example:
e:\video_ts\vts_01_1.vob
e:\video_ts\vts_01_2.vob
e:\video_ts\vts_01_3.vob
e:\video_ts\vts_01_4.vob
e:\video_ts\vts_01_5.vob
Save this file as streamlist.txt, or streamlist.lst. Make sure that you save it as unformatted ASCII text, I suggest you use notepad to edit
your streamlists, since notepad won't save in another format. Mpeg2avi needs the streamlist to have the extension lst, whereas you're free
to chose any other extension for other programs that use a streamlist. However the GUI is kind of limited in its choice for input
files/extensions, therefore you might have to rename your streamlist, if it doesn't show up in the file selection dialog Stuffing (bits); stuffing (bytes) - Code-words that may be inserted into the compressed bitstream that are discarded in the decoding process.
Their purpose is to increase the bitrate of the stream Sub-pixel - A spatial resolution smaller than that of pixels. Although digital images are composed of pixels it can be very useful to resolve
image detail to smaller than pixel size, i.e., sub-pixel. For example, the data for generating a smooth curve on television needs to be created to
a finer accuracy than the pixel grid itself, otherwise the curve will look jagged Subsampled - Subsampled means that a signal has been sampled at a lower rate than some other signal in the system. A prime example of this is
the 4:2:2 Y'CbCr color space used in ITU-R BT.601. For every two luma (Y') samples, only one Cb and Cr sample is present. This means that the Cb
and Cr signals are subsampled SVCD (Super Video Compact Disc) - called also SuperVCD or Chaoji VCD. SVCD is a new CD standard developed in 1998 by Chinese consumer
electronics manufacturers, Chinese government and VCD consortium (Sony, Philips, Matsushita and JVC) that allows regular CD to contain
35-60 minutes of video and audio. A SVCD is very similiar to a VCD, although SVCD's video bitrate is normally higher than VCD's. SVCD
contains very good quality full-motion MPEG2 video along with up to 2 stereo audio tracks (MPEG1 stereo audio layer II, MPEG2 stereo
audio layer II or MPEG2 Multi-Channel 5.1 surround audio) and also 4 selectable subtitles. A SVCD can be played on many standalone DVD
Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM driver with the help of a software based decoder/player.
Just like VCDs (and audio CDs), SVCDs require a specific way how they are burned on the CD -- just sticking all the required files into
CD structure doesn't make disc a SVCD compatible. Most of the new CD burning applications support SVCD already, so authoring your own
SVCDs should be relatively easy. View DVD to SVCD Ripper, AVI DivX to SVCD Converter and SVCD to DVD Burner SVHS (SuperVHS) - SVHS is an improved, high-resolution VHS standard developed by JVC to offer better video quality than the VHS format.
SVHS recording can't be played back correctly with VHS videos, unless VHS VCR has something called "super quality playback" that allows
playing SVHS tapes Sync - Sync is a fundamental piece of information for displaying any type of video. Essentially, the sync signal tells the display where to
put the picture. The horizontal sync, or HSYNC for short, tells the display where to put the picture in the left-to-right dimension. The vertical
sync, or VSYNC for short tells the display where to put the picture from top-to-bottom Synchronization - Making sure that the video runs at the same speed as the audio, and at the right place. When the two streams run at
different speeds or are offset from each other, events that are supposed to happen simultaneously in both streams do not. For instance, a
person’s lips move in the video, and then his words come out several seconds later TDM (Time Division Multiplex) - The management of multiple signals on one channel by alternately sending portions of each signal and
assigning each portion to particular blocks of time Telecide - Means same as inverse telecine Teleconferencing - The use of telecommunications links to provide audio, video and graphics capabilities. These systems allow distant
workgroups or individuals to meet. An endpoint which provides for real-time, two-way communications with another Terminal or Gateway Telecine - A process to bring a 24fps source (usually a movie is shot at that speed) to 29.97fps or 29.97x2 interlaced fields per second.
Please read this article on how the conversion actually works Telesync - One of the multiple terms used by movie pirates to describe the source material that was used to make a bootlegged pirate
copy, normally distributed in VideoCD, SVCD or DivX format. Precisely Telesync means a copy which was shot in an empty cinema or from the
projection booth with a professional camera, directly connected to the sound source. Other bootleg version methods include Telecine,
Screener, Cam and DVD-Rip Temporal Aliasing - A defect in a video picture that occurs when the image being sampled moves too fast for the sampling rate Temporal Resolution - The ability of the display to reproduce adequate detail to allow the visual system to distinguish the separate
parts or components of an object that is moving through the display TIFF (Tag Image File Format) - TIFF is a flexible container format for digital still images, commonly used in desktop publishing. TIFF
images can incorporate various forms of compression (like JPEG), or can be uncompressed. Some digital cameras offer a special TIFF mode for
capturing uncompressed photos; however, these files require many times more storage space than JPEGs, and can quickly fill up your camera's
available memory TMDS (Transition Minimized Differential Signaling) - A technology for transmitting serial data at high bit rates (over 1 Gbps). This
technology is used in DVI interface standard TMDS Link - Three TMDS data channels plus one TMDS clock channel. The three data channels are referred to as channel 0, 1 and 2.
The clock channel is sometimes referred to as channel C. Base of DVI interface Transcoding - Transcoding or more specifically Compressed-domain Transcoding means normally a re-encoding process that changes the video
or audio features, such as resolution or bitrate, by changing parts of the a/v content, but not by reconstructing the content again (which is
the case in encoding process). Compressed-domain transcoding also maintains the format of the file same as in the original file Up Converting (up-resizing) - The process which increases the number of pixels and/or frame rate and/or scanning format used to represent
an image by interpolating existing pixels to create new ones at closer spacing. Despite its name the process does not increase the resolution
of the image. Up converting is done from standard definition to high definition V2000 - One of the three competing video formats in early 1980's, developed by Philips in order to beat the crap out of Sony's BetaMax and VHS.
It has some unique features that other VCR formats didn't have -- the cassette can be flipped over, just like a regular C-cassette and it also
had linear stereo already in early '80s. It was also the first VCR format to achieve noise-free still picture and many other achievements.
Unfortunately Philips ceased the development of this format in late '80s.
For more information, I suggest you to read this website VBI (Vertical Blanking Interval) - During the vertical blanking interval, the video signal is at the blanking level so as not to display
the electron beam when it sweeps back from the bottom to the top side of the CRT screen VBR (Variable Bitrate) - Most newer audio and video codecs employ a technology known as variable-bitrate encoding, which allows resulting
files to look and sound better while still retaining a compressed, convenient file size. Essentially, VBR encoding assigns more bits to
complexly-detailed portions in the original source, and fewer bits to the simpler portions.
By contrast, constant-bitrate (CBR) encoding uses about the same amount of memory for simple and complex passages - so the user is more likely
to experience audible or visible loss of quality during complex parts, especially with lower-bitrate files VC1, VC-1 - is a video codec standard. Its most popular implementation is Windows Media Video 9. It is an evolution of the conventional
DCT-based video codec design also found in H.261, H.263, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. It is widely characterized as an alternative to the
latest ITU-T and MPEG video codec standard known as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. VC-1 contains coding tools for interlaced video sequences as well as
progressive encoding. The main goal of VC-1 development and standardization is to support the compression of interlaced content without first
converting it to progressive, making it more attractive to broadcast and video industry professionals VCD - The process which increases the number of pixels and/or frame rate and/or scanning format used to represent an image by interpolating
existing pixels to create new ones at closer spacing. Despite its name the process does not increase the resolution of the image. Up converting
is done from standard definition to high definition Vertical Sync - This is the portion of the video signal that tells the decoder where the top of the picture is VHSRip - In the Internet piracy scene, this term means a release of a movie, or some form of video, that has been taken from a
VHS source. It has been captured and then re-encoded to a digital format. Some groups are dedicated to releasing VCD copies of movies
that haven't been released on DVD as of yet Video capture - The process of digitising analog video (for eg. Converting from VHS tape in a VCR to a file on a computer) is called
video capture VIDEO_TS - On a DVD disc, DVD movie files are stored in the VIDEO_TS folder. There is also an AUDIO_TS folder, this is where DVD-Audio
would be stored, but usually the folder is empty Video Coder Overload (also Buffer Overload) - Video coder overload is tested using rapid scene cuts, at most only a few frames apart,
to stress digital compression systems by presenting them with a video signal that contains little or no temporal redundancy (frame-to-frame
correlation) Video Mixing - Video mixing takes two independent video sources (they must be genlocked) and merges them together VKI (Variable Keyframe Interval) - Basically that means that keyframes will not be inserted in regular intervals as in the regular DivX
codecs but where they are needed. There are 2 ways of VKI: The first is that the encoder analyzes the compressed frame, compares it against
the original and re-encodes the frame again as a keyframe if the quality difference is higher than a set threshold. This way of encoding is
only possible with a certain special application: M4C. There's a command line based version and a plugin for AviUtl available (the latter is
described in detail in the AviUtl guide). If you set the threshold too high you'll end up with a lot of keyframes. Then there's the 2nd way
which is basically keyframe insertion at scene changes. In order to do that the encoding program or the codec will detect when there's a cut
(as it's called by movie makers) occur and make the first frame of the new scene a keyframe. This can be achieved by using mpeg2aviAr (part
of AviRevolution 2.1), m4c or by installing the DivX VKI codec. If you use the latter you don't have to worry about the encoder... every
program that can encode to DivX will then result in files that has keyframes at scene changes. VKI, when properly used (that applies to the
first way), can help you increase quality and reduce the amount of keyframes, which may lead to higher quality again because especially at
lower bitrates too many keyframes will give you a worse quality VM2 - Short version of VKI + MM4 + VBR MP3 VOB - VOB stands for DVD Video Object. It is basically one of the core files found on DVD-Video discs and contains the actual movie data.
Basically VOB file is just a basic MPEG-2 system stream -- meaning that it is a file that contains multiplexed MPEG-2 video stream, audio
streams (normally AC3 format) and subtitle streams. VOB files on a DVD are numbered as follows: vts_XX_y.vob where XX represents the title
and Y the part of the title. There can be 99 titles and 10 parts, although vts_XX_0.vob does not contain any video, usually just menu or
navigational information. You can find them on a DVD video disc in a subdirectory labelled VIDEO_TS VOB ID - VOB IDs are used to internally group cells in a PGC on a DVD VOB Files - All DVD movies are stored in so-called VOB files. Vob files usually contain multiplexed Dolby Digital Audio and MPEG2 video.
Vob Files are called as follows: vts_XX_y.vob where XX represents the title and Y the part of the title. There can be 99 titles and 10 parts,
although VTS_XX_0.VOB does never contain any video, usually just menu or navigational information. There's 2 ways to find out which files
contain the main movie: First: Play the movie in any DVD player and watch the LED on a standalone or the status window on a software player.
Second: The main movie is the largest number of consecutively numbered VOB files. For instance it's vts_05_1.vob, vts_05_2.vob.... vts_05_8.vob
(I haven't seen movies with 9 partial files but that doesn't mean that they don't exist) Vodcasting - see Podcasting VOP (Video Object Plane) - a picture VOS (Visual Object Sequence) - последовательность визуальных объектов VP3 - VP3 is a video codec originally developed by On2 Technologies, which donated the codec to Xiph.org Foundation in summer 2002 as an
open source project. On2 still has further developer propietary version of VP3 among its products, currently called as VP5.
VP3 codec is now part of Xiph.org Foundation's Ogg Theora project, which aims to integrate Ogg Vorbis audio codec and VP3 into a fully
integrated multimedia platform that would compete against likes of MPEG-4 VSync (Vertical synchronization) - вертикальная синхронизация. Вертикальная синхронизация сигнала обычно используется в CRT мониторах VTS - VTS stands for Video TitleSet and means a set of consecutively named VOB files with the corresponding IFO and BUP files. For
instance VTS2 would be VTS_02_0.VOB (containing the menus), VTS_02_1.VOB, VTS_02_2.VOB, etc, VTS_02_0.IFO and VTS_02_0.BUP. VTS are used to
group video stuff together that belongs together. For instance one VTS is usually used for the main movie (sometimes including the trailer
and some studio logos), other VTS are used for extras Wavelets - Wavelets are an alternative basis space. There are infinitely many wavelet bases (Daubechies, Haar, Mexican Hat, "Spline",
Zebra, etc), but their primary feature is that they are localized. Fourier basis functions span all space (from negative to positive infinity).
Wavelets are basically individual pulses of waves (at various positions and scales).
Their value in compression stems from factors like the grouping which generally shows that a good 90% of the data is modelled by the low-pass
filters, with the high-pass filters generally showing very small values that are mostly details. (of course, this is not true if the source is
noisy in the first place). For images, the greatest value comes from localization of the basis, which means that we can model discontinuities
(e.g. edges) VERY well with wavelets. You will NOT get those weird JPEG halos if you use wavelets Windows Media - Microsoft's proprietary architecture for audio and video on the PC. It's based on a collection of codecs which can be used
by the WindowsMedia Player (www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia) to play files encoded in any
supported format. There are 3 released of the WindowsMedia codec architecture: version 7, 8 and 9. Those codecs are natively supported by the
corresponding media player version (Windows Media Player 7, Windows Media Player 8 supports WMV8, and Windows Media Player 9 supports WMV9),
but you can also find codecs pack for download at microsoft.com to play such content outside the
official Microsoft media player Windows Media - Name of a group of technologies developed by Microsoft. This umbrella includes Microsoft's Digital Rights Management tools,
Windows Media Video encoding technology and Windows Media Audio encoding technology. Not very surprising, but these products are not public
standards, but Microsoft's own varieties of open standards like MPEG-4 WMF - Windows Media Format files are audio/video files encoded with the Windows Media Encoder, providing high quality and media security
for streaming and download-and-play applications on PCs, set-top boxes, and portable devices. Windows Media Format comprises Windows Media
Audio and Video codecs, an optional integrated digital rights management (DRM) system, and a file container WMV (Windows Media Video) - Microsoft's proprietary lossy compression format for motion video. Windows Media Video is used for both
streaming and downloading content via the Internet. Microsoft's Windows Media Player, an application bundled with Windows Vista operating
systems, lets you play back and manage a range of audio and video file types, including WMA and WMV. In WMV7, Microsoft has used its own
flavour of MPEG4 video encoding technology. You can use a .wmv file either to download and play files or to stream content Wrapper - See container Xvid - Xvid is an open-source lossy video codec based on MPEG-4. It was developed in response to DivX, and received its name from the
backwards spelling of DivX. Xvid compresses a great deal of video content into relatively small files, and retains a reasonably good video
resolution. It can be used with several different operating systems, and is a popular choice for transferring video over the Internet Y/C video - Standard of analog video that uses 2 separated cables : one for luma (Y) and synchronization, and the other for the chroma (C). Also called S-Video. Provides a better quality than Composite video but (little) worst than Component video Y'CbCr, YCbCr - Y'CbCr is the color space originally defined by BT.601, and now used for all digital component video formats. Y' is the luma component and the Cb and Cr components are color difference signals Y'IQ, YIQ - Y'IQ is a color space optionally used by the NTSC video system. The Y' component is the black-and-white portion of the image.
The I and Q parts are the color difference components; these are effectively nothing more than color placed over the black and white, or luma,
component Y'PbPr, YpbPr - Y 'PbPr is a scaled version of the YUV color space, with specific levels and timing signals, designed to interface
equipment together. See Component video Y'UV, YUV - Y'UV is the color space used by the NTSC and PAL video systems. As with the Y'IQ color space, the Y' is the luma component
while the U and V are the color difference components. Many people use the Y'UV notation when they actually mean Y'CbCr data Zig-zag scanning order - A specific sequential ordering of the DCT coefficients from (approximately) the lowest spatial frequency to the highest
- AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) - AAC stands for two things: either MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding or MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding and as its
full name suggests, it is either an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4-based audio format. The MPEG-2 version of the format is also often called as MPEG-2 NBC
as in Non-backwards compatible, but the correct name that should be used, is the AAC. The NBC name comes from the fact that unlike older MPEG
audio encoding methods, it is not backwards compatible (for example, MP3 is backwards compatible to MP2) to older MPEG audio formats.
MPEG-2 AAC produces better audio quality than MP3 using less physical space for the files and MPEG-4 AAC produces better quality and smaller
files than MPEG-2 AAC
The current version of the AAC codec was developed as part of the MPEG4 standard. Versions of AAC are used by Apple in their popular iTunesR Store,
as well as Sony in their PlayStationR3 game consoles. Files may appear with the ".m4a" or ".mp4" filename extension. Songs with DRM (digital rights
management) purchased from the iTunes Store usually have an ".m4p" extension (with the "p" at the end to denote "protected") AC3 (Audio Coding 3) - AC3 file, a Dolby Digital audio file, can be found as the standard audio track on Digital Versatile Discs (DVD)
and High Definition Television (HDTV). This coder has been designed to take maximum advantage of human auditory masking in that it divides
the audio spectrum of each channel into narrow frequency bands of different sizes optimized with respect to the frequency selectivity of
human hearing. This makes it possible to sharply filter coding noise so that it is forced to stay very close in frequency to the frequency
components of the audio signal being coded. By reducing or eliminating coding noise wherever there are no audio signals to mask it, the sound
quality of the original signal can be subjectively preserved AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) - An audio format for Macintosh operating systems commonly used for storing uncompressed, CD-quality
sound (similar to WAV files for Windows-based PCs). AIFF is considered a lossless container format Apple Lossless - Apple Lossless Encoding (also known as Apple Lossless, Apple Lossless Audio Codec or ALE) is a lossless audio codec
developed by Apple Computer to provide full, CD-quality audio in about half the space of the original file ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) - is a computer soundcard driver protocol for digital audio specified by Steinberg, providing a
low-latency and high fidelity interface between a software application and a computer's sound card. Whereas Microsoft’s DirectSound is commonly
used as a stereo input and output for non-professional users, ASIO allows musicians and sound engineers to process their audio via Windows
computer software instead of external hardware.
ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from the user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software, so that the
application connects directly to the soundcard hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency, the delay between an
application sending sound to the sound being reproduced by the soundcard. In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple
audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency of Windows audio mixing
kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware. Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical", that
is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original WAV file, thus having higher audio fidelity ATRACT - Developed by Sony engineers in the early 90s for the MiniDisc format, ATRAC is a lossy audio codec which offers near-CD sound
quality with relatively small file sizes ATRAC3T - A newer version of the ATRAC format that squeezes music into even smaller files. It's used for music storage in some portable
Sony digitial music players, in other Internet music applications like RealAudio ATRAC3plusT - The newest version of the ATRAC codec. ATRAC3plus is found on Sony's Hi-MD portable recorders and offers even better sound
quality at lower bitrates than earlier versions AU - An audio format commonly used for posting sound clips on the Internet. AU files can be played back on Windows, Macintosh, and other
operating systems CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) - It is the original music CD format storing digital PCM data. Defined by the Red Book standard CDA (CD Audio) - You can play .cda files only from a CD-ROM. The tracks however, can be ripped to your HDD as a digital audio format
like WAV, wma, or MP3 files. View CDA to MP3, WMA or MP3 Ripper DRC (Dynamic Range Compression) - AC3 Tracks contain a much larger dynamic range that most audio equipment can handle, therefore most
standalone and software DVD player will compress the dynamic range somewhat, according to the actual dynamic range. In layman terms the
volume will be augmented dynamically, e.g. explosions won't become louder or only a bit louder, whereas in normal dialogues the volume
will be augmented quite a bit. Since your player will do the same this is the way to go to have augmented volume Embedded Audio - digital audio that is multiplexed and carried within an SDI connection--so simplifying cabling and routing.
The standard (ANSI/SMPTE 272M-1994) allows up to four groups each of four mono audio channels FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) - Lossless means that the audio is compressed, but the quality of the input audio wont suffer from
the compression, but remains identical. This is exactly unlike the audio formats such as MP3 and WMA work -- these audio formats are
called "lossy" and that means that when the original audio is encoded into the lossy audio format, some of the audio data is lost forever
and can't be brought back by any means. So, to summarize, by encoding audio files with FLAC, the quality is exactly the same as the
original audio file's quality is G.711 - is the default audio representation used in H.320, providing roughly 3.5-KHz frequency response in a 64,000-bit communication channel G.722 - is an optional audio representation used in H.320, providing roughly 7-KHz frequency response in a 48,000-, 56,000-, or 64,000-bit
communication channel G.723 - is an audio representation used in H.324, providing roughly 3.5KHz frequency response in a 6,300-bit communication channel G.728 - is an optional audio representation used in H.320, providing roughly 3.5-KHz frequency response in a 16,000-bit communication channel HE-AAC - HE-AAC stands for High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding. Audio standard within the MPEG-4 standard. See also AAC ID3 - see MP3 ID3 Tag ID3 - When MP3s became popular in late 1996, group of people started wondering if there would be a solution for the lack of
information in audio tracks stored in MP3 format. Basically the problem was that even most advanced rippers who distributed audio
tracks in MP3 format, included the information about album, track name, etc inside the filename, some morons renamed these names into
something else that didn't provide the same quality of information anymore. So, ID3 was born. ID3 is a small piece of information stored
physically inside the MP3 file (in the beginning or in the end of the file, depends on ID3's version). ID3 tags (as the pieces of
information that ID3s contain are called) can contain various information about the MP3, like album name, song name, artist, original
artist, genre, composer, releasing year, additional comment fields, etc.. Nowadays ID3s are de facto in audio world and they can be
added to most of the audio formats and even to certain video formats in order to provide additional information of the file ISO - ISO refers also to a CD or DVD image (not picture..) file with an extension of ".iso". The extension comes from the full name of
the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM file system specification, ISO 9660. Just like other CD/DVD image formats, ISO is a file that contains full content
of the disc, including every single track, directory, file and information about the structure of the disc. Normally ISO files are being used
to replicate existing CD/DVD discs, transfer those discs over the network to other location (or to other person) and burn back to CD/DVD
which then would be an identical replica of the original disc. View DVD to ISO Converter M3U - M3U is a special type of metafile playlist that is used with MP3 files that have an .mp3 file extension. The .m3u files list one MP3
or other media file on each line, normally with full path or URL to the file. If the .m3u file is loaded to an MP3 player, the player normally
plays the list of media files in the order they are listed in the playlist (unless options such as "randomize" have been selected in the MP3
player) M4A - The audio file format used by Apple in their popular iTunes Music Store often appears on your system with the ".M4A" filename
extension. M4A can produce better audio quality than MP3 using less physical space for the files. View M4A to MP3, WAV or WMA Converter M4P - M4P format is "protected AAC". It is a format of purchased music that can be listened to only through the iTunes softer or an iPod.
View M4P to MP3, WAV or WMA Converter MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) - A MIDI file doesn't contain actual audio data, but rather contains commands that let
MIDI-capable synthesizers re-create a specific musical passage. The MIDI protocol has been used for years as a way for electronic musical
instruments (like digital keyboards and sequencers) to communicate with each other.
Computer sound cards typically feature the ability to interpret MIDI files into music. Since they don't actually contain the music itself,
but rather the commands used to re-create music, MIDI files are a lot smaller than audio files like MP3s, WMAs, or WAVs. MIDI files are
small and manageable enough that it's not uncommon to find them embedded in web pages, adding a sonic element to the surfing experience.
They usually appear with the ".MID" filename extension MP2 - MP2 stands for MPEG Audio Layer II or MPEG2 Audio, which used on VCDs, SVCDs and can be used DVDs. View MP2 to MP3 Converter MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) - It is not a separate format, but a part of MPEG-1 video encoding format, developed by MPEG group in early
1990's. Too often people refer MP3 as MPEG-3, which is incorrect, because such format doesn't even exist. MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3) is a
method to store good quality audio into small files by using psychoacoustics in order to get rid of the data from the audio that most of the
humans can't hear.
The most popular codec for storing and transferring music. Though it employs a lossy compression system which removes frequencies judged to
be essentially inaudible, MP3 still manages to deliver near-CD sound quality in a file that's only about a tenth or twelfth the size of a
corresponding uncompressed WAV file. When creating an MP3 file, you can select varying amounts of compression depending on the desired file
size and sound quality. For more info, see our article on the MP3 format MP3's bitrates vary from 8kbps (that is 8 kilobits per second, not
kilobytes) to 320kbps. When MP3 phenomenom began in 1996, most of the audio files were encoded using 128kbps bitrate, which is still the
most popular bitrate in the world -- although most of the people agree that by using slightly higher bitrates, like 192kbps or 256kbps,
the audio quality can be compared with the CD quality MP3 ID3 Tag - An MP3 ID3 Tag is information stored at the end of an MP3 file. The tag can contain information about the Title/Songname,
Artist, Album, Year, Comment, and Genre in version 1 and also Track in version 1.1. A proposed Version 2 is out which would be extendable
to include more information and pictures. View MP3 ID3 Tag Editor mp3Pro - An updated version of the original MP3 codec. Small, low-bitrate mp3Pro files contain much more high-frequency detail than
standard MP3 files encoded at similar low bitrates. The high-frequency portion of the audio signal is handled by an advanced and extremely
efficient coding process known as Spectral Band Replication (SBR), while the rest of the signal is encoded as a regular MP3. That means
that when you play an mp3Pro file on non-mp3Pro-compatible software, you'll only hear the non-SBR-encoded portions (so you'll lose the
highs altogether). However, when encoded and played back using a fully compatible audio program, such as Windows Media Player, mp3Pro
files can deliver very good sound quality using low bitrates Ogg - Ogg is the umbrella for a group of several related multimedia and signal processing projects that are open source and
royalty free. Development of these projects is controlled by Xiph.org
First and best-known project of these is called Ogg Vorbis, a royalty-free audio compression technology. View Ogg to MP3 Converter Ogg Vorbis - is an "open-source" digital audio compression format. like MP3, It is a "lossy" compression system, removing frequencies
deemed inaudible. Both formats offer variable-bitrate encoding options, for better efficiency. But the algorithms Ogg Vorbis uses to
decide which information to discard differ from those used by MP3. Proponents claim that the Ogg Vorbis format outperforms MP3, producing
files that are significantly smaller than MP3s of similar sound quality (or files that sound better than similarly sized MP3s)
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- ReWire - is a software protocol, jointly developed by Propellerhead and Steinberg, allowing remote control and data transfer among digital
audio editing and related software. Originally appearing in the ReBirth software synthesizer in 1998, the protocol has since evolved into an
industry standard.
Currently used in Mac OS and Microsoft Windows audio applications, ReWire enables the simultaneous transfer up to 256 audio tracks of arbitrary
resolution and 4080 channels of MIDI data. This allows, for example, the output from synthesizer software to be fed directly into a linear
editor without the use of intermediate files or analog transfers. There are also provisions to remotely trigger actions, such as starting and
stopping recording. The protocol is licensed only to proprietary software authors, but free of charge RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) - RIAA represents major record labels in the United States and fights againts piracy,
lobbies in Congress pushing forward laws that benefit recording industry, etc. Similiar organization to RIAA, but which works internationally,
is called IFPI SDII (Sound Designer II) - An audio format for Macintosh operating systems which is often employed by pro-quality sound editing
software applications. SDII files, like AIFF and WAV files, are capable of storing uncompressed CD-quality audio SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) - The Secure Digital Music Initiative was established to standardize digital music file
specifications throughout the industry. The primary purpose was to create a uniform copyright protection protocol that would work with a
variety of digital players, software programs, and download sites. SDMI-compliant devices and files have special coding to recognize and
comply with the requirements imposed on copyright-protected materials SHN (Shorten) - Shorten is a lossless form of compression for digital audio. An SHN file is only about half the size of its original WAV
or AIFF source. Unlike lossy audio codecs (such as MP3, WMA, etc.), SHN is capable of reproducing the original audio signal in its entirety,
without removing frequencies. Because of this, SHN offers significantly better sound quality than MP3. However, since SHN files are
significantly larger than MP3 files, this format isn't nearly as convenient when it comes to storage space or download time Vorbis (Ogg Vorbis) - Vorbis is an "open-source" digital audio compression format - that is, it exists in the public domain and is
completely free for commercial or non-commercial use. Because Vorbis is most often used in conjunction with a digital A/V container format
known as "Ogg," it's usually referred to as "Ogg Vorbis."
Vorbis, like MP3, is a lossy compression system, removing frequencies deemed inaudible. Both formats offer variable-bitrate encoding options,
for better efficiency. But the algorithms Vorbis uses to decide which information to discard differ from those used by MP3. Proponents claim
that the Vorbis format outperforms MP3, producing files that are significantly smaller than MP3s of similar sound quality (or files that
sound better than similarly sized MP3s) VQF - VQF is one of the "alternative" audio compression formats back in 1990s that was aimed to take over MP3 by providing better
audio quality than MP3 with lower bitrate. Failed miserabely due various reasons, most notably because of restrictive licensing. Nowadays
the only serious alternatives to MP3 are probably Ogg Vorbis and Microsoft's WMA VST (Virtual Studio Technology) - is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and
hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use Digital Signal Processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with
software. Thousands of plugins exist, both commercial and freeware, and VST is supported by a large number of audio applications. The technology
can be licensed from its creator, Steinberg WAV - A standard audio format for Windows operating systems, often used for storing high-quality, uncompressed sound. WAV files can contain
CD-quality (44.1 KHz/16-bit) audio signals. However, CD-quality WAV files require relatively large amounts of memory - roughly 10 MB per minute
of music. WAV is a container format. WAV files are probably the simplest of the common formats for storing audio samples. Unlike MPEG audio and
other compressed formats, WAVs store samples "in the raw" where no pre-processing is required other that formatting of the data.
The WAV file consists of three "chunks" of information: The RIFF chunk which identifies the file as a WAV file, The FORMAT chunk which
identifies parameters such as sample rate and the DATA chunk which contains the actual data (samples) WMA (Windows Media Audio) - Developed by Microsoft, Windows Media Audio is one of today's most pervasive Internet audio formats. Though
not as popular as MP3, proponents of lossy WMA claim that it can outperform MP3 in the area of sound quality, particularly with files encoded
at lower bitrates such as 64 or 96 Kbps. This performance advantage makes it handy for applications like portable digital audio players, where
total play time is limited by a finite amount of internal memory.
The Windows Media Audio format features built-in copy protection abilities, unlike MP3. Windows Vista, Microsoft's current flagship operating
system software, contains native support for WMA encoding, enabling users to create their own WMA music files
ASPI - Advanced SCSI Programming Interface is an old high-level interface written for accessing data stored on SCSI devices. It was
developed by Adaptec, and welcomed by developers frustrated with complexity of the SCSI hardware layer. ASPI layer is also used to control
ATAPI CD-ROM devices connected to an ATA (IDE) bus Audio/video (CD/VCD/DVD ripping) - CD Ripping - also called Digital audio/video Extraction (DAE) is the process of copying audio/video
from a CD/VCD/DVD to another medium while keeping the audio/video in its original digital state AVCHD - A high-definition digital video format that can record in 1080i and 720p and still maintain a reasonably small file size. AVCHD
files are based on the MPEG4 codec. The advent of high-definition (HD) televisions and displays spurred the development of this format, which
uses the same resolution as HDTV signals. AVCHD video files can also be burned to Blu-ray DiscsT, and played in compatible devices, such as
Blu-ray Disc players and the Sony PlayStationR3 CDV - See LaserDisc cDVD - See miniDVD Chaoji VCD - See SVCD Coaster - Coaster is a slang term for an optical disc (CD, DVD, etc) that doesn't work, normally because of bad quality of the optical disc
itself, failure during the CD/DVD burning process, etc. So, such disc just creates an excellent, shiny coaster to use with your latenight pint DVD-Rip - Bootlegged movie copy made directly from a DVD-Video disc and encoded into some other format, like SVCD or DivX DVD5 - is a single sided single layer DVD that stores up to about 4.7 GB = 4 700 000 000 bytes and that is 4.38 computer GigaBytes where 1
kilobyte is 1024 bytes(4 700 000 000B/1024 = about 4 589 843KB/1024 = about 4485MB/1024 = about 4.38GB) . Video DVD, DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W
supports this format. Often referred to as "single sided, single layer" DVD9 - is a single sided dual layer DVD which can fit up to 8.5 GB or 7.95 computer GB which many commercial video DVDs are using today (a
DVD9 is basicly two pressed plastic DVD5s pressed together, they are not burned). Video DVD supports this format but DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W does
not support this format. View DVD9 to DVD5 Converter DVD10 - is a double sided single layer DVD. Video DVD, DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W support this format. Effectively this means that DVD10 is a dual-sided
DVD5 and can hold 8.75 gigabytes of data with 4.38 gigabytes on each side. Two-sided discs need to be flipped over in order to access the other data
side. Unfortunately many blank DVD media advertisers mislead customers to believe that these discs are actually blank DVD9 discs in hope that they
could copy their dual-layer discs directly to blank discs DVD18 - is a double sided dual layer DVD which can fit up to 17 GB or 15.9 computer GB which some commercial video DVDs are using today (a
DVD18 is basicly four pressed plastic DVD5s pressed together, they are not burned). Video DVD supports this format but DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W does
not support this format D-VHS (Digital-VHS) - DVHS is a digital recording and playback format for High Definition material. It's based on the existing 1/2"
VHS-sized cassettes Disk image - An ISO image (.iso) is an informal term for a disk image of an ISO 9660 file system. More loosely, it refers to any
optical disk (CD/DVD) image. As is typical for disk images, in addition to the data files that are contained in the ISO image, it also
contains all the filesystem metadata (boot code, structures, and attributes). All of this information is contained in a single file
making it easy for distribution and download rather than have to make available the files compiled for a CD/DVD as a compilation of several files DVCD (Double VideoCD) - DVCD - pretty popular format in mainland China. Format itself is nothing new really, its just a regular VideoCD
overburned to include 90 to 99mins per CD, compared to regular 74mins per CD in standard VideoCD format. For more specific details, look at
VideoCD specs DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) - DVD is very often used as a replacement acronym for DVD-Video, which is one standard based on DVD format DVD+R - A propietary recordable DVD format, developed by DVD+RW Alliance. Format currently (10/2003) allows single-layer data to be stored
on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information (NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels
claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and gigabyte, when the correct number to
be used should be 1,024).
Dual-layer discs that can hold 8.5GB entered the market in Q2/2004. However, dual-layer discs can't be burned using the old DVD+R writers that
support only single-layer burning (==all DVD+R capable burners made before 2004 or so).
Single layer discs pose a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs
need to be split to two DVD+R discs if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
DVD+R is technically slightly more advanced than its competitor, DVD-R, but DVD-R still leads DVD+R by rather wide margin in terms of blank
media sales.
Both, DVD+R and DVD-R, formats are write-once formats. DVD+R's "sister format" is called DVD+RW which is essentially a re-writable version of
DVD+R. DVD-R's sister format is called DVD-RW.
All most common recordable DVD formats, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW can be read with most stand-alone DVD players and with virtually all
DVD-ROM drives DVD+RW - A propietary re-writable DVD format, developed by DVD+RW Alliance. Format allows single-layer data to be stored on each side of
the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information (NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB
is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should
be 1,024). Dual-layer discs that could hold 8.5GB don't exist and most likely never will due technical limitations. This poses a problem when
backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD+RW discs
if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
DVD+RW is technically slightly more advanced than its competitor, DVD-RW. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that sales
of DVD-RW dominate the rewritable market by ratio of 75-to-25 when compared to DVD+RW.
Both, DVD+RW and DVD-RW, formats are re-writable formats. DVD+RW's "sister format" is called DVD+R which is essentially a record-only-once
version of DVD+R. DVD-RW's sister format is called DVD-R DVD-5 - DVD-5 is a single sided single layer DVD that stores up to about 4.7 GB = 4 700 000 000 bytes and that is 4.38 computer GigaBytes
where 1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes(4 700 000 000B/1024 = about 4 589 843KB/1024 = about 4485MB/1024 = about 4.38GB) . Video DVD, DVD-R/W and
DVD+R/W supports this format. Often referred to as "single sided, single layer" DVD-9 - DVD-9 is a single sided dual layer DVD which can fit up to 8.5 GB or 7.95 computer GB which many commercial video DVDs are using
today (a DVD-9 is basicly two pressed plastic DVD-5s pressed together, they are not burned). Video DVD supports this format but DVD-R/W and
DVD+R/W does not support this format. View DVD9 to DVD5 Converter DVD-10 - DVD-10 is a double sided single layer DVD. Video DVD, DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W support this format. Effectively this means that
DVD-10 is a dual-sided DVD-5 and can hold 8.75 gigabytes of data with 4.38 gigabytes on each side. Two-sided discs need to be flipped over
in order to access the other data side. Unfortunately many blank DVD media advertisers mislead customers to believe that these discs are
actually blank DVD-9 discs in hope that they could copy their dual-layer discs directly to blank discs DVD-14 - DVD-14 is an oddball format that doesn't really exist anymore, but was used for a short period of time back in late 1990s and in
early years of new millennium when manufacturing of DVD-18 discs was complicated and expensive. DVD-14 is a two-sided DVD disc that has one
side which contains single layer of data and one side which contains two layers of data. In easier terms, the other side of the disc is DVD-5
and the other side of the disc is DVD-9. DVD-14 disc can hold upto 12.33 gigabytes of data.
Other regular DVD size acronyms are:
-DVD-5
-DVD-9
-DVD-10
-DVD-18 DVD-18 - DVD-18 is a double sided dual layer DVD which can fit up to 17 GB or 15.9 computer GB which some commercial video DVDs are
using today (a DVD-18 is basicly four pressed plastic DVD-5s pressed together, they are not burned). Video DVD supports this format but
DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W does not support this format DVD-Audio - DVD-Audio is one of the standards controlled by DVD Forum, an authority behind various DVD standards. DVD-Audio is music disc,
aimed to replace regular audio CD within next few years. DVD-Audio disc can contain 4 - 18 GBs of data, depending on how many layers and sides
of the disc are used. Regular DVD-Audio disc contains various copy-protection methods and obviously the audio data itself -- audio can be
stored in various formats, including uncompressed (L)PCM format (in frequencies from 44.1kHz upto 192kHz) with bitrates as high as 9.8Mbit/sec.
Other formats allowed include Dolby Digital 5.1, MPEG-1 (stereo, audio layers II and III), MPEG-2 (multichannel), DTS and SDDS.
Another variety of DVD-Audio is called DVD-AudioV which adds a possibility to have regular DVD-Video compliant video on the disc as well.
DVD-Audio discs can't be played with regular DVD-Video players -- the player has to be so-called "Universal DVD" player in order to support
DVD-Audio (obviously if your player has DVD-Audio logo, it supports these discs) DVD-MP3 - This type of disc is created when MP3 audio files are burned on a DVDR/W disc. Some DVD Players can play these discs,
but many so far cannot DVD-R - A DVD Forum (the industry body that controls the development of DVD formats) approved recordable DVD format. Format allows
single-layer data to be stored on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information
(NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and
gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should be 1,024). This poses a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold
dual-layer worth of data per side, 8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD-R discs if all the information has to be preserved from
the original disc. Dual-layer DVD recordables entered the markets in Q2/2004.
DVD-R is technically slightly less advanced than its competitor, DVD+R. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that sales
of DVD-R media will exceed 90,000,000 discs during 2002 while sales of DVD+R media will be only 13,000,000.
Both, DVD-R and DVD+R, formats are write-once formats. DVD-R's "sister format" is called DVD-RW which is essentially a re-writable version
of DVD-R. DVD+R's sister format is called DVD+RW.
DVD-R discs can be read with virtually any PC DVD-ROM drive and with most of the regular, stand-alone DVD players DVD-RW - A DVD Forum (the industry body that controls the development of DVD formats) approved re-writable DVD format. Format allows
single-layer data to be stored on each side of the disc -- in other words, one side of the disc can hold upto 4.38 gigabytes of information
(NOT 4.7GB what the disc labels claim -- 4.7GB is achieved by tweaking the numbers and using 1,000 in calculations between megabyte and
gigabyte, when the correct number to be used should be 1,024). Dual-layer discs that could hold 8.5GB don't exist and most likely never will
due technical limitations. This poses a problem when backing up pressed DVD-Video discs that can hold dual-layer worth of data per side,
8.5GB. Those discs need to be split to two DVD-RW discs if all the information has to be preserved from the original disc.
DVD-RW is technically slightly less advanced than its competitor, DVD+RW. But the year 2002's projections of blank media sales show that
sales of DVD-RW media will dominate the markets with appx. 75 percent re-writable market share.
Both, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, formats are re-writable formats. DVD-RW's "sister format" is called DVD-RW which is essentially a record-once
version of DVD-R. DVD+RW's sister format is called DVD+R.
DVD-RW discs can be read with virtually any PC DVD-ROM drive and with most of the regular, stand-alone DVD players DVD-SVCD - A term that means a hacked, non-standard DVD-Video disc that has SVCD-compatible content on it. Because DVD-Video specs don't
allow using the SVCD resolution (480x480/576), SVCD material is basically impossible to transfer to a DVD-Video disc without re-encoding the
material and therefor lowering the quality.
But some people have found a way to "hack" their way beyond this limitation. This process basically involves modifying the SVCD's MPEG-2
headers so that the material stays the same, but the MPEG-2 header lies about the resolution and claims that it is the same as in CVD
(352x480/576 -- which IS one of the specified DVD-Video resolutions) resolution. This "trick" allows importing SVCD material into DVD
authoring tools and burning the SVCD material on recordable DVD media. The problem is that some, more accurate, DVD players refuse to
play such discs, because they're not within the DVD standards DVD-Video - DVD-Video is the video element of the DVD format DVD-VCD - Actually a very misleading term, since DVD-Video specs clearly state that VCD-encoded video content is perfectly within the
specs of DVD-Video as well (with the exception of audio, which in VCD is 44.1kHz and in DVD 48kHz). But basically, DVD-VCD, is just a "clever"
way to stating that we're speaking of DVD-Video disc that has material on it which has been encoded by using MPEG-1 video format with same
definitions as VCD has (same resolution, same bitrate, etc). If you're interested of transferring your existing VCD movies to a DVD format,
this process is relatively painless -- as stated before, only real difference between VCD and one of the allowed DVD-Video specs is the fact
that the audio frequency needs to be changed from VCD's 44.1kHz to DVD-Video's 48kHz. Read our guide on how to do this EZ-D - EZ-D is a new DVD-Video-compatible optical disc developed by a company called Flexplay. They're (or should be -- currently, 09/2003,
there are no official reports on discs' compatibility issues) fully compatible with DVD-Video specs, but differ from traditional DVD-Video
discs because their dye is made in such way that once opened from airtight container, discs will turn into black within 48hrs and become
unreadable by DVD players. Thus, discs are being called as disposable DVDs. Currently (09/2003) Disney is running trials with these discs
-- read our news story from here (http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4464.cfm) HD-DVD - This is a proposed name for a next generation DVD-Video disc. Currently (spring 2002) industry is fighting over the specs of the
standard -- there are two suggested specifications for the standard which are competing:
suggested by most technology companies is the spec which would continue using MPEG-2 as a video format for the discs, but start using next
generation blue-laser discs instead of old red laser discs
other proposal suggests that companies continue to use the existing DVD media which holds appx. 4.36GB of data per one layer per one side,
but start using MPEG-4 as a compression format instead of currently used MPEG-2 HQ-VCD - One of the "generation 2" video formats that never happened. If you're interested of the SVCD history, please visit
this site ISO image - see Disk image LaserDisc - Semi-digital high-quality video format developed in early 1970's by Philips and MCA that hit the stores in 1978. It used to be
the choice of home video freaks until late 1990's when DVD killed it within two years. LaserDisc (or LD or CDV as it was also known) got
digital sounds in late 1980's and Dolby Surround and DTS sound in 1990's. Most of the Hollywood studios released their titles for LD in 1990's
before DVD revolution. At its peak, U.S. had over 1M LD players and Japan over 4M players and in U.S. there were over 5,000 LD retailers.
The picture quality beats the crap out of VCD, but loses in comparision to DVD-Video -- you could say that it is in par with SuperVCD in terms
of video quality miniDV - The most popular digital camcorder format at the moment miniDVD - miniDVD is not a real format, but a hack instead that uses standalone DVD players' abilities to play back regular CDs. Basically
miniDVD is a regular CD that has the same structure as regular DVD-Video has. Most of the standalone DVD players can be fooled to think that
the disc inserted is a regular DVD-Video disc and to play it.
Biggest problem with miniDVDs is the fact that DVD movies tend to take appx. 4GBs of space and in CD you can just fit ~700MB of data -> one
movie ends up taking 6 or more CDs. Therefor most of the people don't use miniDVDs, but use some other standalone DVD player-compliant formats
instead, like VCDs, SVCDs or their varieties Region codes - in this instance mean flags implemented in DVD-Video discs that determine the geographic area where the DVD-Video
disc is being sold and where it can be watched. Region codes are controlled normally by the DVD players. According to DVD Forum (the association
that controls DVD patents) rules, all DVD-Video capable stand-alone players need to have region control measurements built-in. This means that a
DVD player bought from the manufacturer, which is set to use Europe's region code (region code 2, same as in Japan and in South Africa), can
only play DVD-Video discs that are either region free (region code 0) or have same region as the player (==only discs sold in Japan/Europe/South
Africa work). So, with such player, it is impossible to watch DVDs sold in the U.S. (region code 1, same as in Canada) -- and obviously vice
versa, American DVD players can't be used to watch DVD-Video discs sold in Europe.
The region controls are also implemented in PC's DVD-ROM drives, normally in three levels. First of all, if the DVD-ROM drive is manufactured
after 1st of January, 2000, the drive itself has physical locks implemented in it to permit playback of only specific region code (for more
information about this, read also RPC-1 and RPC-2). Secondly, all newer operating systems, including Windows 2000 and Windows XP, have region
control measurements built-in. And finally, the DVD player software, such as WinDVD or PowerDVD, have region control measurements built-in RPC-1 - RPC-1 term is used to refer to PC's DVD-ROM drives that were built before 1st of January, 2000. Before that date, virtually all
DVD-ROM drives permitted the user to change the region code settings of the drive freely when necessary, thus allowing watching/using
DVD-Video movies from all over the world.
This was changed when the MPAA forced hardware manufacturers to implement a new technology, dubbed as RPC-2 in their drives, that only allows
max. 5 changes in the region code RPC-2 - RPC-2 term is used to refer to PC's DVD-ROM drives that are built after 1st of January, 2000. Before that date, virtually all
DVD-ROM drives permitted the user to change the region code settings of the drive freely when necessary, thus allowing watching/using
DVD-Video movies from all over the world. Those older drives are called as RPC-1 drives.
This was changed when the MPAA forced hardware manufacturers to implement a new technology, dubbed as RPC-2 in their drives, that only allows
max. 5 changes in the region code SACD - See SuperAudioCD SSDL - SSDL stands for Single Sided Dual Layer DVD. For more information, see DVD-9 SSSL - SSSL stands for Single Sided Single Layer DVD. For more information, see DVD-5 SVCD - Super Video CD, mainly used in Asian countries. Uses MPEG2 Video and therefore much better image quality - LaserDisc-like and
also offers High quality surround sound. Furthermore it can take advantage of hardware decoders and there are players for many operating
systems. However there are only a few - mostly Asian made low-end - DVD player that can play SVCD and other than SVCD player which are not
sold in the US and Europe you can only play SVCDs on your computer. Video is MPEG2 at up to 2600kbit/s and audio MPEG1 audio layer 2 up to
224kbit/s. MPEG2 multichannel audio is also possible, but most players will only output 2 channels and those that will pass through 5.1
audio still require that you have an mpeg2 multichannel capable receiver VCD - VCD stands for VideoCD (version 2.0 to be more specific). VideoCD is a standard developed in early 1990's that allows regular CD to
contain 74 minutes of video and audio. Both, video and audio, are encoded in MPEG-1 format and stored on the CD in specific format. VideoCDs
can be played in most of the stand-alone DVD players, in all stand-alone VCD players and in all computers that have CD-ROM drive. This is the
VCD's strong point against DivX format which is based on MPEG-4 audio/video encoding technology.
VideoCD resolution is in PAL format 352 x 288 pixels with 25 frames/second. In NTSC format it is 352 x 240 pixels with 29,97 frames/second
(except in NTSC film format, where the framerate is 23,976 frames/second.
Audio is encoded with bitrate of 224 kbit/sec in MPEG-1 Layer2 format (in both PAL and NTSC versions). Video is encoded with bitrate of 1150
kbit/sec. VideoCDs are pretty rare in western countries -- basically only VCDs you see in the Europe or in the U.S. (except in NYC's Chinatown,
which is a true VCD paradise in middle of the western city :-) are illegal copies or porn movies. On the other hand, VCD is a very popular
method for movie distribution in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.. Some studios release some of their movies officially for VCD
format in Asia. It has almost completely replaced regular VHS format in Asia, because cheap VCD recorders are widely available there.
VideoCD's successor is called SuperVideoCD VCD/DVD Authoring - This is the process of getting a single file or a selection of files into a universally defined structure to be
burnt onto a VCD or DVD that would play in a VCD/DVD player VCD/DVD Burning - Burning is the pocess of writing files or CD/DVD images/ iso onto a VCD or DVD. This requires a CD/DVD writer VCD/DVD image - see Disk image VHS (Vertical Helix Scan) - VHS is the video casette format and technology introduced by JVC in 1976. It is an analog format capable
of delivering 240 lines of video resolution, along with stereo sound that's nearly as good as CD. Blank tapes usually feature either 120
minutes or 160 minutes of recording time at the highest recording speed (6 hours or 8 hours at the slowest speed) VHS (Video Home System) - Video casette format and technology introduced by JVC in 1976. Competed with Sony's BETA format. Eventually
VHS came out as a winner and BETA died out. SVHS (SuperVHS) is an improved, high-resolution VHS standard VideoCD - See VCD XCD - New data CD format which uses CD Mode 2/XA to store data on CD. Basically you can fit more data on single CD than using regular
Mode 1, because Mode 2 doesn't use triple error correction like Mode 1 does. Mode 2 is normally used for VideoCDs and AudioCDs XSVCD (eXtended SuperVideoCD) - XSVCD is same for SVCD as XVCD is for VCD -- an unofficial hack for an existing format, in this case, for
SuperVideoCD. XSVCD is a regular SVCD disc, but instead of staying within SVCD bitrate limits, it pushes the bitrate limits up to the same
level as DVD-Video does, up to 9.8Mbit/sec. With XSVCD you can also use full PAL/NTSC resolution instead of SVCD's regular 480x576 / 480x480
resolution. XSVCD is based on the idea that if standalone DVD player supports SVCD discs, it can read the material from the disc and in other
hand, when DVD player supports regular DVD-Video discs, it must be able to read higher bitrates of MPEG-2 video as well (both, SVCD and
DVD-Video are based on MPEG-2 encoding, so it is the same chip that decodes both formats).
XSVCD's cons include the fact that only very small amount of video can be stored in one CD and the fact that some DVD players don't support it
as it is a hack and not a real format XVCD (eXtended VideoCD) - It is not a real format unlike VideoCD and SuperVideoCD are, but instead it is a hack/extension of VideoCD format.
Instead of using VideoCD's constant bitrate of 1150kbit/sec, the video can use up to 3,5Mbit/sec bitrate, providing better video quality. Also
the resolution can be higher than VideoCD's CIF resolution -- full PAL/NTSC resolution can be used instead.
The problem with XVCD is the fact that it is not a real standard and therefor only some standalone DVD player can play these discs. And of
course using higher bitrate causes the problem that one CD can contain less video and your movies end up taking more CDs (VCD uses
1,1Mbit/sec bitrate and if you use 3,5MBit/sec, obviously the CD can only contain appx. 1/3 of the length VCD can -- average of 25 minutes per CD).
See also XSVCD
Audiographics - is a means to augment telephones with graphics such as shared documents Chrominance - refers to the color components (hue and saturation) of a luminance-based representation of color Conducted conferences - allow one site to be designated as the conductor of the conference. Conducted conferences are sometimes called
"chaired" or "chair controlled" IP (Internet Protocol) - the network level protocol used in the Internet and other computer networks IPX/SPX - stands for "Internet Packet eXchange/Sequenced Packet eX-change," the family of protocols originally used on NetWare networks.
(Some NetWare networks use TCP/IP instead of IPX/SPX, and many NetWare networks use both families of protocols) IRC - IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat and as a standard, it is older Net standard than WWW, being developed in late 1980s in Finland.
IRC and its variations are commonly known as "chat rooms", but very often the whole idea is being missed when describing IRC like that.
Unlike conventional website-specific chats, IRC is actually a network of servers that are connected to each others constantly, creating an
interconnected network between these servers. Users can then login to any of these servers by using an IRC client (most popular IRC client
at the moment is called mIRC which you can download from here). After being connected and selected their nickname, users join to channels
(or chat "rooms" like non-technical people and media love to call them). There can be virtually unlimited number of channels -- each channel
is unique by its name, such as #afterdawn. The hash symbol (#) traditionally always indicates that it means IRC channel name. Each channel
can have virtually unlimited number of users -- each user can be connecting to the channel from different IRC server or from same server or
mix of these. Normally each channel has one or more operators that can "kick" people, i.e. remove them from the channel, assign other users
as operators, change channel's topics, etc. Channels can also require a password, can be hidden from public channel listings and can require
an invitation from existing channel users before a new user can join.
Biggest difference between IRC and instant messaging applications is the fact that all the users on channels normally see everything other
users talk -- i.e. it is real-time, public conversation area (whereas discussion forums aren't real-time and instant messaging is normally
only between two parties, although most of the IM applications support IRC-style group chats as well). In addition to this, IRC also
supports IM-style private messaging between users as well and many old-time IRC users see IM apps just a sidekick of IRC phenomenom.
Apart from being a network of interconnected servers and the protocol for servers and clients to communicate with, IRC also means the whole
thing -- all the IRC networks (as there are several IRC networks where servers are interconnected to other servers within that network, but
that network is not connected to other IRC networks, thus creating separate IRC networks). Biggest IRC networks at the moment are called
EFNet, IrcNet and QuakeNet.
IRC as a standard doesn't suppopt graphics, audio, etc. But it supports file transfers between connected users, using a method called DCC
to transfer data P2P (Peer to Peer) - A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth
of the users of the network rather than one or more servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting computers of end users via largely
ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or
anything in digital format is very common Telecommuting - is the practice of working at home but "commuting" to an office by computer networking and/or videoconferencing Terminal adapter (TA) - is an ISDN device to manage dialing and answering the call (using the D-channel) and convert the bit-serial
data on the B-channels to and from a form suitable for management by the conferencing software
General notion
СС (Creative Commons) - The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work
available for others legally to build upon and share. The Creative Commons website enables copyright holders to grant some of their
rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public
domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information
AKA - Also Know As All-in-One - BTW - But The Way FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions IMHO - I Have My Opinion Q&A - Questions & Answers WWW - World Wide Web
