Unit 1 Digital Content

Unicode

A 16-bit character representation code that can rep more than 65,000 characters

Digital camera

A camera that takes and stores a digital image instead of recording onto film

True Color

A color image with a color depth of 24 bits or 32 bits. Each pixel in a true Color image can be displayed using any of 16.7 million different colors

Lossless compression

A compression technique that is able to reconstitute all of the data in the original file; hence 'lossless' means that this compression technique does not lose data

Audio player

A device or software program that plays files containing audio data in one or more formats, such as MP3 or WAV

scanner

A device that converts a printed image into a bitmap graphic

Digital-to-analog converter

A device that converts digital data, such as 1s and 0s, in an audio file into continuous data, such as audio sounds

Digitizing tablet

A device that provides a flat surface for a paper-based drawing and a "pen" used to create hand-drawn vector drawings

MP3

A file format that provides highly compressed audio files with a very little loss of sound quality

WebM

A multimedia container format designed for HTML5 projects

MOV

A multimedia file format, popular for digital videos, that works with QuickTime software

Ogg Theora

A non-proprietary container format (Ogg) and video codec (Theora

Pixel interpolation

A process that is used by graphics software to average the color of adjacent pixels in an image, usually when the image is enlarged

Wireframe

A representation of a 3-D object using seperate lines, which resemble wire, to create a model

Digital Video

A series of still frames stored sequentially in a digital format by assigning values to each pixel in a frame

Delimiter

A special character used to separate commands or formatting characters from the rest of the text in a file

Ray tracing

A technique by which light and shadows are added to a 3-D image

3-D graphics

A type of digital graphics format that displays a three-dimensional image in a two-dimensional space

Phoneme

A unit of sound that is a basic component of words and is produced by speech synthesizers

UTF-8

A variable-length coding scheme that uses seven bits for common ASCII characters, but uses 16-but Unicode as necessary

Upconverting

Adding pixel data to video frames to increase the resolution

byte

An 8-bit unit of data that reps a single character

WAV

An audio file format with the .wav extension that was Windows' original "native" sound format

Vector graphic

An image generated from descriptions that specify the position, length, and direction in which lines and shapes are drawn

Bitmap graphic

An image, such as a digital photo, that is stored as a gridwork of colored dots

Image histogram

An interactive graph that can be used to adjust the colors in a digital photo

Ogg Vorbis

An open source audio file format

Lossy compression

Any data compression technique in which some of the data is sacrificed to obtain more compression

Image compression

Any technique that is used to reduce the size of a file that holds a graphic

Synthesized sond

Artificially created sound, usually found in MIDI music or synthesized speech

Digital compositing

Assembling parts from multiple digital images into a single image

letterbox

Black bars added to a video file to fit it into a different aspect ratio

Pixelation

Describes the effect of increasing the size of an image until smooth edges become jagged

Resolution dependent

Graphics, such as bitmaps, in which the quality of the image is dependent on the number of pixels constituting the image

Intraframe compression

In a digital video, compression that takes place within a single frame, similar to the compression used for still images.

Cloning

In context of digital graphics, the process of replicating a section of an image, often used to cover blemishes or fill in backgrounds

photosites

In digital photography, each photosite is a single point on an image capture chip, equivalent to one pixel

Rendering

In graphics software, the process of creating a 3-D solid image by covering a wireframe drawing and applying computer-gengerated highlights and shadows

RAW

In the context of digital graphics, a file that contains unprocessed image data directly from a digital camera's sensors

Frame

In the context of digital video, one of the sequential images that are combined to produce video footage

Character data

Letters, symbols, or numerals that will not be used in arithmetic operations (name, Social Security number, etc)

Vector

Lines and curves that form simple shapes

Codec

Short for compressor/ decompressor; a hardware or software routine that compresses and decompresses digital graphics, sound, and video files.

Interframe compression

Shrinking the size of a video by removing redundant data that is the same in two successive frames

Extended ASCII

Similar to ASCII but with 8-bit character representation instead of 7-bit allowing for an additional 128 characters

Text-to-speech software

Software that generates speech based on written text that is played back through a computer's sound card

Audio plugin

Software that works in conjunction with a browser to play audio that is accessed from websites

Live stream

Streaming data that carries an event happening in real time

On-demand stream

Streaming media that starts and stops when requested, as opposed to a live stream

Audio compression

Techniques used to reduce the size of files that contain audio data

ASCII text

Text files that contain no embedded formatting codes

MIDI messages

The commands that create MIDI music by specifying the note to play, its duration, and the instrument that plays it

Container formats

The formats for files that hold multiple types of media files, such as a video & audio

BMP

The native bitmap graphics file format of Mircrosoft Windows

Bit rate

The number of bits that are transmitted or processed per unit of time (usually per second); usually measured as bps (bits per second)

Color depth

The number of bits that determines the range of possible colors that can be assigned to each pixel. Ex: an 8-bit color depth can create 256 colors

Frame rate

The number of frames that are displayed in a video per second

Image resolution

The number of pixels in an image, usually expressed as horizontal pixels x vertical pixels

Sampling rate

The number of times per second a sound is measured during the recording process

Clipping path

The outline of an object in a digital image that can be used to cut out out the object from its background

Speech synthesis

The process by which computers produce sound that resembles spoken words

Speech recognition

The process by which computers recognize voice patterns and words, and then convert them to digital data

Alpha blending

The process of combining a foreground color with background colors as when an image is pasted onto background and the edges are blended to look more natural

video capture

The process of converting analog video signals into digital data stored on a hard drive

Transcoding

The process of converting audio and video files from one digital format to another, such as converting an MOV file into a Flash video file

Digital audio extraction

The process of copying files from an audio CD and converting them into a format that can be stored and accessed from a computer storage device, such as hard disk; sometimes referred to as ripping

Inpainting

The process of reconstructing missing parts of digital images, usually by means of an algorithm built into graphics software

Data compression

The process of shrinking the size of a file by removing data or recoding it more efficiently

Rasterization

The process of superimposing a grid over a vector image and determining the color depth for each pixel

Download

The process of transferring a copy of a file from a remote computer to a local computer's storage device

Aspect ratio

The ratio of the width and height of an image or display screen

digital cinematography

The use of digital cameras and storage to produce high-quality digital films.

RGB color model

The use of red, green, and blue light that can be combined to create the full spectrum of colors

Interlaced scan

The way a display device builds an image by showing every other row of pixels, then going back and filling in the remaining rows.

digital audio

music or voice that has been digitized into files using sampling techniques; sometimes referred to as waveform audio

OCR

(optical character recognition) The ability of a device or software to digitize text from printed sources

Compression ratio

5:1 indicating the amount of compression that has been applied to a file. High compression ratios such as 35:1 indicate more compression so data can be contained in smaller files.

AAC

(Advanced Audio Coding) A file format provides highly compressed audio files with a very little loss of sound quality and is promoted by Apple on its iTunes Web site.

ASF

(Advanced Systems Format) Microsoft's proprietary container format for streaming digital multimedia; typically holds WMV and WMA files

ASCII

(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) A code that reps characters as a series of 1s and 0s. Most computers use ASCII code to represent text, making it possible to transfer data between computers

AVI

(Audio Video Interleave) A video file format, developed by Microsoft, that was once the most common format for desktop video on the PC

CDDA

(Compact Disc Digital Audio) An optical disc recording format for audio CDs

Gigabyte

(GB) Approx. 1 billion bytes; exact;y 1,024 megabytes (1,073,741,824 bytes)

Gigabit

(Gb or Gbit) Approx. 1 billion bits, exactly 1,024 megabits

GIF

(Graphics Interchange Format) A bitmap graphics file format, popularized by CompuServe, for use on the Web

JPEG

(Joint Photographic Experts Group) A format that uses lossy compression to store bitmap images. JPEG files have a .jpg extension

Kilobyte

(KB) Approx 1,000 bytes; exactly 1,024 bytes

Kilobit

(Kbit or Kb) 1024 bits

Megabyte

(MB) Approx 1 million bytes; exactly 1,048,576 bytes

Megabit

(Mb or Mbit) 1,048,576 bits

MPEG

(Moving Picture Experts Group) A family of highly compressed container file formats and codecs for digital multimedia; MPEG-1, MPEG-2 & MPEG-4

MIDI

(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) A standardized way in which sound and music are encoded and transmitted between digital devices that play music

Pixel

(Picture Element) The smallest unit in a graphic image. Computer display devices use a matrix of pixels to display text and graphics

PNG

(Portable Network Graphics) A type of graphics file format similar to but newer than GIF and JPEG

Run-length encoding

(RLE) A graphics file compression technique that looks for patterns of bytes and replaces them with messages that describe the patterns

SVG

(Scalable Vector Graphics) A graphics format designed specifically for Web display that automatically resizes when displayed on different screens

TIFF

(Tagged Image File Format) A bitmap image file format with the .tif extension that automatically compresses the file data

VOB

(Video Object) An industrystandard video format for standalone DVD players

WMA

(Windows Media Audio) A file format with the .wma extension that is promoted by Mircrosoft and provides highly compressed audio files with very little loss of sound quality.

CCD

(charged-coupled device) One of the components in a digital camera that captures light from an image and converts it into color data