Glossary

• Windows Media Video (WMV): WMV (*.wmv) files use Microsoft's ASF container format. These files can be played in Windows Media Player and other players such as MPlayer, VLC media player or Media Player Classic.
  
  
• AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. This is a container video format that specifies certain structure how the audio and video streams should be stored within the file. AVI itself does not specify how it should be encoded, so the audio/video can be stored in very various ways. Most commonly used video codecs that use AVI structure are M-JPEG and DivX.
  
  
• MPEG-2, a standard for compressing video. MPEG is a lossy compression method, which means that some of the original image is lost during the compression stage, which cannot be recreated. MPEG-2 supports a wide variety of audio/video formats, including legacy TV, HDTV and five channel surround sound. It provides the broadcast-quality image of 720x480 resolution that is used in DVD movies. MPEG-2 requires from 4 to 15Mbps bandwidth.
  
  
• Container format In video terminology it means a "wrapper" format, which doesn't define what compression formats the video file within a specific container format includes, but rather defines how the video, audio and other possible data is stored within the container.
  
  
• Interlaced scan: It is a display method employed by old TV sets. The lines of video are displayed in an alternate fashion on a television screen. All the odd lines are scanned first, then all the even lines. These are referred to as fields. This process results in an interlaced image. Each frame on your screen is made up of the two interlaced fields of video. Although video frames are displayed every 30th of a second, the viewer, at any given point in time is only seeing half the image. Since the scanning process is so quick, the viewer's brain perceives the video image on the screen as a complete image.
  
  
• Progressive scan: It differs from interlaced scan in which the image is displayed on a screen by scanning each line (or row of pixels) in a sequential order rather than an alternate order, as is done with interlaced scan. In other words, in progressive scan, the image lines (or pixel rows) are scanned in numerical order (1,2,3) down the screen from top to bottom, instead of in an alternate order (lines or rows 1,3,5, etc... followed by lines or rows 2,4,6). By progressively scanning the image onto a screen every 60th of a second rather than "interlacing" alternate lines every 30th of a second, a smoother, more detailed, image can be produced on the screen that is perfectly suited for viewing fine details, such as text, and is also less susceptible to interlace flicker.
  
  
• MPEG-2 TS: It is a communication protocol for audio, video and data that is specified in MPEG-2 Part 1. Its design goal is to allow multiplexing of digital video and audio and to synchronize the output. Transport stream offers features for error correction for transportation over unreliable media, and is used in broadcast applications such as DVB and ATSC. It is contrasted with program stream, designed for more reliable media such as DVDs.
  

If you convert PowerPoint to DVD, HD-TV or MPEG-2, you must choose a TV standard for your movie to make sure it can be played on TV correctly. If the TV standard applied to your movie does not match the one of your TV set, the color will be displayed incorrectly.

• PAL: Short for Phase Alternating Line, it is a color encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC.
  
  
• NTSC: NTSC is the analog television color encoding system used in Canada, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, United States, Mexico, and some other countries, mostly in the Americas. It is named for the National Television Standards Committee, the U.S. standardization body that adopted it. Some television engineers have parodied the acronym to stand for "Never Twice Same Color."
  
  
• SECAM: Also written SCAM (Squentiel couleur mmoire, French for "Sequential Color with Memory"), it is an analog color television system first used in France. A team led by Henri de France working at Compagnie Franaise de Tlvision (later bought by Thomson) invented SECAM. It is, historically, the first European color television standard.
  
  
• MP2: MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2, sometimes Musicam) is an audio codec defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3. An extension exists: MPEG-2 Layer II and is defined in ISO/IEC 13818-3. The file extension for files containing such audio data is usually .mp2. While it has largely been superseded by MP3 for PC and Internet applications, it remains a dominant standard for audio broadcasting as part of the DAB digital radio and DVB digital television standards. It is also used internally within the radio industry, for example in NPR's PRSS Content Depot programming distribution system.