GLOSSARY

This section lists some common terms that are used when working in WATCHOUT.

ALPHA CHANNEL

Refers to a color channel that stores information on the transparency or opacity of a pixel. If the alpha value is set to 0 (zero) it is completely transparent and if it is set to 1 (one) it is opaque.

AUDIO BUS

An audio bus is a virtual mono path collecting tracks from one or more audio cues and transmitting onto one or more output device channels. The available buses in the system are numbered from 1 and upwards, but can also be assigned names. By default buses 1 and 2 have the names Left and Right. The available buses are visible in the channel mapping sections of the Cues and devices.

AUDIO DEVICE

An audio device is a device capable of playing sound. An audio device is controlled by a Runner, and can be of type WASAPI, WASAPI exclusive, Dante or ASIO. A WASAPI, WASAPI exclusive or ASIO device is always hosted on the same machine as the Runner, either built-in, or connected via USB. A Dante device is attached to the network, but controlled by a Dante controller on the Runner's device. An audio device can have one or more channels.

AXIS GIZMO

An axis gizmo is generally used to move, scale and rotate objects in 3D editors.

BITS PER PIXEL

Refers to the number of bits used per pixel, which is shortened as bpp. If an image consists of pixels that use 8-bits per channel, and there are three channels per pixel, it is considered to be a 24 bpp image.

CHANNEL MAPPING

Channel mapping is the process of mapping audio cue channels to audio device channels. This is done in two stages: first in the Cue properties window where the cue channels are mapped to audio buses, then in the Audio Properties window, where the audio buses are mapped onto audio device channels.

CHROMATICITY

Refers to the color without taking into account luminosity.

CHROMINANCE

Refers to the color in relation to luminosity.

CODEC

Refers to a device or software that can be used to encode and decode a data stream.

COMPRESSION

Refers to techniques used to reduce the size of data, such as an image or video.

COLOR BIT DEPTH

Refers to the number of bits used per color channel for a pixel. If a color channel consists of 8-bits, each channel can represent 256 different values. Three 8-bit channels can represent 256^3=16777216 different colors. This value is referred to as the color depth.

COLOR CHANNEL

Refers to a specific component of a color model. RGB consists of a red, green and blue channels.

COLOR DEPTH

Refers to the number of colors that can be represented in an image. It is often used to convey how many colors a specific input/output device can handle and is related to color bit depth.

COLOR GAMUT

Refers to all chromaticities that can be represented by a specific output or input device.

COLOR MODEL

Refers to a numerical representation of a color. Examples include RGB, HSV and CMYK.

COLOR SPACE

Refers to a constrained space in which you can represent a set of colors. Examples include sRGB and Rec.2020.

EDID

Stands for Extended Display Identification Data which is used to share display properties between different devices. For instance, it can be used to let a GPU know what computer screen is currently connected.

GAMMA CORRECTION

The human eye is much better at perceiving differences between dark colors compared to bright colors. This is exploited when storing and displaying image data. The concept called gamma correction may refer to both gamma encoding and decoding.

GAMMA ENCODING

Refers to transforming image data in a way where more bits (more data) is used for darker colors and fewer bits (less data) is used for brighter colors.

GAMMA DECODING

Refers to reversing the gamma encoding operation which means a color is transformed from its encoded value to its original value.

HDR

HDR, which stands for High Dynamic Range, refers to a set of techniques that allow for a greater range of luminance levels between the darkest and brightest parts of a video image compared to standard dynamic range (SDR) video.

LOSSLESS COMPRESSION

Refers to a compression technique that reduces the size of data, such as an image or video, without sacrificing any quality.

LOSSY COMPRESSION

Refers to a compression technique that reduces the size of data, such as an image or video, where quality/accuracy is often sacrificed for greater reduction in size.

LUMA

Refers to the brightness or grayscale intensity of an image.

LUMINANCE

Refers to a photometric unit used to describe the brightness of light.

MESH

A mesh is a surface composed of a set of connected polygons.

POLYGON

A polygon is a surface defined by three or more vertices. In WATCHOUT each polygon is always a triangle and thereby defined by three vertices. Sometimes polygons are also referred to as faces or triangles.

SDR

SDR, which stands for Standard Dynamic Range, refers to the standard range of luminance levels between the darkest and brightest parts of a video. It cannot represent the same amount of color detail compared to a high dynamic range (HDR) video.

TEXTURE

A texture can be thought of as an image that is to be applied to a mesh surface.

UNIFORM SCALING

Uniform scaling means that x, y and z are scaled equally.

UV-COORDINATE

UV-coordinates are used to map an image/texture onto a polygon. UV-coordinates are also sometimes referred to as texture coordinates.

VERTEX

A vertex is a point in space. Three vertices form a triangle/polyon in a mesh.

WHITE POINT

Refers to a point in a color gamut that is used as a reference color for white.

WIREFRAME

Wireframe rendering means that each polygon edge is rendered as a visible line. The intention with this render mode is often to get a better understanding about the topology and polygon density of a mesh.