Kino Terminology
You will find the following terminology used throughout the
documentation and user interface:
- Movie
- A movie is your current project within Kino. Sometimes,
it is referred to as a "playlist." Kino saves movies as SMIL XML—a W3C
XML standard. We suggest that you save movies with a ".smil"
filename extension.
Note: Playlist is a deprecated term. That term applied well
to the old file format, but the new file format is SMIL. SMIL
is much more sophisticated than the term "playlist" implies.
As Kino implements more functionality, the deprecated nature
of the term "playlist" becomes more obvious.
- Scene
- A scene is a continuous sequence of frames. The old,
deprecated term is "sequence." A movie is a collection of
scenes. In capture mode, a scene refers to a segment on tape
between index points.
- Mode/Page
- A mode refers to two things in Kino, depending upon
context. For one, based upon the vi analogy, mode refers to
the keyboard command context: normal or "ex." Secondly, more
commonly a mode refers to one of Kino's major functions, and
the Kino user interface uses a notebook widget with pages for
each mode. Sometimes, a mode is also called a "page," as in
the "capture page." Unlike vi, though, when you press 'i' to
enter input mode, you actually switch to Kino's capture mode.
And since Kino does not capture characters, it uses the same
set of keyboard commands that the edit mode uses for
navigation. See the Command
Reference for more information.
- Frame Dropping
- A video playback technique that reduces the video
framerate to improve audio quality and maintain an overall
rate of playback that is close to the true audio/video
framerate. NTSC = approx. 29.97 frames per second. PAL = 25
frames per second.
- Time Code
- A display of the running time of video that is
frame-accurate yet easier for humans to understand than pure
frame count. It shows hours, minutes, seconds, and frames in
the format HH:MM:SS:FF.
- Drop Frame
- Drop frame is a timecode adjustment that applies to NTSC
video only. Due to the framerate of NTSC, a system that
normally outputs 30 frames per second must adjust timecode by
subtracting two frames every minute except every tenth minute
to achieve the effective framerate. Kino does not currently
perform any drop frame adjustment; perhaps soon it will.
- AutoSplit
- AutoSplit is an alogorithm that detects scene changes.
When AutoSplit is enabled in capture, a new file is created.
When loading a video clip, AutoSplit examines timecode to
look for scene breaks. Nice, eh?
- Dropped Frames
- Dropped frames are frames that are lost during capture.
Try not to do anything else on your computer while capturing
to minimize dropped frames. In preferences, you can disable
the preview during capture to help slower systems. One
developer hacks on Kino using an AMD K6-2 333MHz machine to
ensure that Kino is capable of reliable performance on lower
end machines. If you have dropped frames and not enabled
AutoSplit during capture, then when you load the video into
Kino, the AutoSplit algorithm should detect it and Kino
displays a scene break.
- Fields and Interlacing
- Every frame of non-progressive scan video is composed of
two interleaved fields. The result is either 50 fields per
second for PAL or roughly 60 fields per second for NTSC.
Interleaving means that all of the even lines are in one
field, and all of the odd lines are in another field. The
terms "even" and "odd" field are only useful for illustration
purposes. These terms, however, are not accurate when
discussing field order. Rather, it is best to specify "upper"
or "lower" field first when specifying field order. DV is
lower-field first.
- Inter-field motion
- Due to the field-based nature of interlaced video, motion
in the subjects of the video may result in two different
pictures. This is a good and bad thing. On the positive side,
the playback is smoother. The negative side-effect is that
individual frames of video resulting in a "comb" or "venetian
blinds" effect leading some viewers to believe the image is
blurred or just plain "wrong." Applying most image processing
effects to interleaved pictures produces disastrous results.
GIMP provides a de-interlace filter that may improve the
quality of your still frames.
- Aspect Ratio
- There are two kinds of aspect ratio: frame aspect ratio
and pixel aspect ratio. Frame aspect ratio is the proportion
of width and height of a picture typically expressed given a
square pixel aspect ratio. Most video is 4:3, but 16:9 is
becoming increasingly popular. Kino currently only supports
4:3. A 640 pixels wide by 480 pixels high image has a 4:3
frame aspect ratio. However, the 4:3 DV frame aspect ratio is
either 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL). Therefore, DV pixels
are NOT square whereas most computer display resolutions use
square pixels. Using the XVideo display method, Kino blindly
assumes you are using a square pixel display resolution and
compensates for the differences in pixel aspect ratio to
achieve a better looking preview. However. Kino still capture
and still frames export functions do not compensate for pixel
aspect ratio. Therefore, you should scale (resample) the
image in your image editor (e.g. GIMP) before using it. You
can scale to any size by simply using a calculator. If you
know, the height you want multiply it by (4/3) to get the
width. If you know the width you want, multiply by (3/4) to
get the height. Then, simply force the scale function into
those sizes. You might have to tell the image editor to
unlock the aspect ratio of the picture.
- Scrub Bar/Transport Controls/Shuttle
- See User Interface.
- USB Jog/Shuttle device
- A specialized input controller for video editing. It
consists of a wheel with a ring around it. The wheel actually
more closely resembles a dial and provides bi-directional,
very fine, frame-based navigation. The shuttle ring wraps
around the wheel, and it is spring loaded such that when when
released it "snaps" back to the center position. The shuttle
provides bi-directional, variable speed playback including
fast, normal, and slow speeds. Often, a video deck that
supports these commands calls this a "trick play" mode.
Usually, these devices also contain additional programmable
buttons typically mapped to editing commands. Kino supports
two USB Jog/Shuttle control devices both in the edit and
capture modes. In capture mode, Kino supports the IEEE-1394
AV/C commands required to control your camera or deck's
transport mechanism. Cool, huh?
Adobe has a good
online glossary of digital video terms.
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