Glossary -F-
F connector — A small socket or plug used for RF or TV signals.
Fade out — Make a TV picture smoothly grow black.
Fade — TV picture smoothly turns black (fade-out) or black smoothly turns to a TV picture (fade-in).
Fade up — Make a TV picture smoothly grow from black to normal.
Fader — A slider or handle on a switcher that allows you to fade in or fade out a picture or dissolve from one picture to another.
Falloff — The rate at which a light’s brightness diminishes with distance. Fluorescent lights have a rapid falloff, a spotlight has very little falloff.
Feed antenna or focal point antenna — The tiny microwave antenna that collects the signal bounced off the dish.
Feedback — A loud screech coming from a loudspeaker when sound enters a microphone, gets amplified, and then comes out the speaker only to be picked up again by the microphone and amplified more.
Feedhorn or “Feed” — Funnel-like apparatus on a dish antenna that holds the actual receiving antenna.
Fiber (or fibre) optic — Glass fiber, able to transmit light waves long distances, enables signals, coded into the light beam, to carry computer data or TV channels.
Fiber optics — Technique of converting a signal (such as audio or video) to a light beam and sending it down a hair-thin strand of glass. Light beams can travel several miles without amplification. The signal is then converted from light back to an electrical signal.
Field dominance — A determination of which field (the odd or the even) is used first when a videodisc player creates a still frame from two video fields.
Field one dominance — Attribute of a still frame using the odd field as the first of two fields which comprise the whole picture frame.
Field — The TV picture created in one-sixtieth of a second by scanning an electron gun over every other line in the picture. In the United States there are 262-1/2 odd-numbered lines in a field, followed by 262-1/2 more even-numbered lines making the next field one-sixtieth of a second later. The two fields together make a frame, a complete TV picture.
Field two dominance — Attribute of a videodisc still frame which uses the even field first, and then the following odd field to create a still frame.
File extension — Last part of a computer file name that comes after the dot. BMP is the file extension for the file MYFILE. BMP and tells us that this file is a bitmap (a digitally coded image).
Fill light — Soft broad light whose main purpose is to fill in (reduce the blackness of) shadows created by the key light.
Film chain or Telecine — Device to project film into a TV camera.
Film splicer — Mechanical device for clamping and neatly cutting and holding film steady for gluing.
Filter — A lens attachment to eliminate glare or certain colors or modify the image in some way.
Filter — Electronic graphics name for a special effect, like ripples added to a picture.
Filter factor — A number describing how much light a filter absorbs. A filter factor of 2 requires you to open your iris 2 stops to compensate for it.
Filter holder — Small carrier to clip onto a lens and accept slide-in filters.
Filter — In audio, an electronic device to trap a certain frequency of sound, letting others pass through.
Filter — Small electrical device which can remove a certain frequency (i.e., a certain channel) from a signal. Some filters can remove many frequencies, leaving just the desired ones. Also called a trap. Audio filters remove certain tones from a sound signal.
Fine cut — Final edited master, prepared with painstaking care using the best editing equipment available. Fine cut is generally produced in an on-line editing session.
Finger slate — A slate made by holding one or more fingers in front of the camera at the beginning of a take.
Firewire or IEEE P1394 — Standard for transmitting compressed video data used by DV format digital videocassette recorders.
Fish eye lens — Very wide angle lens with a bulging glass outer element.
Fish pole — A portable boom in the form of a pole with a mike at the end.
Fixed focus — Lens which cannot change focus from near to far.
Fixed pattern noise — Non-moving specks or grain visible when the camera lens is capped, or pans across dark scenes.
Flag — Easily movable flap used with lights for casting shadows and controlling light.
Flagwaving — The sideways pulling and fluttering seen at the top of a TV picture caused by a skew misadjustment or some other tape tension error.
Flare — A bright spot, streak, or geometric pattern seen in the picture, caused by light streaming directly into a lens and reflecting off its internal glass elements.
Flat — Shallow, lightweight, standing scenery used as background or to simulate walls of a room.
Flatshade or quickshade — Simple flat surface applied to wireframes to give them substance and realism. Flat surfaces stretched between wireframe lines render quickly.
FLIC — A large .FLI or .FLC file holding many image files for sequential playback to create an animation.
Flood — Broadly focused light that covers a large area evenly.
Floor manager — Studio crew member who assists by handling cables or relaying director’s cues and commands.
Floor plan — A sketch, seen from above, showing where objects, walls, doors, cameras, etc., are to be positioned on the studio floor.
Floor stand — Microphone holder that stands on the floor and reaches up to shoulder height.
Flowchart — A diagram, mapping out the events, actions, and branches a program can take.
Fluid head — Camera support that dampens the tilting and panning movement of the camera, smoothing out jerky movements.
Flying erase head — A spinning head residing upstream of the video recording head that can erase video tape a split second before the video record head records a new picture.
FM synthesizer — Inexpensive musical device that electronically simulates familiar sounds by combining internally generated wave patterns.
FMV or Full Motion Video — Video that proceeds at 60 fields-per-second, filling the whole TV screen (as opposed to a reduced size and frame rate).
Foam core — Stiff mounting board made of plastic foam sandwiched between paper.
Focal length — The distance between the optical center of a lens and the surface where the image is focused when the lens is focused on infinity. The apparent magnification or angle of view of a lens.
Focal plane shutter — A pair of curtains inside a photographic camera. One opens to let light reach the film, followed by the other one closing to complete the exposure.
Focus shift — Also called “pull focus”; the act of changing focus to sharpen objects at different distances from the camera to center attention on them.
Fog filter — Lens filter that makes the image look foggy.
Foldback — Audio mixing system to allow sound effects, music, etc., to be mixed, amplified, and sent to the studio for performers to hear, as well as being recorded, mixed with the sounds of their microphones.
Follow focus — Continually adjusting a lens’s focus to maintain a sharp picture of the subject moving closer to or away from the camera.
Font — Style and shape of lettering.
Footcandle — A measure of illumination, the level of brightness found 1 foot from a candle; about 10 lux.
Footprint — Geographic area where a satellite aims its signal.
Format — The way the tapes, cassettes, and video recorders and players are designed so that one machine can play another machine’s tapes. Machines of the same format should be able to play each other’s tapes.
Forward kinemation — 3-D animation feature that calculates how connected objects will move at the end of a nearby part that is moved.
Fractional T1 — T1 telephone service rented in 64kbps increments.
Frame — A complete TV picture lasting one-thirtieth of a second, composed of two fields or 525 scanning lines (in the United States).
Frame accurate — Edit or editing device that identifies a specific frame of video tape. “Perfect” accuracy when editing.
Frame advance — VCR feature allowing the tape to be moved forward one video picture at a time.
Frame store — Electronic device able to store a video picture (a frame) electronically and perhaps manipulate it.
Frame synchronizer — Electronic device that delays the signal from an asynchronous video source (a common VCR, for instance) making its signal match up with another video source, so that both video signals can be mixed.
Frame synchronizer — Electronic device to synchronize two independent video signals so they can be mixed.
Framestack — One can separate an animation file, like Quicktime, into its individual frames so that each image file may be modified one by one. The framestack is the separated series of addressable frames.
Franchise — Contract between a municipality and a cable company whereby the company has rights to market cable TV services to the population for a specified number of years. In return, the cable company promises to provide a certain level of service.
Frequency modulated or FM — A video or audio signal combined with a high frequency signal that changes its frequency to track every vibration of the original signal, essentially coding two signals into one.
Frequency response — The ability of a device to pick up high tones (high audio frequencies) as well as low tones equally well. For audio, the perfect frequency response would be 20Hz-20KHz, the full range of human hearing.
Frequency — The number of times a signal or sound vibrates each second, usually expressed as cycles per second or hertz (Hz).
Fresnel — Lighting instrument with a circularly ribbed glass lens to focus the light.
Friction head — Inexpensive tripod head with locks to impede unwanted camera movement.
Front loading — Cassette goes into a slot in the front of the VCR instead of into a trapdoor or pop-up mechanism atop the VCR.
Front projection — Process of projecting an image onto the front of a white screen or wall. Viewers are on the same side of the screen as the projector.
FTTC — Fiber To The Curb, a cable TV or phone connection that brings wide bandwidth fiber optics to your home or business.
Full field color bars — Color bars that run from the top of the screen to the bottom.
Full page or feature film format — Script format with dialogue in the center of the page and detailed description of action and shots also in the center.
Fuzzy logic — Autofocus technology that increases focusing accuracy by rotating the lens by tiny amounts, not noticeable to the eye.
FX — Effects, a special effect such as text keyed over a picture.
