Audio/Video Glossary

WAVE (Waveform Audio Volume Exchange): An uncompressed digital audio data file format supporting a variety of bit resolutions, sample rates and audio channels and widely used in professional applications that process digital audio waveforms. This format is very popular on IBM PC (clone) platforms as it takes into account some peculiarities of the Intel CPU such as little endian byte order.
The WAVE (or WAV) format is sort of a bastardized standard, unlike the AIFF standard which was mostly designed by a small, coordinated group, WAV has had all manner of much-too-independent, uncoordinated aberrations inflicted upon it. The net result is that there are far too many versions of the format. The WAV file itself consists of three “chunks” of information: The RIFF chunk which identifies the file as a WAV file, the FORMAT chunk which identifies parameters such as sample rate and the DATA chunk which contains the actual data (samples).
WHITE BALANCE: An electronic process used in camcorders and video cameras to calibrate the picture for accurate color display in different lighting conditions. (i.e., sunlight vs. indoor incandescent) White balancing should be performed prior to any recording, typically by pointing the camera at a white object for reference. (See COLOR TEMPERATURE)
WHITE BOOK: (See VIDEO CD)
WIPE: Special effect in which two pictures from different video sources are displayed on one screen. Special effects generators provide numerous wipe patterns varying from simple horizontal and vertical wipes to multi-shaped, multi-colored arrangements.
WORD CLOCK: The timing signal that is used in a multidevice digital audio system to synchronize the sampling frequency at which the system’s component devices operate. To avoid data loss and distortion, all digital devices in a system must be slaved to a single word-clock master so that their sampling frequencies will be exactly the same.
WORD LENGTH: The number of bits per sample that a digital device (such as an A/D converter or VBR encoder) uses to convert or store data. The greater the number of bits in a digital sample, the more accurate the digitized description of the instantaneous analog signal value. Also called bit depth, bit rate or bit resolution.

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