Glossary
Video terms, explained simply
Plain-English definitions of the words you meet when you make explainer videos and shorts, each with why it matters, an example, and how Motiongist handles it.
0–9
A
- AnimaticAn animatic is a rough, timed preview of a video made by putting storyboard frames in sequence over a scratch voiceover or soundtrack, used to check pacing before final animation.
- Aspect ratioAspect ratio is the proportional relationship between a video’s width and height, written as width:height, such as 16:9 for widescreen, 9:16 for vertical and 1:1 for square.
B
- B-rollB-roll is supplementary footage cut into a video over the main track, such as an interview or narration, to illustrate what is being said, add context or hide edits.
- BitrateBitrate is the amount of data used to encode one second of video or audio, usually measured in megabits per second (Mbps) for video and kilobits per second (kbps) for audio.
- Burned-in captionsBurned-in captions, also called open captions, are captions rendered directly into the video image, so they are always visible and can’t be turned off by the viewer.
C
- Call to actionA call to action (CTA) is the part of a video, page or message that tells the audience exactly what to do next, such as follow, try a product, read a guide or sign up.
- Camera dollyA camera dolly is a move where the camera physically travels toward, away from or alongside a subject, as opposed to a zoom, which changes the lens’s focal length while the camera stays in place.
- Captions vs subtitlesCaptions transcribe a video’s speech and meaningful sounds for viewers who can’t hear the audio, while subtitles translate or transcribe dialogue for viewers who can hear but don’t understand the language.
E
- EasingEasing is the rate of change of an animation over time: instead of moving at a constant speed, an eased element accelerates, decelerates or both, which makes motion feel natural.
- Explainer videoAn explainer video is a short video, often animated and narrated, that explains one idea, product, process or concept clearly enough for someone new to the topic to understand it.
F
- Faceless channelA faceless channel is a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram account whose videos never show the creator on camera, relying instead on voiceover, animation, text, screen recordings or footage.
- Frame rateFrame rate is the number of still images, or frames, shown per second in a video, measured in frames per second (fps); common values are 24, 25, 30 and 60 fps.
H
K
- KeyframeA keyframe is a point on an animation’s timeline where you set an exact value, such as position, size, color or opacity, that the software then animates toward or away from.
- Kinetic typographyKinetic typography is a motion design technique where text is animated, moving, scaling, appearing or transforming over time, to express an idea and follow the rhythm of speech or music.
L
M
P
R
- RenderTo render a video is to compute every final frame from a project, combining graphics, animation, effects and audio, and encode the result into a playable file such as an MP4.
- Retention curveA retention curve is a graph showing what share of viewers is still watching at each moment of a video, used to see where people drop off and what keeps them watching.
S
- Safe zoneA safe zone is the area of a video frame where text and key visuals won’t be hidden by the player’s interface, such as buttons, captions, usernames or navigation bars, or cut off by cropping.
- Short-form videoShort-form video is video content of a few seconds to a few minutes, usually vertical and made for feeds such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
- SRT fileAn SRT file is a plain-text subtitle file in the SubRip format that lists numbered caption blocks, each with a start and end timecode and the text to display.
- StoryboardA storyboard is a scene-by-scene plan of a video that pairs each part of the script with a description or sketch of what appears on screen, made before production starts.
T
- Text-to-speechText-to-speech (TTS) is technology that converts written text into spoken audio using a synthetic voice, today usually generated by neural network models.
- TweeningTweening, short for in-betweening, is the process of generating the intermediate frames between two keyframes so that an object appears to move or change smoothly from one state to the next.
V
- Vertical videoVertical video is video framed taller than it is wide, most commonly in a 9:16 aspect ratio at 1080×1920 pixels, designed to fill a phone screen held upright.
- VoiceoverA voiceover is narration recorded separately from the visuals and played over them, spoken by a narrator who is usually not seen on screen.
W
Ready to go deeper?
The guides turn these terms into step-by-step methods: scripts, hooks, storyboards and captions.
Put the vocabulary to work: make a video
Start from one sentence, a script or a document. You see the exact price before anything renders.
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