Glossary -B-
Baby boom — Small boom stand for holding a microphone.
Back focus — The distance between the lens and the pickup chip; To remain in focus while zooming, the lens’ back focus must be adjusted precisely. Also, the act of adjusting a lens’ back focus.
Background generator — SEG circuit that adds color to a black background, useful for keying words onto a colored background.
Backhaul — The act of sending a program or newsfeed via satellite from a local area back to the main distribution area for rebroadcasting via satellite.
Backlight — Light coming from behind a subject. Also a control on a TV camera which improves a backlit picture (keeps it from looking like a silhouette). 6]
Backlight — Lighting instrument that illuminates the subject from behind, creating a rim of light around the edges of the subject. The back light usually has barn doors for precise control of light’s direction.
Backspace — Act of moving a video tape backward slightly. Helpful in producing glitchless (clean, smooth) edits.
Backspace — Move a tape backwards a ways and park it in preparation for an edit; give the tape space for the preroll.
Balanced line — An audio cable with three wires, two inside a shield. Corresponding connectors have three prongs.
Ballast — An electrical transformer that properly conditions the electrical power to run HMI lights.
Band — A range of radio frequencies used for a certain type of communications.
Band — A set of related frequencies. UHF (ultrahigh frequency) is one band 470-890 MHz (megahertz).
Band separator/joiner — Electrical device which separates combined bands (like VHF, UHF, FM) into separate bands (like FM alone) or combines separate bands so the signal can travel on a single cable.
Banding — A picture artifact or fault whereby smooth brightness or color gradients appear to be comprised of bands of brightness or color, often the result of too few bits used to represent each sample of a picture. Banding could make a billiard ball look like a sliced onion.
Bandwidth — Electromagnetic “room” for TV channels or computer data on a wire, cable, fibre, or airwave.
Bandwidth — The range of frequencies over which a circuit or electronic device can function properly. NTSC bandwidth is 4.2 MHz, meaning the signals can have frequencies ranging between 0 vibrations per second and 4.2 million vibrations per second.
Barn doors — Metal flaps on a lighting instrument that can be closed or opened to direct the light, and shade areas where light is undesirable.
Barrel connector — An adapter with a socket at each end which allows two cables to be connected together.
Baseband audio and video — Composite video and audio, not RF modulated.
Basic level videodisc player — Like a movie, this videodisc and player can only start at the beginning and play to the end of a program. There is no interactivity.
Basic service — Inexpensive lineup of local TV channels and access channels.
Bass — Low frequency sound.
BAUD — Bits per second transmitted or received by a modem.
Bayonet mount — Lens-to-camera connection popular on professional cameras.
Beaded screen — Projection screen covered with tiny glass beads (looks like white sandpaper); has a gain of 2 or 3.
Below-the-line costs — Ongoing costs realized whether a production company is doing a show or not. Overhead. Examples: staff engineering and production personnel, equipment amortization, telephone, taxes.
Betacam — Aging popular professional camcorder format using betamax-like cassettes, recording separate colors at high tape speed for high quality. Expensive.
Betacam SP — Component VCR format using Betacam cassettes.
Betacam-SP — Improved version of betacam, downwardly compatible with it, very popular among professionals.
Betamax — Introduced by Sony, nearly extinct, 1/2-inch consumer videocassette format.
Bezier patch — Grid upon which flat objects are “pasted”. By stretching or bending the grid, objects will stretch, bend, or morph.
Binary — Counting system based on two levels, 0 and 1, used by computers and other digital equipment.
Bit — A Binary digit, a 0 or 1, representing a no or a yes answer to a question. A bit is the smallest piece of information a computer understands.
Bitmap — Image stored as pixels mapped across the screen.
Black balance — Color camera adjustment which makes blacks pure black (not tinted one color or another).
Blacked tape — A video recording of black, used to prepare a tape for insert editing.
Blanking — One of the sync signals that determines the size of the black sync bar at the bottom of the TV picture.
Blocking — Planning out everyone’s position and movement for the show.
Blue gun — Used with color bar test signals, this calibration switch on a TV monitor activates only the electron guns for the blue phosphors; for adjusting color hue and saturation.
Blue pedestal — Control on a color camera CCU which adjusts the amount of blue signal the camera makes when it “sees” no blue. Similar controls for red and green may exist. Used in balancing black levels.
Blur — Adobe paint tool for softening parts of a picture. Blue softens the unrealistically hard edges of some modified graphics.
BMI — Broadcast Music, Inc.-an agency that licenses the use of copyrighted music.
BMP — Bitmap format for an image file, capable of handling 16 colors, 256 colors, or True color. BMPs are a subset of Windows DIB format, but do not support image compression.
BNC — The most popular industrial connector used for video or sync. Sometimes used for RF.
Boolean operation — Process of forming an object by intersecting two other 3-D objects.
Boom — An arm that sticks out, often with a mike hung on the end.
Boost — Camera control which makes it extrasensitive in dim light.
Border — Split screen effect which makes a visible line (of chosen width and color) between the pictures sharing the screen.
Bow tie — Portable TV antenna which looks like a bow tie, used for UHF stations.
Bps — Bits per second, the speed data travels through a wire or device.
Branch — A step in a flowchart or CAI program where a choice is made, and the viewer follows one of several alternate routes through the program.
Breakaway or split edit or L-cut — An edit where the audio and video do not automatically switch together; they are switched in separate operations, perhaps one occurring before the other.
BRI — Basic Rate Interface, ISDN phone line with two 64kbps channels and one 16kbps channel.
Bulk tape eraser — Large electromagnet used for erasing (demagnetizing) an entire reel or cassette of audio or video tape at once. The procedure takes about 4 seconds.
Bump map — Texture map data describing the instructions for how shadows will be made by the bumpiness of the surface.
Burn in — A spot, streak, or blemish on the TV screen which remains even when the camera is focused on a new scene. TV screen burn-ins are usually caused by displaying a contrasty object for too long. Aiming the camera at a very bright object like the sun can burn-in the CCD chip.
Burst — One of the sync signals to control the hue and color accuracy of TV pictures.
Burst — Part of the sync signal controlling the hue and color accuracy of TV pictures. It is a reference signal used by TVs and other video equipment as the benchmark for what all the hues should be.
Burst phase — Control on a color camera CCU (or other video gear) that adjusts the timing of the burst signal and thus varies the color hues in the picture.
Bus — A channel or a group of related buttons on a switcher/SEG.
Bus — Computer’s network of circuits to move data from one part of its “brain” to another for processing.
Butterfly or Overhead — Large sheet of diffusion material usually erected like a tent over the subject to soften light.
Byte — Eight bits, usually the number of bits necessary to represent an alpha numeric character like the letter A (which happens to be 01000001).
