Glossary - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 723

Topic Description

one motor spinning at 1500 RPM with another bolted to
the same chassis that is spinning at 1200 RPM will generate a
300 Hz of rattling noise. A computer monitor set to scan at 60
Hz with a florescent lamp shining on it that is running at 50 Hz
(European mains frequency) will exhibit a 10-Hz flicker.

Betacam A family of video recorders used for professional work and

made by Sony. The latest models use IMX format. The Betacam
family includes Digital Betacam, which is often refered to as
Digibeta or d-Beta.

Bézier Named after a French mathematician, this is a kind of curve that

is generated mathematically. Sometimes called Spline curves,
they are much used in interpolation software. Useful for spatial,
temporal, and color interpolation.

B-frame A bi-directional difference frame.

BIFS Binary Format for Scenes. Derived from VRML but represented

in a binary form as the scene description within MPEG-4.

Bit Binary digit. The smallest representable quantity inside a

computer system.

Bit rate The number of bits that can be transported per second is

described as a bit rate. Some common speeds are 56K (for
dial-up modems), 384K (for most video-conferencing), and 10
Mbps (for a low-speed Ethernet). Faster Ethernet circuits run at
100 and 1000 Mbps.

Bit stream The output of a video-compression coder.

Bitmap A description of an area of picture elements or pixels. This

would more accurately be called a pixmap.

BKSTS British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society.

Block Usually taken to mean a macroblock.

BPS Bits per second.

Broadband A telecommunications connection, usually to the home or small

office, that provides transfer data rates of between 500 Kbps and
2 bps. Speeds in excess of 8 Mbps and even as high as 25 Mbps
are speculated about for the future.

BSI British Standards Institute.

Byte A collection of 8 bits gathered together and manipulated as a

single unit.

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