Home > Glossary
| DVD | DVD-R | DVD-RW | Bitrate | CSS | VOB | IFO |
| HD-DVD | Blueray | H.264 | Xvid | Framerate | NTSC | PAL |
| VHS | S-VHS | ISO | DAT | AVI | FLV | MOV |
| MKV | MOD |
DVD: DVD+Recordable define a standard for recordable DVD drives and media defined by the DVDRW Alliance. Often called "plus R", the format is writing once (compared to DVD+RW which can be erased and rewritten). The single sided discs can hold 4,700,000,000 bytes (4.38 Gigabytes at 1024 bytes to the kilobyte) with double sided discs holding twice as much. There are no dual layer single sided recordable discs. This format competes with the DVD Forum DVD-R specification. DVDRhelp DVDR information.
DVD-R: DVD+Recordable define a standard for recordable DVD drives and media defined by the DVDRW Alliance. Often called "plus R", the format is writing once (compared to DVD+RW which can be erased and rewritten). The single sided discs can hold 4,700,000,000 bytes (4.38 Gigabytes at 1024 bytes to the kilobyte) with double sided discs holding twice as much. There are no dual layer single sided recordable discs. This format competes with the DVD Forum DVD-R specification. DVDRhelp DVDR information.
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. Some bitrate examples in common video and audio files:
MP3 about 128 kbps (kilobits per second)
VCD about 1374 kbps
DVD about 4500 kbps
DV about 25 Mbps (megabits per second).
MP3 about 128 kbps (kilobits per second)
VCD about 1374 kbps
DVD about 4500 kbps
DV about 25 Mbps (megabits per second).
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.
VOB: All DVD movies are stored in on a DVD video disc in so-called VOB files. VOB files usually contain multiplexed Dolby Digital audio and MPEG-2 video. 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
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in a subdirectory labelled VIDEO_TS (all upper case).
IFO: is a DVD information file that stores information about Chapters, Subtitles and Audio Tracks. Other DVD files include VOB and BUP files.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 MPEG2 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.
HD DVD: HD DVD (High Density DVD or High Definition DVD) is a next-generation optical disc format designed for high-density storage of high-definition video and data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-DVD
Blueray: A Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format designed for high-density storage of high-definition video and data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
H.264: H.264 is known as MPEG4 AVC, The standard is expected to offer up to twice the compression of the current MPEG4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile), in addition to improvements in perceptual quality. The H.264 standard can provide DVD-quality video at under 1 Mbps, and is considered promising for full-motion video over wireless, satellite, and ADSL Internet connections.
Xvid: is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. It's not a product but an open source project which is developed and maintained by people around the world.
Framerate: Frames per second. A measure of the rate at which pictures are shown for a motion video image. In NTSC and PAL video, each frame is made up of two interlaced fields.
NTSC: Abbreviation of National Television Standards Committee. The NTSC is responsible for setting television and video standards in the United States (in Europe and other parts of the world, the dominant television standards are PAL and SECAM). The NTSC standard for television defines a composite video signal with a refresh rate of 60 fields (half-frames interlaced) per second. Each frame contains 525 lines and can contain 16 million different colors. The resolution of an NTSC VCD is 352x240 pixels, an NTSC SVCD is 480x480, and an NTSC full D1 DVD is 704 or 720 x 480.
PAL: Short for Phase Alternating Line, the dominant television standard in Europe. The United States uses a different standard, NTSC. PAL delivers 625 lines at 50 fields (half-frames interlaced) per second. The resolution of a PAL VCD is 352x288 pixels, a PAL SVCD is 480x576, and a PAL full D1 DVD is 704 or 720 x 576.
VHS: VHS an analog format capable of delivering 240 lines of video resolution, along with stereo sound that's nearly as good as CD (in dynamic range and frequency response). 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 and VCR's are slowly being phased out in favor of DVD players and other digital tape media.
S-VHS: S-VHS, which stands for Super VHS, is an analog consumer videotape format developed by JVC and introduced in 1987 as a successor to the popular VHS (Video Home System) format. S-VHS offers two distinct advantages over VHS. Use of a higher quality tape provides a higher bandwidth, resulting in more detail preserved on each TV scanline. In addition, the use of S-Video (instead of composite video) to connect a S-VHS deck to a TV results in the native luminance / chrominance separation in both S-VHS and standard VHS being preserved, which also improves the image on your TV.
ISO: Besides the standards organization, this is a CD/DVD image format somewhat similar to a BIN/CUE image fileset, but the one single .ISO file contains both: the data and the CD/DVD layout information. These types of images can be burned with several CD /DVD burning programs.
DAT: DAT is used to refer to a certain tape backup format. But in audio/video terminology it normally refers to files that VideoCD has in its SEGMENT or MPEGAV directories. 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.
AVI: Stands for Audio Video Interleaved, 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.
FLV: SWF is not the only Flash format. FLV files (Flash Video Files) are a binary file format that delivers "bitmapped" video, limited to one video and one audio stream per file, over the Internet to the Macromedia Flash Player version 7. FLV content may also be associated with SWF files by ActionScript external references. FLV format can also imported into Macromedia Flash Authoring tool. Unlike SWF format, FLV do not have maximum of 16000 frames limitation and ideally for large video file size.
MOV: QuickTime Content (.mov, .qt) a file format developed by Apple Computer to create, edit, publish, and view multimedia files. QuickTime supports video, animation, graphics, 3D and virtual reality (VR).
MKV: MKV format (Matroska Video) is an entirely free video format. More precisely, it is a container (hence the name Matroska, in reference to the Russian dolls contained within another) making it possible to contain video (DivX, Xvid, RV9, etc), sound (MP3, MP2, AC3, Ogg, AAC, DTS, PCM), as well as subtitles (SRT, ASS, SSA, USF, etc) in the same file.
