Motion Graphics & Video

Busted

• 3D camera tracking / matchmovingReconstructing the real camera's move from footage so added 3D objects inherit its perspective and stay planted in the scene.
• Adjustment layerA transparent layer that applies one set of effects or color changes to every visible clip beneath it.
• Alpha channel; matteThe invisible grayscale layer that says which pixels are solid, which are gone, and which are half there. Transparency as data.
• Anamorphic lens flareThe long horizontal light streak that anamorphic lenses produce across bright highlights, often seen as a blue sci-fi flare.
• Aspect ratio & letterboxingThe shape of your frame, plus the black bars that fill the gap when the footage shape does not match the player it lands in.
• Automatic reframingSoftware recrops wide footage into a vertical or square frame and pans the crop automatically so the subject stays in shot.
• B-rollThe extra footage you lay over a talking head so viewers see what is being described instead of a face for four minutes.
• BitrateHow much data the encoder spends per second of video. Too low and the picture goes blocky and smeared; too high and the file is enormous.
• Bloom / glow passA blurred copy of the brightest parts added back to make intense light spill softly beyond its edges.
• Burned-in captionsSubtitles rendered into the video's pixels, so they always show and the player cannot toggle, restyle, search, or translate them.
• Camera shake / handheld simSmall added camera movement that makes a locked shot feel handheld, or a short stronger jolt that sells an impact.
• Chroma key / keyingMaking one background color (usually green) transparent so you can drop any scene in behind the subject.
• Chromatic aberrationRed, green, and blue fringes that appear when a lens or digital effect makes the color channels miss each other at sharp edges.
• CinemagraphA mostly frozen photograph with one small area of motion repeating in a quiet loop, such as steam rising from a still cup.
• Codec vs containerThe container (.mp4, .mov) is the box; the codec (H.264, ProRes) is how the picture inside was squeezed. Same box, different contents.
• Color grading vs color correctionCorrection fixes footage so it looks right and matches shot to shot. Grading then styles it on purpose to set a mood.
• CompositingLayering separately shot or generated elements into one shot that looks like it was all filmed at once.
• Cross-dissolveOne shot fades out while the next fades in over the same few frames, so they overlap. The classic 'time passed' transition.
• Cut on actionAn edit hidden inside a movement, with the action starting in one shot and continuing from another angle.
• Displacement mapUsing one image's light and dark values to push another layer's pixels around, creating ripples, warps, and heat haze.
• Film grain / halationFilm-emulation texture: shifting grain across the image plus a soft warm halo where intense highlights bleed through the stock.
• Frame rate (fps)How many frames play per second. 24fps feels like cinema, 60fps feels like live video, and mixing them on one timeline stutters.
• Glitch effect; datamoshingDeliberate digital breakage, including blocky smears where compressed motion from one shot gets applied to the wrong frame.
• Hard cutAn instant switch from one shot to the next with no dissolve or blended frames. The default edit, and usually the right one.
• Interpolated slow motion (optical flow)Artificial slow motion that estimates movement and invents the missing in-between frames instead of repeating recorded ones.
• J-cut / L-cutA split edit where sound and picture change at different moments, so audio from the next shot arrives early (J) or the old one lingers (L).
• Jump cutA visible jump between two nearly identical framings, usually from cutting time out of one take. The grammar of talking-head vlogs.
• KeyframeA marker pinning a property to a value at a specific time. Set two and the software invents every frame in between.
• Kinetic typographyText animated in sync with speech or music so the words themselves perform the line. Lyric videos, title sequences, caption clips.
• Light leak; light wrapLight leak is a film-like wash; light wrap borrows background light along a cutout's edge so a composite feels photographed together.
• Log footageFootage shot flat and gray on purpose, so the highlights and shadows survive for the color grade later.
• Lower thirdThe name-and-title graphic that appears near the bottom of the frame to tell you who is talking.
• LUT (Look-Up Table)A color preset file: a lookup table mapping every input color to an output color, so one file gives footage an entire look.
• Mask tracking; planar trackingTracking a mask or flat surface through footage so a blur, cutout, or corner-pinned graphic stays locked to it.
• Masking and featheringMasking limits an image or effect to a drawn region; feathering softens that region's edge so the composite does not look cut out.
• Match cutA cut where the shape, motion, or action of one shot lines up with the next, so two scenes feel welded together.
• Motion blurThe directional smear a moving thing leaves within one frame. Without it, fast motion reads as a stack of crisp stutters.
• Motion trackingLetting software follow a point or surface in your footage so graphics stick to it as the camera and subject move.
• Nested sequence / precompositionA timeline inside a timeline: several clips or layers behave as one item but stay editable when you open the group.
• Particle systemA generator that emits and animates many small pieces at once, making effects such as sparks, dust, smoke, rain, or confetti.
• Proxy workflowEditing with small, easy-to-play copies of heavy footage, then swapping the full-quality originals back in at export time.
• Render queue; pre-rendering or bakingThe queue holds multiple exports; pre-rendering or baking turns heavy live effects into fixed results that play and render faster.
• Ripple edit vs rolling editA ripple trim moves everything after the edit; a rolling trim moves only the shared cut, borrowing time from one clip for the other.
• RotoscopingTracing a mask around a subject frame by frame so you can cut it out of footage that never had a green screen.
• Screen replacementCompositing new content onto a filmed device display so it follows the screen's perspective, motion, reflections, and occlusions.
• ScrubbingDragging the playhead back and forth to skim frames quickly instead of watching the video from start to finish.
• Seamless loopA clip whose last frame flows straight into its first, so it repeats forever with no visible jump or restart.
• Shot matchingBalancing neighboring shots so brightness, white balance, contrast, and color stay consistent across the cut.
• Slip edit / slide editSlip changes which frames play inside a fixed clip slot; slide moves the whole clip while its neighbors absorb the timing change.
• Speed rampSliding a clip's playback speed up or down inside the shot, so it glides into slow motion instead of snapping into it.
• Spill suppression (despill)Removing the green or blue tint that a chroma screen reflects onto a keyed subject, especially around hair and edges.
• Text-behind-subjectA title layered behind a cutout person or object, so the foreground hides part of the letters and gives the shot depth.
• Time remappingA keyframed playback curve that makes one clip speed up, slow down, freeze, or reverse at different moments.
• Title-safe areaThe inner margin of the frame where text is conventionally clear of screen overscan, platform buttons, and reframes. A convention, not a promise.
• Transcript-based editingEditing video by editing its transcript: delete a sentence in the text and the matching footage vanishes from the timeline.
• Video stabilizationSoftware that counter-moves, crops, and sometimes warps frames to make unwanted camera shake look steadier.
• VignetteA soft darkening around a video's edges that keeps the eye inside the frame and draws attention toward the subject.
• Waveform monitor / vectorscopeVideo scopes that reveal brightness, color, skin hue, clipping, and delivery levels more reliably than your display.
• Whip pan transitionA cut hidden inside a fast, motion-blurred camera swipe so one shot seems to whip directly into the next.

The territory

30 core terms mapped for this field, ranked by how often builders reach for them. Each one is a future entry. Want to bust one? One entry, one file, one pull request.

• J-cut / L-cutaudio leads or trails the picture edit across a cut"you hear the next scene before you see it" · "sound bleeds over the cut"
• Lower thirdname/title graphic occupying the bottom third of frame"the name banner at the bottom" · "that caption bar for who's talking"
• LUT (Look-Up Table)preset color transform applied to footage for a look"the one-click film look filter" · "color preset file"
• Color grading vs color correctioncorrection normalizes; grading applies stylized look"making it match vs making it pretty" · "the mood color pass"
• Keyframeanchor point defining a property value at a time"the dot that says be here at this moment" · "setting points for the animation"
• Chroma key / keyingremoving a solid color background to composite"green screen removal" · "cutting out the background"
• Rotoscopinghand-tracing a matte around a subject frame by frame"manually cutting the person out over time" · "hand-drawn cutout mask"
• Motion trackingattaching graphics to moving footage points"make the text stick to the sign" · "follow that object"
• Match cutcut between shots with matching shape, motion, or action"the cut where the shapes line up" · "seamless-looking transition"
• Jump cutcut removing time within the same shot, visibly"the choppy vlog editing style" · "cutting out the pauses"
• Hard cutimmediate transition between shots with no blended frames"just a straight cut" · "no transition, next shot"
• Cross-dissolveone shot fades into another through overlapping opacity"the fade between two clips" · "crossfade"
• B-rollsupplementary footage covering the main interview or narration"the cutaway clips" · "the visuals over the talking"
• Speed rampanimated acceleration or deceleration of clip playback speed"the whoosh slowdown then speedup" · "time stretch into slow motion"
• Kinetic typographyanimated text choreographed to speech or beat"words flying in with the audio" · "dancing text video"
• Compositinglayering multiple visual elements into one seamless shot"stacking layers together" · "faking it in post"
• Alpha channel; mattetransparency data defining what shows through"the see-through part" · "the cutout mask layer"
• Blend modemath controlling how a layer mixes with layers beneath"screen the glow on top" · "layer mixing setting"
• Motion blurdirectional smear on fast-moving elements, sells realism"why my animation looks too crisp" · "streaky fast movement"
• Proxy workflowediting lightweight stand-in files, relinking full-res at export"why my timeline lags" · "low-res editing copies"
• Codec vs containercompression scheme vs the wrapper file format"MP4 is just the box" · "why the file won't open"
• Bitratedata per second; governs quality versus file size"why my export looks blocky" · "compression amount"
• Log footageflat low-contrast capture preserving grading latitude"why the raw video looks washed out" · "gray flat footage"
• Frame rate (fps)frames per second; drives filmic versus video feel"24 vs 30 vs 60fps" · "how smooth the video looks"
• Title-safe areainner frame region where text won't be cropped"safe margins" · "keep text away from the edges" · "won't get cut off on TV"
• Aspect ratio & letterboxingframe shape; bars filling mismatched dimensions"black bars top and bottom" · "cinematic widescreen crop"
• Burned-in captionssubtitles rendered permanently into the pixels"captions baked into the video" · "subtitles you can't switch off"
• Transcript-based editingcutting video by deleting words in a text transcript"editing video like a text document" · "delete the word, delete the clip"
• Automatic reframingAI recropping wide footage to vertical while tracking subject"auto-reframe" · "turn my landscape video into a vertical one"
• Seamless loopclip whose end matches its start invisibly"plays forever without a jump" · "infinite background video"

Deeper in the field

• Ripple edit vs rolling edit ripple shifts downstream clips; rolling shifts the shared cut point
• Slip edit / slide edit retimes clip contents or repositions clips without changing duration
• Cut on action hides an edit by continuing movement across adjacent shots
• Scrubbing dragging the playhead to preview frames quickly
• Nested sequence / precomposition groups clips or layers into a reusable, editable composite
• Adjustment layer applies shared effects or grading to all clips beneath
• Masking and feathering isolating regions and softening mask edges for believable composites
• Spill suppression (despill) removes green or blue contamination after chroma keying
• Video stabilization removes unwanted shake by compensating for frame movement
• Shot matching balances exposure and color consistently across adjacent footage
• Waveform monitor / vectorscope scopes for judging luminance, chroma, skin tone, legal levels
• Interpolated slow motion (optical flow) inventing frames to smooth artificial slowdown
• Time remapping non-linear retiming curve applied across a clip
• Whip pan transition fast blurred camera swipe hiding a cut
• Vignette darkened frame edges focusing attention centrally
• Film grain / halation added texture and light bloom emulating film stock
• Anamorphic lens flare horizontal blue streak across highlights
• Bloom / glow pass soft light spill added around bright areas
• Light leak; light wrap edge light spilling onto a composited subject
• Chromatic aberration RGB channel fringing at high-contrast edges
• Displacement map using an image's luminance to warp another layer
• Particle system procedurally emitted elements like sparks, dust, confetti
• Camera shake / handheld sim added subtle instability for realism or impact
• Mask tracking; planar tracking locking a shape to a flat moving surface
• 3D camera tracking / matchmoving reconstructs camera motion to anchor 3D elements in footage
• Screen replacement compositing new content onto a device's display
• Cinemagraph still image with one small looping moving element
• Text-behind-subject title occluded by the foreground person for depth
• Glitch effect; datamoshing digital corruption artifacts used as stylistic effect
• Render queue; pre-rendering or baking queue manages export jobs; baking commits effects to pixels