Access time
In mass storage devices, the time elapsed to read or write to or from a device.
Additive color system
A color reproduction system in which images are reproduced by mixing appropriate amounts of red, green, and blue lights.
Animation
A synchronized sequence of graphics that conveys action.
Antialiasing
The process of reducing the visibility of jagged edges by using gray scale pixel values to smooth and feather contrasting intersections of bitmapped objects.
Application
A computer program written for a specific purpose.
Aspect ratio
The ratio of width to height of an image. The standard aspect ratio of broadcast television and most computer displays is 4:3. The 35mm slide standard is 3:2.
Asymmetric system
A video system that requires more equipment to store, process, and compress a digital image than it needs to decompress and playback. Intel’s DV I and Phillips/Sony’s CD-I systems are asymmetric in full fidelity mode.
Audio track
A CD- DA track with digital audio samples encoded as 16 bit numbers.
Audio
Sound portion of a video signal. or separate sound used to; annotate objects on frames including text, graphics, animation and still images.
Authoring language
A high- level programming language using English or mnemonics and simple commands specifically designed for developing multimedia applications. Often included as a subset of an authoring system.
Authoring system
A software product designed to allow users without specific programming skills to develop and test multimedia applications.
Averaging
The process of smoothing the selection or image by averaging the values of the surrounding pixels over a specified radius.
