2D animation
Figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. This includes automated computerized version of tweening, morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.
Examples: A Scanner Darkly, Jib Jab
• Analog computer animation
• Flash animation
• PowerPoint animation

3D animation
Figures are created in the computer using polygons. To allow these meshes to move they are given a digital armature (sculpture). This process is called rigging. Various other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions (gravity), simulated fur or hair, effects such as fire and water and the use of motion capture to name but a few.
Examples The Incredibles, Shrek
• Cel-shaded animation
• Morph target animation
• Skeletal animation
• Motion capture
• Crowd simulation


At Frogjuggler we have invested heavily in this area and work with:
Adobe After Effects, Maxon 4D Cinema, Adobe Flash, Apple: Motion, Shake and Final Cut Pro

Audio Video Interleave, known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a standard container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback. Like DVDs, AVI files support multiple streaming audio and video, although these features are seldom used. Most AVI files also use the file format extensions developed by the Matrox OpenDML group in February 1996. These files are supported by Microsoft, and are unofficially called "AVI 2.0".
AVI is a special case of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), which divides a file's data into blocks, or "chunks." Each "chunk" is identified by a FourCC tag. An AVI file takes the form of a single chunk in an RIFF formatted file, which is then subdivided into two mandatory "chunks" and one optional "chunk". The entire structure of a RIFF file was apparently copied from an earlier IFF format devised by Electronic Arts in the mid-1980s, the primary difference being the "endianness" of integers used, between the current .avi (see also UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, for more about this) and the original FourCC format. In fact, even a properly written IFF parser for the now old-aged AmigaOS, (after correcting for endianness) should parse RIFF files just fine.
The first sub-chunk is identified by the "hdrl" tag. This sub-chunk is the file header and contains metadata about the video, such as its width, height and frame rate. The second sub-chunk is identified by the "movi" tag. This chunk contains the actual audio/visual data that make up the AVI movie. The third optional sub-chunk is identified by the "idx1" tag which indexes the physical addresses [within the file] of the data chunks.
By way of the RIFF format, the audio/visual data contained in the "movi" chunk can be encoded or decoded by software called a codec (which is an abbreviation for coder-decoder, but in reality is actually a translation scheme). Upon creation of the file, the codec translates between raw data and the (compressed) data format used inside the chunk. An AVI file may therefore carry audio/visual data inside the chunks in virtually any compression scheme, including Full Frame (Uncompressed), Intel Real Time (Indeo), Cinepak, Motion JPEG, Editable MPEG, VDOWave, ClearVideo / RealVideo, QPEG, MPEG-4 Video.

Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency. The Bluetooth specifications are developed and licensed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.

A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: 'Compressor-Decompressor', 'Coder-Decoder', or 'Compression/Decompression algorithm'.
An endec is a similar (but not identical) concept for hardware. In the middle 20th Century a "codec" was hardware that coded analog signals into Pulse-code modulation and decoded it back. Late in the century the name came to be applied to a class of software for converting among digital signal formats, and including compander functions.
Codecs (in the modern, software sense) encode a stream or signal for transmission, storage or encryption and decode it for viewing or editing. Codecs are often used in videoconferencing and streaming media applications. A video camera's ADC converts its analog signals into digital signals, which are then passed through a video compressor for digital transmission or storage. A receiving device then runs the signal through a video decompressor, then a DAC for analog display. A "codec" is a generic name for a video conferencing unit.
An audio compressor converts analog audio signals into digital signals for transmission or storage. A receiving device then converts the digital signals back to analog using an audio decompressor, for playback.
The raw encoded form of audio and video data is often called essence, to distinguish it from the metadata information that together make up the information content of the stream and any "wrapper" data that is then added to aid access to or improve the robustness of the stream.
Most codecs are lossy. Originally this was in order to achieve a relatively small (compressed) file size such that the resultant files could be readily exchanged (across non-broadband networks) and stored on relatively expensive media (non-volatile memory, hard-disk storage, etc., as opposed to write-once read-many formats such as CD-ROM and DVD).
There are lossless codecs but for most purposes the slight increase in quality (some would say almost imperceptible increase) may not be worth the often considerable increase in data size. The main exception to this is if the data is to undergo any future processing (for example editing) in which case the repeated application of lossy codecs (repeated encoding and subsequent decoding) will almost certainly degrade the quality of the edited file such that it is readily identifiable (visually or audibly or both). Using more than one codec or encoding scheme whilst creating a finished product can also degrade quality significantly (however there are many situations where this is all-but-unavoidable).
Many codecs are designed to emphasize certain aspects of the media to be encoded. For example, a digital video (using a DV codec) of a sports event, such as baseball or soccer, needs to encode motion well but not necessarily exact colors, while a video of an art exhibit needs to perform well encoding color and surface texture. There are hundreds or even thousands of codecs ranging from those downloadable for free to ones costing hundreds of dollars or more.
Many multimedia data streams need to contain both audio and video data, and often some form of metadata that permits synchronization of the audio and video. Each of these three streams may be handled by different programs, processes, or hardware; but for the multimedia data stream to be useful in stored or transmitted form, they must be encapsulated together in a container format.
While many people explain that AVI is a codec, they are incorrect. AVI (nowadays) is a container format, which many codecs might use (although not to ISO standard). There are other well known alternative containers such as Ogg, ASF, QuickTime, RealMedia, Matroska and MP4.

Digital Video (DV) is a digital video format launched in 1994, and, in its smaller tape form factor MiniDV, has since become a standard for home and semiprofessional video production; it is sometimes used for professional purposes as well, such as filmmaking and electronic news gathering. The DV specification (originally known as the Blue Book, current official name IEC 61834) defines both the codec and the tape format. Features include intraframe compression for uncomplicated editing, a standard interface for transfer to non-linear editing systems (FireWire, also known as IEEE 1394), and good video quality, especially compared to earlier consumer analog formats such as 8 mm, Hi8 and VHS-C. DV now enables filmmakers to produce movies inexpensively, and is strongly associated with independent film and citizen journalism.
There have been some variants on the DV standard, most notably Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO formats targeted at professional use. Sony's consumer Digital8 format is another variant, which is similar to DV but recorded on Hi8 tape. Other formats such as DVCPRO50 utilize DV25 encoders running in parallel.
A high-definition version of DV has also been developed, called HDV. It differs significantly on a technical level as it uses MPEG-2 compression. Both formats share the miniDV tape form factor. MPEG-2 compression is much more efficient than that used in DV, in large part due to inter-frame/temporal compression.[1] This allows for higher resolution at bitrates similar to DV. On the other hand, the use of inter-frame compression can cause complications in editing.[2] Nonetheless, an increasing number of editing applications support real-time (native) HDV editing or intermediary codecs.[3]

Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player, and to the Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program. Adobe Flash Professional is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which acquired Macromedia in 2005 in a merger that was finalized in December 2006), is a client application available in most common web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. There are also versions of the Flash Player for mobile phones and other non-PC devices.
Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash Professional is an integrated development environment (IDE) while Flash Player is a virtual machine used to run, or parse, the Flash files. But in contemporary colloquial terms "Flash" can refer to the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.
Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.
The Flash files, traditionally called "Flash movies" or "Flash games", have a .swf file extension and may be an object of a web page, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a Projector, a self-executing Flash movie. Flash Video files have a .FLV file extension and are utilized from within .swf files.

FLV (Flash Video) is a proprietary file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player (formerly known as Macromedia Flash Player) version 6, 7, 8, or 9. FLV content may also be embedded within SWF files. Notable users of the FLV format include YouTube, Google Video, Reuters.com Yahoo! Video and MySpace.
Flash Video is viewable on most operating systems, via the widely available Adobe Flash Player and web browser plugin, or one of several third-party programs such as Media Player Classic (with the ffdshow codecs installed), MPlayer, or VLC media player.

The Adobe Flash Player is a multimedia and application player created and distributed by Adobe. It plays SWF files which can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, Adobe Flex or a number of other Adobe and third party tools. It has support for a programming language called ActionScript, which can be used to display Flash Video from an SWF file. Because the Flash Player runs as a browser plug-in, it is possible to embed Flash Video in web pages and view the video within a web browser.

Commonly FLV files contain video bit streams which are a variant of the H.263 video standard, under the name of Sorenson Spark. Flash Player 8 and newer revisions support the playback of On2 TrueMotion VP6 video bit streams. On2 VP6 can provide a higher visual quality than Sorenson Spark, especially when using lower bit rates. On the other hand it is computationally more complex and therefore will not run as well on certain older system configurations.
An optional alpha channel which represents per pixel transparency is supported by including a second simultaneous video stream which encodes the alpha channel only, dropping any chromatic information. The implementation makes the assumption that the YUV data of the main On2 VP6 video stream is always converted to RGB by the client before compositing occurs as the resulting RGB values are alpha premultiplied and clamped accordingly. This option is only available for On2 VP6 encoded video streams.
The FLV file format supports two versions of a so called 'screenshare' codec which is an encoding format designed for screencasts. Both these formats are bitmap tile based, can be lossy by reducing color depths and are compressed using zlib. The second version is only playable in Flash Player 8 and newer.
Support for encoding FLV files is provided by an encoding tool included with Adobe's Macromedia Flash Professional 8 product, On2's Flix encoding tools, Sorenson Squeeze, FFmpeg and other third party tools.

FLV files can be delivered in several different ways:
• As a standalone .FLV file. Although FLV files are normally delivered using a Flash player for control, the .FLV file itself is fully-functional on its own and can be played or converted to other formats from local storage such as a hard disk or a CD.
• Embedded in an SWF file using the Flash authoring tool (supported in Flash Player 6 and later). The entire file must be transferred before playback can begin. Changing the video requires rebuilding the SWF file.
• Progressive download via HTTP (supported in Flash Player 7 and later). This method uses Action Script to include an externally hosted FLV file client-side for playback. Progressive download has several advantages, including buffering, use of generic HTTP servers, and the ability to reuse a single SWF player for multiple FLV sources. Flash Player 8 includes support for random access within video files using the partial download functionality of HTTP, sometimes this is referred to as streaming. However, unlike streaming using RTMP, HTTP "streaming" does not support real-time broadcasting. Streaming via HTTP requires a custom player and the injection of specific FLV metadata containing the exact starting position in bytes and timecode of each keyframe. Using this specific information, a custom FLV player can request any part of the FLV file starting at a specified keyframe. For example, Google Video supports progressive download and can seek to any part of the video before buffering is complete, whereas YouTube cannot.
• Streamed via RTMP to the Flash Player using the Flash Media Server (formerly called Flash Communication Server), VCS or the open source Red5 server. As of December 2006, there's no general purpose stream recorder available for this protocol (as opposed to MMS, HTTP, etc.).

Keynote is a presentation software application made by Apple for its Mac OS X operating system. Originally announced in January 2003, Keynote is now part of the iWork productivity suite (which also includes Pages), with a retail price of 79 USD in the USA, 55 GBP in the United Kingdom and 79 EUR in other countries of European Union. The latest version, Keynote 3, has been built as a universal binary, allowing it to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel processors.

Frame rate, or frame frequency, is the measurement of how quickly an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems. Frame rate is most often expressed in frames per second or simply, hertz (Hz).

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding, lossy compression format, and algorithm, designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. It was invented by a team of German engineers of the Fraunhofer Society, who worked in the framework of the EUREKA 147 DAB digital radio research program, and it became an ISO/IEC standard in 1991.

MPEG-4 Part 14, formally ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003, is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital audio and digital video streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, MPEG-4 Part 14 allows streaming over the Internet. The official filename extension for MPEG-4 Part 14 files is .mp4, thus the container format is often referred to simply as MP4. Devices that play .mp4 files are referred to as MP4 players.

.MP4 versus .M4A file extensions
The existence of two different file extensions for naming audio-only MP4 files has been a source of confusion among users and multimedia playback software. Since MPEG-4 is a container format, MP4 files may contain any number of audio, video, and even subtitle streams, making it impossible to determine the type of streams in a MP4 file based on its filename extension alone. In response, Apple Inc. started using and popularizing the .m4a file extension. Software capable of audio/video playback should recognize files with either .m4a or .mp4 file extensions, as would be expected, as there are no file format differences between the two. Most software capable of creating MPEG-4 audio will allow the user to choose the filename extension of the created MPEG-4 files.
While the only official file extension defined by the standard is .mp4, various file extensions are commonly used to indicate intended content:
• Audio-only MP4 files generally have a .m4a extension.
• MP4 files with audio streams encrypted by FairPlay Digital Rights Management as sold through the iTunes Store use the .m4p extension.
• Audio book and podcast files, which also contain metadata including chapter markers, images, and hyperlinks, can use the extension .m4a, but more commonly use the .m4b extension.
• MP4 files with audio and video generally use the .mp4 and .m4v extensions, occasionally .mp4v.
• 3G mobile phones use 3GP, a simplified version of MPEG-4 Part 12 (a.k.a MPEG-4/JPEG2000 ISO Base Media file format, MPEG-4 Part 14 is a derivative of the standard from ISO Base file format too), with the .3gp and .3g2 extensions. These files also store non-MPEG-4 data (H.263, AMR, TX3G).
The common, but non-standard use of the extensions .m4a and .m4v is due to the popularity of Apple's iPod and the iTunes Store.

Almost any kind of data can be embedded in MPEG-4 Part 14 files through private streams; the widely-supported codecs and additional data streams are:
• Video: MPEG-4 Part 10 (also known as H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC), MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2, and MPEG-1.
• Audio: AAC (also known as MPEG-2 Part 7), MP3 (also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3), MPEG-4 Part 3, MP2 (also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2), MPEG-1 Audio Layer 1, CELP (speech), TwinVQ (very low bitrates), SAOL (MIDI).
• Subtitles: MPEG-4 Timed Text (also known as 3GPP Timed Text).
Some private stream examples include Nero's use of DVD subtitles (Vobsub) in MP4 files. They are however not a part of the MPEG-4 file format standard and programs are not required to support them.

The Moving Picture Experts Group or MPEG is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. Its first meeting was in May of 1988 in Ottawa, Canada. As of late 2005, MPEG has grown to include approximately 350 members per meeting from various industries, universities, and research institutions. MPEG's official designation is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29 WG11.
MPEG has standardized the following compression formats and ancillary standards:
• MPEG-1: Initial video and audio compression standard. Later used as the standard for Video CD, and includes the popular Layer 3 (MP3) audio compression format.
• MPEG-2: Transport, video and audio standards for broadcast-quality television. Used for over-the-air digital television ATSC, DVB and ISDB, digital satellite TV services like Dish Network, digital cable television signals, and (with slight modifications[citation needed]) for DVDs.
• MPEG-3: Originally designed for HDTV, but abandoned when it was discovered that MPEG-2 (with extensions) was sufficient for HDTV. (Do not confuse with MP3, which is MPEG-1 Layer 3.)
• MPEG-4: Expands MPEG-1 to support video/audio "objects", 3D content, low bitrate encoding and support for Digital Rights Management. Several new (newer than MPEG-2 Video) higher efficiency video standards are included (an alternative to MPEG-2 Video), notably:
• MPEG-4 Part 2 (or Advanced Simple Profile) and
• MPEG-4 Part 10 (or Advanced Video Coding or H.264). MPEG-4 Part 10 may be used on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, along with VC-1 and MPEG-2.
In addition, the following standards, while not sequential advances to the video encoding standard as with MPEG-1 through MPEG-4, are referred to by similar notation:
• MPEG-7: A formal system for describing multimedia content.
• MPEG-21: MPEG describes this standard as a multimedia framework.

A podcast is a media file which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.Like 'radio', it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. The term "podcast" is a portmanteau of the name of Apple's portable music player, the iPod, and broadcast; a pod refers to a container of some sort and the idea of broadcasting to a container or pod correctly describes the process of podcasting.

Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint is a ubiquitous presentation program developed for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS computer operating systems. Being widely used by businesspeople, educators, and trainers, it is among the most prevalent forms of persuasion technology. It is a component of the Microsoft Office system.

In PowerPoint, as in most other presentation software, text, graphics, movies, and other objects are positioned on individual pages or "slides". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector, a device which has become somewhat obsolete due to the use of PowerPoint and other presentation software. Slides can be printed, or (more often) displayed on-screen and navigated through at the command of the presenter. Slides can also form the basis of webcasts.
PowerPoint provides two types of movements. Entrance, emphasis, and exit of elements on a slide itself are controlled by what PowerPoint calls Custom Animations. Transitions, on the other hand are movements between slides. These can be animated in a variety of ways. The overall design of a presentation can be controlled with a master slide; and the overall structure, extending to the text on each slide, can be edited using a primitive outliner. Presentations can be saved and run in any of the file formats: the default .ppt (presentation), .pps (PowerPoint Show) or .pot (template).

QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and several types of interactive panoramic images.
The most recent version is 7.1.3 and is available for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

A video format describes how one device sends a video pictures to another device, such as the way that a DVD player sends pictures to a television, or a computer to a monitor. More formally, the video format describes the sequence and structure of frames that create the moving video image.
Video formats are commonly known in the domain of commercial broadcast and consumer devices; most notably to date, these are the analog video formats of NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. However, video formats also describe the digital equivalents of the commercial formats, the aging custom military uses of analog video (such as RS-170 and RS-343), the increasingly important video formats used with computers, and even such offbeat formats such as color field sequential.
Video formats were originally designed for display devices such as a CRTs. However, because other kinds of displays have common source material and because video formats enjoy wide adoption and have convenient organization, video formats are a common means to describe the structure of displayed visual information for a variety of graphical output devices.