AV Glossary
The reference glossary for live technicians: audio, networking/AV-IT, video, lighting. Sharp definitions and field markers.
Audio
- Acoustic Feedback
- Aux Send vs Bus
- Balanced vs Unbalanced
- Clipping
- Comb Filtering
- Crest Factor / Headroom
- Crossover Frequency
- dBFS — Decibels Full Scale
- Decibel (dB)
- Delay Stack / Fill
- DI Box (Direct Injection)
- Dynamic Range
- Dynamic vs Condenser Mic
- Gain Before Feedback (GBF)
- Gain Staging
- HPF — High-Pass Filter
- IEM vs Wedge Monitoring
- Impedance (Ω)
- Latency
- Line Array
- LUFS — Loudness Units
- Mic Level vs Line Level
- Noise Floor
- Phantom Power (+48V)
- Polar Pattern (Cardioid / Omni / Fig-8)
- Polarity vs Phase
- RT60 — Reverberation Time
- SPL — Sound Pressure Level
- True Peak (dBTP)
Networking / AV-IT
- AES67
- Bandwidth vs Throughput
- Dante
- Dante / AES67 Interop
- DHCP vs Static IP
- Fibre — SM vs MM
- IGMP Querier
- IGMP Snooping
- Link Aggregation (LAG / LACP)
- Managed vs Unmanaged Switch
- mDNS / Discovery
- Network Latency vs Jitter
- Network Redundancy
- PoE — Power over Ethernet
- PTP — IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol
- QoS — Quality of Service
- RSTP — Rapid Spanning Tree
- SFP — Small Form-factor Pluggable
- STP / Spanning Tree Basics
- Subnet / CIDR Notation
- Unicast vs Multicast
- VLAN — Virtual Local Area Network
Video
- 3:2 Pulldown / Cadence
- Aspect Ratio
- Chroma Subsampling (4:4:4 / 4:2:2 / 4:2:0)
- Colour Gamut
- Colour Space (Rec.709 / Rec.2020 / DCI-P3)
- EDID — Extended Display ID Data
- EOTF — Electro-Optical Transfer Function
- Frame Rate (fps)
- Gamma
- Genlock / House Sync
- HDCP — Content Protection
- HDR — High Dynamic Range
- IMAG — Image Magnification
- Keying — Luma / Chroma
- LED Processor
- LED Receiving Card
- LUT — Look-Up Table
- Media Server
- NDI — Network Device Interface
- Pixel Pitch
- Refresh Rate vs Scan Rate
- Scaler vs Switcher
- SDI — Serial Digital Interface
- Timecode (LTC / VITC / MTC)
- Tri-Level Sync
- Video Latency
- Video Mapping / Warping
Lighting
- Art-Net
- Beam Angle
- Beam Angle vs Field Angle
- Colour Temperature (Kelvin)
- CRI — Colour Rendering Index
- CTO / CTB Gels
- Dimmer Curve / Law
- DMX Universe
- DMX512
- Fixture Patching
- Flicker / PWM Frequency
- Follow Spot
- Gobo
- Haze vs Fog
- Inrush Current
- Key / Fill / Backlight
- Power Factor (PF)
- RDM — Remote Device Management
- sACN — Streaming ACN (E1.31)
- Strobe / PWM on Camera
- TLCI — Television Lighting Consistency Index