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# 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.
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?

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