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Glossary |
16mm Film Projector - A 16mm motion picture film projector, which may have a sound track.
35mm Slide Projector - A projector used for projecting 35mm film slides.
35mm Slide Converter - A slide projector equipped with a camera that allows slides to be displayed through an LCD projector and or monitor.
AVI - Audio Video Interleaved - A multimedia file format for storing sound and moving pictures in RIFF format developed by Microsoft. An AVI file can use different codecs and formats so there is no set format for an AVI file unlike for example standard VCD video which sets a standard for resolution, bitrates, and codecs used.
Boundry Microphone - A boundry microphone is used to record a large area. It is useful in recording an audience or a panel table discussion, however, it will also pick up any unwanted room noise such as air handling equipment.
Analog Phone Jack - A phone line that is not digital. We need an analog phone line to use with our speaker phones.
Bitmap - A representation, consisting of rows and columns of dots, of a graphics image in computer memory. The value of each dot (whether it is filled in or not) is stored in one or more bits of data. For simple monochrome images, one bit is sufficient to represent each dot, but for colors and shades of gray, each dot requires more than one bit of data. The more bits used to represent a dot, the more colors and shades of gray that can be represented.
Bitrate - Bitrate or Bit Rate is the average number of bits that one second of video or audio data will consume. Higher bitrate means bigger file size and generally better video or audio quality while lower bitrate means lower file size but worse video or audio quality.
Capture - To capture video to a hard drive. This can include firewire capture from DV cameras.
CD Audio Recorder - A digital audio recording device that records audio onto a CD Rom.
Codec - An acronym for "compression/decompression", a codec is an algorithm or specialized computer program that encodes or reduces the number of bytes consumed by large files and programs. Files encoded with a specific codec require the same codec for decoding.
Compression - The process of removing redundancies in digital data to reduce the amount that must be stored or transmitted. Lossless compression removes only enough redundancy so that the original data can be recreated exactly as it was. Lossy compression sacrifices additional data to achieve greater compression.
Digital - Any system that uses a binary numeration system to perform an operation.
Digital Editing - A computer system designed to import or capture video, edit the video and then export the edited video to another format.
Digital Phone Jack - A digital phone line that connects to a digital phone system.
DVD - A DVD or digital versatile disc, is the next generation of optical disc storage technology. It's essentially a bigger, faster CD that can hold cinema-like video, better-than-CD audio, and computer data.
Data/Video Projector - An LCD or DLP projector, for displaying video or computer data.
Document Camera - A camera mounted on a stand, allowing for capture of text or 3-dimensional objects. The image is typically displayed through an LCD projector.
Firewire - FireWire is a fast peripheral interconnect standard capable of transfer speeds up to 400 Mbs. It works well for multimedia peripherals such as DV (Digital Video) cameras and other high-speed devices like the latest hard disk drives, CD/DVD burners and printers.
JPEG - JPEG is a standardized image compression mechanism. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the original name of the committee that wrote the standard. JPEG is designed for compressing either full-color or gray-scale images.
Lavaliere Microphone - Sometimes called a tie clip or clip on microphone that can be either hard wired or wireless.
MPEG - MPEG which stands for Moving Picture Experts Group, is the name of family of standards used for coding audiovisual information (e.g., movies, video, music) in a digital compressed format. The major advantage of MPEG compared to other video and audio coding formats is that MPEG files are much smaller for the same quality. This is because MPEG uses very sophisticated compression techniques.
Microphone Mixer - An audio device with multiple inputs for microphones or other audio equipment.
MiniDV - Mini DV is a video cassette designed for use in MiniDV digital camcorders. The picture quality of digital video (DV) recorded on a Mini DV cassette is basically identical or better to the quality of DV recorded on a Hi8 or 8mm cassette by a Digital8 camcorder. Mini DV can have up to 530 lines of video resolution for some camcorder models.
Overhead Projector - A projector used to display 8 1/2” x 11” transparencies or x-ray images.
P.A. System - An audio system for an auditorium or a room. We have portable systems that can be used almost anywhere.
Podium Microphone - A hard wire or wireless microphone that is mounted to a podium.
Polycom Speaker Phone - An analog speaker phone system that can conference call up to 2 other phone lines.
Resolution - The number of picture elements (pixels) that can be reproduced with good definition.
Streaming Video - Compressed video that can be put on the web for viewing.
S-VHS - A videotaping format that uses S-VHS tape that produces a higher quality image than standard VHS.
Teleconferencing - At its simplest, a teleconference can be an audio conference with one or both ends of the conference sharing a speaker phone. With considerably more equipment and special arrangements, a teleconference can be a conference, called a videoconference, in which the participants can see still or video images of each other.
Time Code Window Dub - A copy of a video tape that displays the video time code on the screen enabling the viewer to select segments when editing.
Transcoding - A more technical term would be "The reformatting of content, without changing the source, to another type of content - most often of a different format than the original.
VGA Cable - A cable that connects a laptop to a data / video Projector.
VCD - VCD stands for 'Video Compact Disc' and basically it is a CD that contains moving pictures and sound. If you're familiar with regular audio/music CDs, then you will know what a VCD looks like. A VCD has the capacity to hold up to 74/80 minutes on 650MB/700MB CDs respectively of full-motion video along with quality stereo sound. VCD’s use an encoding standard called MPEG-1 to store the video and audio. A VCD can be played on almost all standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player.
VCR - Videocassette recorder (can be 3/4", U-Matic, 1/2", 8mm, Hi-8).
Videoconferencing - A videoconference is a live connection between people in separate locations for the purpose of communication, usually involving audio and often text as well as video. At its simplest, videoconferencing provides transmission of static images and text between two locations. At its most sophisticated, it provides transmission of full-motion video images and high-quality audio between multiple locations.
Wireless Microphone - A lavaliere or hand held microphone that is connected to a transmitter that sends the signal to a receiver that is connected to an audio system.