Insider Baseball: Your Essential Video Glossary

Have you ever been in a meeting and someone drops a word or acronym and you have no clue what they mean? We’re sometimes guilty of that–forgetting that not everyone spends all of their time talking about video. So we thought it would be helpful to put together a little cheat sheet of the common words, files types, and editing styles that we frequently use. Many of these you may already know, but you might find a few you didn't.

Let’s start with the basics… 

FILES TYPES 💾 :

MP4 ▶️
The go-to video format, perfect for most use cases including YouTube posting, website hosting, and all social media platforms.

SRT (SubRip Subtitle) 🗣️
A plain text file format commonly used for storing subtitles or captions for videos. This format is widely supported by various video players and platforms, making it easy to add subtitles to videos for accessibility or multilingual purposes. While many platforms now provide automated captions they almost always have errors. Always use the.SRTs provided by us!

WebM </>
A compressed video that has been saved in an open, high-quality video standard specifically made for the web. It’s widely supported across different browsers and devices without requiring licensing fees.

Lottie or JSON files 🔄
A Lottie is a vector (JSON)-based animation file format, which means you can scale them up and down without worrying about pixelation. These are great for short looping web animations because they are super small files sizes, yet they retain the same quality of a GIF or MP4, and they also support a transparent background. 

GENERAL TERMS 🎬 :

Aspect Ratio 📏
The proportional relationship between the width and height of a video frame. Where is this video going to live? For YouTube or Vimeo you’ll want 16:9. For social, you’ll want 1:1, 4:5, and 9:16. 

B-Roll 🎞️
Supplementary footage used to provide context and depth to your main video (for example, the talking head interview, etc). Think stock footage, detail shots, scenic shots, ambiance shots, time-lapses, still photography, and anything else that helps support the story and create a more engaging narrative.

BTS 👀
No, not the K-pop band, but 'Behind the Scenes.' Stills or video footage that captures everything that goes down during production. Think of it as a peek behind the curtain, letting your audience in on the team, production magic, setup, and all the hard work that goes into creating a video.

Comp 📓
Short for composition, the layout of visuals within a frame, usually in reference to the storyboard.

Cut ✂️
A switch between two shots. There are all kinds of cuts, but these are the ones we reference the most:

Hard Cut 🪨 : Sometimes called a standard cut, switches from one shot to the next, without the use of a transition or effect.

Jump Cut 🦘: A transition where the subject of the shot appears to “jump” from one scene to another—commonly used to show the passage of time.

J-Cut 🇯: The opposite of an L-cut, where you hear the audio start before you see the associated visual. This helps prepare the viewer for the next shot—typically used at the start of a film or transitioning to a new scene.

L-Cut 🇱: Extends the audio from one shot to the next—great for dialogue-heavy scenes.

Frame Rate (FPS) 🖼️
How fast your video displays images per second. The standard frame rate for video is 24fps. 

Key Frame 🔑
Key frames are set to indicate a point of change in animation. Like shifts in position, scale, or rotation.

Pacing 🏃🏾
We talk about this a lot! Pacing is the rhythm of your video—it comes from the script and soundscape, setting the vibe. Viewer engagement is largely dependent on the pacing of a video. Too fast or slow and you’ll lose your audience. 

Post-Production 👩🏻‍💻
Sometimes simply referred to as “post,” is anything that takes place after you have completed after pre-production and filming (if applicable). Typically involves editing, animation, and soundscape.

Pre-Production 📃
Everything that happens prior to production—creative brief, production plan, script, storyboard—it's all set up before anything moves into motion.

Render ▶️
Rendering is the process of compiling all video and motion assets, including raw footage, motion graphics, and soundscape into a final video file. A render can come in various file types, but MP4 is the common choice for most deliverables (see above).

Resolution 🔎
Picture clarity measured in pixels (like 1080p or 4K). More pixels mean a sharper image. So, higher resolution equals a clearer, larger picture.

Rough Cut 🏗️ 
A draft showing the sequence, length, and content of the final video. This usually comes before motion graphics or soundscape.

Shot 🎥
Common shot types include wide, close-up, two-shot, over-the-shoulder, bird's eye, push-ins, push-outs, low-angle, high-angle, and the list goes on... Wide and medium shots are used to set the scene, and close-ups are used to add feeling.

Soundscape 🎧
The audio world of your video—music, sound effects (SFX), and VO (voiceover). We did a deep dive on this in a previous post.

Story Beats 📖
These are the plot's big moments, like an inciting incident, rising action, or climax. 

Thumbnail 👍
A still image that acts as a preview for your video. Its job is to entice viewers to click play. We wouldn’t recommend using a still from the video, we always make something custom per platform.

Ease Curve🎢
An ease curve is a line that defines the acceleration pattern on a graph. Curves ensure that the movement feels natural with fluid, intuitive motion. By adjusting the handles, you can make a variety of unique movements. Types include:

• Linear: Same speed throughout

• Ease In: Starts slow, then accelerates

• Ease Out: Start fast and ends slowly

• Ease In and Out: Starts slow, then accelerates, ends slowly

✨ BONUS ✨ a couple insider Motiio Terms you can’t find on Google:

Jam Sesh 💡
This is where the Motiio team gets together and throws all of our good (and bad) ideas into the ring. Anything goes during a Jam Sesh. Grab your tea or espresso, we’re getting creative.

3-Column Layout 3️⃣
We always start our script writing process with our 3-column grid. This helps us to get a sense of the final video right from the start, both what we say (script) and how we say it (visuals). Column 1 is our sections (how we organize scenes), column 2 is our script (voiceover), and column 3 is written ideas for the storyboard. 

Now, this by no means covers everything, but just a quick little guide so that you’re not left wondering. And please, just stop us next time we’re those people!