Glossary
The words of video
The terms of editing, motion design and social media, explained simply, each with a concrete example.
- Aspect ratio
- The relationship between a video’s width and height: 9:16 vertical, 1:1 square, 16:9 horizontal.
- B-roll
- Supporting footage laid over speech: you still hear the person, but you see what they are talking about.
- Brand guidelines
- A brand’s visual rules: colours, fonts, logo and how to use them, so it is recognised at a glance.
- Call to action
- The prompt at the end of a video: what the viewer should do next, said clearly (follow, book, open a link).
- Clip
- A short excerpt taken from a longer video (talk, podcast, webinar, livestream) that makes sense on its own.
- Colour grading
- Adjusting a video’s colours, light and contrast, shot by shot, so it looks right and consistent.
- Easing
- The speed curve of an animation: movement that speeds up and slows down instead of travelling at a constant rate.
- Frames per second (fps)
- The number of images a video shows each second, usually 25, 30, 50 or 60; also called the frame rate.
- Hook
- The very first seconds of a video, built to stop the thumb scrolling through the feed.
- Jump cut
- A cut within the same shot that makes the picture “jump”: a pause or a stumble is removed without changing the framing.
- Keyframe
- A fixed point in time where you set an element’s position, size or opacity; the animation fills in everything in between.
- Kinetic typography
- Text that moves in time with the voice: words appear, grow or travel across the screen to carry the message.
- Lower third
- The caption in the lower part of the picture that introduces a person or a topic: name, job, place.
- Motion design
- The craft of animating text, shapes and illustrations to explain an idea on video, without filming anything.
- Reel
- A short vertical video posted on Instagram or Facebook, made to be discovered in a scrolling feed.
- Resolution
- The number of pixels that make up the picture, such as 1920 × 1080 (1080p, “Full HD”) or 3840 × 2160 (4K).
- Retention rate
- The share of viewers still watching at each moment of a video; its curve shows where people drop off.
- Rushes
- The raw files straight from the camera or phone, before any editing: every take, the bad ones included.
- Script
- The written text of the video before filming or animation: what will be said, in what order, and what will be seen.
- Short
- A short vertical video posted on YouTube, in the Shorts section, alongside the channel’s long videos.
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