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
