Matrox Electronic Systems II Frame buffer, Grab, Horizontal sync, Host, Interlaced scanning

122 Appendix G: Glossary

■Frame

A single image grabbed from a video camera.

■Frame buffer

A frame buffer is a dedicated storage area often used for data transfers between devices of differing speeds. For example, since a computer sends out data faster than a screen can display it, the data is temporarily stored in the frame buffer. The buffer is generally thought of as a two-dimensional surface with a certain pixel depth.

■Grab

To acquire an image from a camera.

■Horizontal sync

The part of a video signal that indicates the end of a line and the start of a new one.

See also vertical sync.

■HSL

A color space that represents color using components of hue, saturation, and luminance. The hue component describes the actual color of a pixel. The saturation component describes the concentration of that color. The luminance component describes the combined brightness of the primary colors.

■Host

In general, Host refers to the principal CPU in one’s computer.

■Interlaced scanning

Describes a transfer of data in which the odd-numbered lines of the source are written to the destination buffer first and then the even-numbered lines (or vice-versa).

See also progressive scanning.

■Latency

The time from when an operation is started to when the final result is produced.