Motion Graphics & Video

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