Vidding Glossary

This is actually a work in progress… We’ll try and add more terms as we find them or as people submit them.

VIDDING TERMS

Action
AMV
Angst
AU or AR
Bandwidth
Beta
Bootleg Footage
Canon
Codec
Crack!Ship
Crack!Vid
Crossover
Disclaimer
DL
DL Link
Embedded video
Embedding
Ep
Episodic
Fade to Black
Fan Trailer
Fanfic Trailer
Fandom
Fanon
Fanvid
Fast-paced video
Femmeslash videos
Fluff
Ghost-frames
Hotlinking
MM
Muse
Music video
MVA
No-Nos
Non-shippy videos
Non-slash videos
OT3
OTP
POV
Ripping
RPS
RU
Seasonal
Shippy videos
Slash videos
Songvid
Source Footage
Spoiler
Streaming media
Talking Heads
TPTB
UST
Vegas
Vid
Vid clip theft
Vid clip thief
Vid Manip ®
Vid Theft
Vid Thief
Vidder
Vidding (or vid-making)
Vidding Community
Vidding No-Nos
Video Fanfic
Watermark

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VIDDING GLOSSARY

ACTION
BANG! POW! PAW! BOOM! CRASH!
Action is one style of video that basically shows lots of guns, people running, explosions, people beating up other people… and sometimes all of these things together. It’s meant to focus on those exciting moments that, lets face it, really sell the movie and keep TV shows interesting.
Keep in mind, however, that a good action video is not simply random action sequences set to rock music. A good action piece explore the beat with every Bang! and really knows when to add a Boom! in the right moment for a good impact on the viewer.

AMV
Acronym for ‘Anime Music Videos’. Contrary to some belief, this does not stand for any type of fan-made vid, but for a very especific category: animes, or japanese animation. Vids made for Disney movies or other types of cartoons or animation, therefore, should not count as AMVs, but since I don’t know a lot of animes and don’t hang around with the AMV crowd, I don’t know for sure how this is going and can’t speak on their behalf.
All I know is AMV does not stand for music videos in general.
They do, however, take up a huge part of the vidding community, most vids that are made are actually AMVs.

ANGST
Refers to the deep sadness and emotional wounds of one character (or more) that vidders decide to focus in a music video. Angst also refers to a couple when they just can’t work things out and always seem to be hurting each other.
Videos with heavy loads of angst should come with a Kleenex Warning.
Scenes in angsty videos may include (but are not limited to): crying, break-ups, close up of sad face , hitting/kicking of objects, character sitting by a window looking so very lonely, etc.

AU or AR
Acronym for ‘Alternate Universe’ or ‘Alternate Reality”. It means that the scenes in the video have been modified to tell a story slightly (or very) different from canon. Such as showing a character dying when they’re actually perfectly alive, or creating a situation for two characters who are not romantically linked in canon to start a relationship. Crappy AUs can be very confusing, but AUs are all-around interesting music videos.

BANDWIDTH
The ammount of data downloadable from a webserver during a period of time, usually a month. That includes graphics, pictures and files available for downloading from a website. Free webservers have a very low bandwidth limit per month, while paid servers have much higher limits.
Anything that is transmitted or downloaded from a website to someone’s computer or server consumes bandwidth, especially large files like music videos, which is why vidders usually ask you to download the videos to your own computer instead of watching them directly from the website.
See also hotlinking.

BETA
To beta someone’s music video (could be called “beta-view” or “beta-watch”, but most times this is simply called “beta”) is to watch it before it’s posted on the internet and give the vidder a more detailed feedback, pointing out what is and isn’t working and what they could change to make the video better.
The word also refers to the person who beta-ed a music video. A beta is more than an ordinary reviewer. They might, sometimes, have to comment on an unfinished project.
Vidders are always looking for betas.

BOOTLEG FOOTAGE
Any movie/TV footage taken by unofficial (and sometimes illegal) means. Usually denotes footage that has been videotaped from a movie screening in a theatre by someone who’s anything BUT a professional at videotaping, other than footage from the DVDs or any official release. There are very few good bootleg footage around, they generally have really crappy quality.

CANON
The “official” events, characters, couples and plotlines of a certain movie/Tv series. They actually happened in the story and no one can deny it.
See also fanon.

CODEC
It stands for COmpressor/DECompressor, or COder/DECoder. It’s basically a piece of software that allows you encode something (usually audio or video, especially in our, lets say, “area of expertise” *wink wink*) in a particular format, and can also decode media that has been encoded in that format too.
In other words, codecs are good because they can shrink large pieces of audio/video files, while still maintaining most of the original quality.
The two main codecs used in vidding are arguably Divx and Xvid.

CRACK!SHIP
A couple that is so absurd that you might wonder if the person who thought of it is in need of mental help. And they often are.
Good crack!ship videos are fun to watch, but bad crack!ship videos will have you going “WTF???”.

CRACK!VID
Along the lines of crack!ship, a music video so absurd that you can’t help but wonder what the vidder was sniffing when they were editing. They’re generally funny videos and really entertaining, but can be just plain silly. They often involve crack!ships and/or crossovers.

CROSSOVER
A video with footage from more than one fandom (e.g. LOST/Harry Potter). There are many types of crossover videos.
1) A general video of two (or more) fandoms where the vidder doesn’t try to merge the fandoms in any way and just set them to the same song. They may, however, make comparissons between the fandoms, as in placing similar scenes from each of them together (e.g. showing a clip of Hermione punching Draco in the face, followed by a clip of Kate punching Sawyer in the face).
2) A video of two (or more) fandoms where the characters from each fandom interact with those from the other fandoms. They’re often humorous and sometimes have dialogue (for instance, they take a scene from LOST where a character goes “How are ya?” and then a scene from Harry Potter where a character goes “Fine! How are you?”, thus creating dialogue between the two characters).
3) A video where the editor takes scenes from one fandom and sets them to the audio from another fandom (like a scene of Hurley going “Wow!” with the audio of Ron going “Bloody brilliant!”).
4) A fan trailer of one fandom using the audio from a trailer of another fandom. (a LOST trailer using the audio from the first Harry Potter trailer, that ends up with Jack saying “There’s no such thing as magic!”).

DISCLAIMER
An obligatory copyright notice added to a video and/or a video page where the creator disavows ownership of the fandom they vidded in and states who the actual owners are.
Vids are property of their editors, but the TV shows/movies/etc they’re about aren’t, and all vidders should acknowledge it.
There is no real format for writing disclaimers, but these are the basic rules: 1) always say you don’t own the characters or the footage and give credit where credit is due; 2) Make it clear that you’re not making a profit.

DL
Short for “download”, but sometimes it’s used as dl link.

DL LINK
‘Download Link’, often asked for in sites such as YouTube when people want to download the file itself, instead of watching the embedded video on the page.

EMBEDDED VIDEO
A video that loads directly in the webpage itself, and not in an external player in your computer. They’re usually YouTube videos that someone posted directly on their webpage instead of giving the link to the page where the video is located. It is not limited to YouTube, however, since some file-hosting servers like Putfile also have embedded videos.

EMBEDDING
To load a video directly to a webpage, instead of providing a download link.
See embedded video.

EP
Short for ‘episode’, as in the episodes of a TV series.

EPISODIC
A music video about one particular ep, or a multi-parter.

FADE TO BLACK
A website run by vidders Barbi and Marie which, for many years, served as reference for other vidders regarding vid clip theft. Although the website has been closed for a while now, it’s still referenced in many places in the web. If you’ve been around enough, you might have already spotted their catchy icon (”Stop vid clip theft now before music videos fade to black”) somewhere.
See also vid clip theft.

FAN TRAILER
Trailers for movies or TV series made by fans. They can be very similar to official trailers, but might also be about an especific character, pairing or plotline. They generally include text to follow the scenes (like that “One man, one destiny” sort of stuff) and often include dialogue, but that does not necessarily mean that any video with text or dialogue is a fan trailer.
Fan trailers can also be AU and tell a story that didn’t necessarily happen in canon. If it’s about a story told in a fanfic, it’s a fanfic trailer.

FANFIC TRAILER
Fan trailer made as a preview for someone’s fanfic. They’re mostly AU and often shippy, but that depends on the fanfic they’re about.
Since some of the events in the fanfic might and usually have not actually happened in canon, the vidder often takes footage of other movies and/or TV shows, usually featuring the same actors from the fandom the fanfic is about (e.g. for a Fanfic Trailer about Sirius Black, the vidder might take footage from other Gary Oldman movies).

FANDOM
The fans and what they do, a community of fans that share a common interest. There are many different fandoms around and they often overlap each other (e.g. the SG-1 and SGA fandoms form the greater Stargate fandom, part of the Sci-fi fandom).
The word might also be used to indicate the movie/TV series itself and not the fans. It is used in vidding to name which movie/TV show the video is about. Music videos are usually about one fandom in particular. If they include more than one fandom, they’re called crossover videos.

FANON
The events, characters, couples and plotlines that have no real evidence in canon, but are accepted among fans.

FANVID
Another word for music video or vid.

FAST-PACED VIDEO
A vid consisted of an immense quantity of clips shown in a very small period of time. Often action-y and might sometimes make you dizzy. For real. A good fast-paced video uses the beat of the song and really grabs your attention, while a poorly edited fast-paced video is just a vast collection random action scenes set to a rock song, with really crappy editing and full of ghost frames.

FEMMESLASH VIDEOS
See slash videos.

FLUFF
Fluff is one especific type of lighthearted shippy videos that only shows the “ups” of the relationship and ignore the “downs”. There’s no angst or drama, the characters are shown perfectly happy and fully enjoying each other’s company.
Good fluff videos make you feel good, but bad fluff videos can be just plain boring.

GHOST-FRAMES
A frame that shows up out of thin air in a music video. Sometimes, when a vidder is placing scene A along with a different scene B and a ghost frame shows up between them, it’s leaked from either A or B. It means that the clip went longer than it was supposed to.
To make things simple, here’s how it works: see if you can spot the ghost frame HERE. Yes, it’s up for less than one second, but in a 3-minute video, that one frame can be really distracting and can destroy the flow of an entire sequence. In this case, the ghost frame leaked from the first clip of Jim and Dwight, since it’s the shot that immediately follows the one used in the sequence.
Ghost frames often indicate crappy editing and might also be a good way to spot vid clip theft. For instance, if the frame is leaked from a scene that has absolutely nothing to do with A or B, it could mean that either A or B was part of an edited sequence from another music video. If this only happens once in a video, it could mean nothing, but if a video is full of them, beware of clip theft!
Actually, “ghost-frames” isn’t really an official name for them. They don’t really have an official name, quite frankly. They can also be known as “stray frames” or whatever… I just call them that ’cause I like to call myself a Ghost-Frames-Buster (give it up for the geeks!).

HOTLINKING
A big no-no in vidding. It’s the act of linking directly to someone else’s music video (or graphics) from another website, other than providing the link to the page where the video is located. This eats up bandwidth and is to be avoided at all cost, since some vidders place their work in free servers with low bandwidth limits.

MM
Sometimes called ‘WMM’. Acronym for ‘Windows Movie Maker’, a free editing program that comes with Windows ME, XP, Vista and all subsequent versions. It’s a good tool for newbies, but it irritates the heck out of most vidders.

MUSE
Not to be confused with the band Muse, a vidding muse is a cunning son-of-a-gun of a creature that always hit vidders in the head with vid ideas when they least expect it.
Ever listened to a song and immediately thought of a great music video you can make with it? Ever woke up at 3 am with an idea for a video so good that you just HAVE to try it? That’s your muse talking.
Muses and vidders have a complex love/hate relationship. Vidders might also give their muses names. For instance, here in Perfect Harmony we have two muses, Pooky (Di’s) and Pinky (Ana’s).

MUSIC VIDEO
Not to be confused with the kind of music videos shown in MTV and the media. Within fandom, a music video is a collection of clips from one or more movies/TV series and set to music. They’re made by fans, for fans.
Also known as ‘fan-made music videos’, ‘fanvids’ or ’songvids’, but most commonly called ‘vids’.

MVA
Acronym for ‘Music Video Awards’. A contest run on many websites to award good music videos. Although there’s an ever-growing, infinite number of video awards online, each fandom has their own “official” MVAs (for instance, the Stargate Music Video Awards).

NO-NOS
What you most definitely CANNOT do under any circumstance.
See the list of vidding no-nos.

NON-SHIPPY VIDEOS
Videos showing an anything-but-romantic relationship between two characters.
The slash (/) was generally used for romantic pairings, but now it is also being used to indicate any kind of connection between two characters (siblings, friends, etc), so vidders say their video is “non-shippy” when they mentioned two characters with the ‘/’, but don’t want people to view them as a romantic pairing.
Often used when the video is about two siblings or family members and the vidder doesn’t want anyone going “EW! Incest!!!!” (e.g. Ron/Ginny, Lorelai/Rory, Dean/Sam, etc…).

NON-SLASH VIDEOS
Much like non-shippy videos, any video showing a non-romantic relationship between two male characters.
Often used when the characters in the video are known to have many slash fans (e.g. House/Wilson, Sheppard/McKay, Jack/Daniel, Frodo/Sam).

OT3
An OTP of 3 characters. It’s a romantic triangle that someone favours over other relationships in a fandom.
Sometimes called 3TP.

OTP
Acronym for ‘One True Pairing’. Initially used to show someone’s main pairing in a fandom, now it’s a general term for any pairing that you follow closely and want them to become canon. It sometimes used humorously (e.g. “OMG! House/The cane OTP!!!!”).
Vidders will often make shippy videos of their OTPs.
An OTP of three characters is an OT3.

POV
Point Of View. It means that the video is being told through the eyes of an especific character or group of characters.

RIPPING
Much less brutal than the word suggests, ripping means copying a DVD of a movie or TV show (or any DVD, for that matter) to your computer hard disk, so that it can be used in a vid (or anything else, but for the purposes of this site, we’ll say vid). It’s a long and tiring process, but you do get the best quality and a clean conscious from having purchased the footage you’re using.

RPS
“Real-People Slash”. Again, a term that came from fanfiction but is now being used for videos as well. This is one kind of slash video, only it’s focused on the relationship between real people (e.g. Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom, Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert, Hugh Laurie/Robert Sean Leonard, etc…), rather than between characters.

RU
Acronym for ‘Runner Up’. In a music video award, it means the video that came in close second (if only 1st place awards are given), or the video that came really close to getting an award (if they have awards for the other places, not just 1st), although the term “honorable mention” is used more often in this case.

SEASONAL
A music video focusing on a particular season of a TV show.

SHIPPY VIDEOS
Music videos that show a romantic relationship between two characters. It can either be a canon or AU pairing, and it can be about male/female, male/male or female/female relationships. Anything goes! (ok, that just sounded wrong, for some reason…)
See also slash videos.

SLASH VIDEOS
Music videos about same-sex relationships, usually between two male characters. It’s sometimes used to describe a video about the relationship between two female characters as well, and, in that case, they might also be called ‘femmeslash videos’ (this is, however, more commonly used in fanfiction).

SONGVID
A less-common word for music video or vid, often used among newbies, and rarely used by long term vidders.

SOURCE FOOTAGE
Simply called ‘footage’ by most vidders. The material used in vidding. The official footage are the movies and TV shows themselves (taken from DVDs or any official release), while bootleg footage comes from people who, for example, videotaped the movies shown in the movie theatre or went as low as to film the TV as they were showing the series they wanted to vid.
Also known as “source material”.

SPOILER
Just like the word suggests, a spoiler is a piece of information that gives away plot points and details about an episode of a TV show or a movie, thus “spoiling” the surprise for those who will watch it.
In vidding, you should always remember that not everyone gets to watch a movie or a TV show at the same time as you, so if a video reveals major information like character deaths, plot twists or cliffhangers for recent episodes, spoiler warnings are required.

STREAMING MEDIA
Media delivery method where the media can be displayed as it’s being loaded (e.g. Television itself).
In web, streaming media can be watched by a user as it’s been sent to their browser, instead of waiting for the download to finish.

TALKING HEADS
This should be taken literally. Basically, talking heads are clips in a vid where a character can be seen talking with no sound to go with it apart from the music in the vid.
Talking heads should be avoided at all costs by vidders, since, considering you won’t hear what they’re saying, it makes no sense to have their mouths speaking and no sound coming out. Besides it might (and often will) distract the viewer and make them lose their focus.

TPTB
Acronym for ‘The Powers That Be’, aka the people who do actually own the TV shows and movies we’re obsessed with (the creators, writers, producers, networks, broadcasting companies, etc).

UST
‘Unresolved Sexual Tension’. It means the chemistry between two characters that are not romantically involved in canon, or somehow can’t get together due to some circumstance, often fate (e.g. John/Aeryn, Mulder/Scully, Jack/Sam, etc).
This term is more usually found in fanfiction, but I’m adding here since some videos are about USTs and mention them in the description.

VEGAS
Sony Vegas in all its versions (Movie Studio, Platinum, or Pro) is known simply as Vegas among vidders. It’s one of the better-known editing softwares out there, highly reccomended for being advanced in comparison to others like MM, easy to use and to master, and yet with some professional tools at the same time. Let’s say it’s sort of the middle ground between MM and Adobe Premiere.
It does have flaws, however, and newbies in particular should avoid using this softwares on their first vidding attempts, or it will drive them insane.

VID
Short for ‘video’ (no, seriously!). A collection of clips from one or more movies/TV series set to music.
See music video.

VID CLIP THEFT
The biggest vidding no-no. The act of taking clips and pieces from someone else’s music video and using them on your own video. Often the subject of many debates in vidding regarding what should be considered stealing or not. But it’s quite simple: if you took a clip from another music video and used in your own, you’ve committed clip theft. Period.
Not to be confused with vid theft.

VID CLIP THIEF
Sometimes refered to as “clip thief” or, most commonly, just “thief”. Used by vidders to indicate someone who committed vid clip theft.
Not to be confused with vid thief.

VID MANIP ®
This is a term created by our very own Ana (hence the ®). A vid manip is a mix between an offical music video and a fan-made one. Basically, what you do is you take the footage with the band from the official music video and add fandom footage of any TV show or movie to make it seem like it’s an official music video for that fandom.
Ok, this sounds a lot more confusing than it is, but you just check the vid manips section of our site and you’ll understand what it means.

VID THEFT
A big no-no in vidding. The act of taking someone elses ENTIRE music video and using it exactly as it is (sometimes with minor changes), and just placing it to another song. It happens more often than you’d think. Not to be confused with vid clip theft.

VID THIEF
Someone who committed vid theft. Not to be confused with vid clip thief.
If someone’s been a vid thief, it is highly suggested that they change their name and IP address if they hope to be respected by at least a small ammount of serious vidders. Though most times not even that works.

VIDDER
Someone who makes music videos. Anyone who’s made a music video can be considered a vidder, but the term is often used to indicate someone who has made a good number of music videos.

VIDDING (or VID-MAKING)
The act of making music videos. Yup, just as simple as that.

VIDDING COMMUNITY
It’s the community of vidders, a place any vidder or vid fan can resort to for help or guidance. It’s not a “real” place in the sense that there’s no website or messageboard or community in particular where all vidders meet, but rather many different places. However, it IS a real community in a way that it has rules and they must be followed by any cost.
If any vidder suffers anything, like no-nos such as hotlinking or vid theft, they know they can always run to the community for protection or support. Also, when the community goes down on someone who’s done something to one of them and is not cooperating, it’s not a pretty sight. Expect blood. Lots of blood.

VIDDING NO-NOS
The vidding community equivalent of the 10 Commandments. If someone commits a no-no, expect punishment. And if you have committed a no-no, it is better to confess and cooperate than to try and resist. To quote the Daleks from Doctor Who, “Resistance is useless!”.
These are some of the vidding no-nos:
1) Vid theft.
2) Vid clip theft.
3) Hotlinking.
4) Posting someone else’s music video to a website without their permission.
5) Posting someone else’s music video and giving them no credit.
6) Claiming someone else’s video as your own (can be considered ‘vid theft’).

VIDEO FANFIC
Not very commonly used, just a more sofisticated way of saying AU. Used mostly in feedback as a way of complimenting someone on making such a believable AU story that they felt like they’re reading a really good fanfic.

WATERMARK
A small picture or text placed usually in the bottom right corner of a music video to indicate which vidder has made it. Can be the vidder’s own name or just any kind of icon.
A vidder who uses a watermark is clearly stating: “I don’t want anyone else to take clips from my videos and using them on their own, and if they do I shall attack them mercilessly”. They often start watermarking when they’ve had (or to prevent) issues with vid clip theft.