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.
- Shot
- A piece of video filmed without interruption, from when the camera starts to when it stops, or from one cut to the next.
- Sound design
- Working on every sound in a video other than the voice: sound effects, ambience and silence.
- Split screen
- Two or more pictures shown at once in the same frame, side by side or one above the other.
- Storyboard
- The video sketched frame by frame before it is made: every key moment, with what you hear and what you read.
- Subtitles
- The text of what is said, shown on screen at the same time as the voice, so the video can be followed with the sound off.
- Thumbnail
- The still image that stands for a video before it plays: on a profile, in search results or in a feed.
- Transition
- How you move from one shot or scene to the next: a straight cut, a fade, a slide, a zoom…
- Vertical video
- Video taller than it is wide, in 9:16 (1080 × 1920 pixels), made to fill the screen of a phone held upright.
- Voice-over
- A voice you hear without seeing the person speaking: it tells the story while the picture shows something else.
- Zoom
- Enlarging the picture, with the lens or later in the edit, to bring the eye closer to a face or a detail.
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