Video clipping glossary

Short definitions of the terms you meet when you turn long videos and podcasts into clips.

• What are chapters in a video?Chapters are named sections of a long video or podcast, each starting at a set time. On YouTube they come from a list of timestamps and titles in the description, or from automatic chapters. They help viewers jump around, and they give a clipper a ready map of where the topics change.
• What are closed captions?Closed captions are captions a viewer can switch on or off, because the text is stored apart from the picture instead of being part of it. Open captions are part of the video image and always show. For clips posted to social apps, the choice mostly comes down to who controls the look: you or the viewer.
• What are open captions?Open captions are captions that are always displayed and cannot be turned off, because they are part of the picture itself. Closed captions can be switched on or off by the viewer. The W3C describes open captions as, for example, images of text embedded in the video. KeyMo's captions are open captions.
• What are show notes?Show notes are the written material published with a podcast episode: a short summary, the guests, links to everything mentioned, and timestamps for the main topics. They help listeners decide whether to press play and give you a place to point from a clip.
• What are speaker labels?Speaker labels are the names or tags in a transcript, caption file or caption track that show who is speaking, such as 'Dana:' or 'Speaker 2:'. They matter when more than one voice is heard, especially when a listener cannot see who is talking.
• What is 1080p?1080p is a video resolution of 1,080 rows of pixels, drawn progressively, and in a normal landscape frame that is 1920x1080 pixels. Turn the frame upright, as vertical video does, and the same detail is 1080x1920. The "p" stands for progressive scan: each frame is drawn whole, not in alternating lines.
• What is a call to action (CTA)?A call to action, or CTA, is a line, caption or graphic that asks the viewer to do one specific thing next, such as follow, comment or watch the full episode. On a short clip it is usually a single sentence, spoken or shown on screen, that fits the topic of the clip instead of sounding like an advert.
• What is a caption?A caption is text shown with a video or post. On video, captions put the speech and any important sounds on screen as words, timed to the audio, so a viewer can follow with the sound off. Under a social post, a caption is the written text the poster adds. This page is about the first meaning.
• What is a cash cow channel?A cash cow channel is YouTube slang for a channel run mainly to earn ad revenue from templated or repurposed videos, usually with little of the owner's own input. The phrase is not in YouTube's monetization policy page. What matters for clip channels is the reused content rule, which can remove monetization from a whole channel.
• What is a clipper?In video, a clipper is a person who cuts short clips out of other people's long videos or streams, to post on TikTok, Reels or Shorts and sometimes for pay per view. The word also names hair clippers and a signal-limiting circuit, so context decides which meaning applies.
• What is a codec?A codec is the method used to compress video or audio into a smaller file and decompress it again for playback. The name joins coder and decoder. A codec is not the file type: MP4 is a container that holds streams encoded with codecs such as H.264 for video and AAC for audio.
• What is a cold open?A cold open starts a video on its most gripping moment before any title, intro or setup. The term comes from TV and film, where a scene plays before the opening credits. In clipping it means starting a clip on the best line, then adding only as much context as the viewer needs.
• What is a copyright claim?A copyright claim is a notice that someone says they own part of your video. On YouTube it is usually created automatically when an upload matches a file a rights owner submitted to Content ID, and the owner can block the video, run ads on it or just track views. A claim is not a strike.
• What is a creator fund?A creator fund is a program in which a platform pays creators from a pool of money once they meet entry rules, usually based on views or engagement. The names change, and each platform sets its own thresholds. Clips cut from other people's videos can be refused for being unoriginal.
• What is a cutaway?A cutaway is a shot that briefly leaves the main subject to show something related, such as an object, a place or someone's reaction, then returns. Editors use it to add context, hide an edit or show what a speaker describes. A short podcast clip of one person talking rarely needs one.
• What is a faceless channel?A faceless channel is a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram channel whose videos never show the creator's face. The video comes from a voiceover, screen or stock footage, animation, text, or clips of other people. Faceless is a style, not a policy category: platforms judge what you add to the material, not whether you appear in it.
• What is a highlight reel?A highlight reel is a short compilation of the best moments from a longer video, game, event or body of work, cut together as one piece. A single clip shows one moment. A reel strings several together, so it needs a through-line. Platforms judge reels made from other people's material by what you added.
• What is a hook?A hook is the opening line or image of a clip, meant to make a viewer stay past the first seconds. In video it is the first thing said or shown. In writing it is the first sentence, in music a catchy phrase, and in React something else again. A good video hook makes sense with no context.
• What is a J-cut?A J-cut is an edit in which the audio from the next scene or speaker starts before its picture appears, so you hear the new sound while still looking at the old shot. It is named for the shape the clips make on an editing timeline. The mirror image is the L-cut, where the old audio runs on over the new picture.
• What is a lower third in video?A lower third is a graphic placed in the lower part of the video frame, usually a name with a short title or topic. It tells viewers who is speaking or what they are looking at without interrupting the picture. The name comes from its position: roughly the bottom third of a landscape frame.
• What is a MOV file?MOV is the file format of Apple's QuickTime, saved with the .mov extension. It is a container that holds video, audio and other tracks. Apple says the QuickTime format is the basis of the MPEG-4 standard while remaining a distinct file type. YouTube accepts MOV uploads, and KeyMo accepts them alongside MP4.
• What is a pattern interrupt?A pattern interrupt is a sudden change that breaks a viewer's rhythm, such as a cut, zoom, sound or on-screen word. In video editing, it is used to stop a thumb mid-scroll or to wake up attention when a shot has gone flat. It is a creator term for a technique, not a metric any platform measures.
• What is a podcast clip?A podcast clip is a short excerpt from an episode, cut so it makes sense without the rest. KeyMo's options run from 15 to 90 seconds, made for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, and are vertical and captioned. A 60-minute episode usually has room for several clips, not dozens, because few moments hold up on their own.
• What is a podcast trailer?A podcast trailer is a short promo that introduces a show as a whole: who it is for, what it covers and what a listener gets. It is not a recap of one episode. A new listener should know within a minute or so whether the show is for them and what to play first.
• What is a pull quote?A pull quote is a short, striking line taken from a longer text and set apart in larger type, often in a box, to catch a reader's eye. The same line also appears in the body of the piece. Its job is to make someone stop scrolling or flipping and start reading.
• What is a punch in?A punch-in is a quick, close crop into the frame, used to add emphasis or to disguise an edit. In music recording the same words mean something else: starting to record in the middle of a take to replace one line or phrase. Context tells you which one is meant.
• What is a quote card?A quote card is a still image that shows a quote as text, usually with the speaker's name and sometimes a photo or logo. It is made for social posts and stories. For a podcast, it turns one memorable line into something people can scan and share in a second.
• What is a safe zone in video?A safe zone is the part of a video frame where text and key visuals will not be cropped or covered by the app's interface. In vertical video it is the middle of the 9:16 picture, away from the profile strip, buttons and caption text that Reels, TikTok and Shorts draw over the edges.
• What is a soundbite?A soundbite is a short, quotable piece of speech taken from a longer recording, such as a single sentence from an interview. News programmes use them as quotes, and creators use them as the core of a clip. It works on its own, without the surrounding conversation.
• What is a subtitle?A subtitle is text shown on screen that gives the spoken words of a video, most often as a translation for people who can hear the audio but do not understand the language. Captions go further and add sounds, and a transcript is the same words kept separate from the video.
• What is a supercut?A supercut is a fast edit that stitches many short clips on one theme into a single video, such as every time a character says one phrase or every missed catch in a season of games. The pieces come from existing footage, and the repetition is the joke or the point.
• What is a talking head?A talking head is footage of one person speaking straight to the camera, usually framed from the chest up, with little else happening on screen. Interviews, vlogs, lectures and most video podcasts are built from talking-head shots, which is why they cut so well into vertical clips.
• What is a text overlay?A text overlay is any writing placed on top of a video's picture: a title, a name label, a quote or a caption. It is part of the frame you design, unlike a separate subtitle file. In vertical video, placement matters, because app buttons and the caption area can cover it.
• What is a timestamp?A timestamp marks a point in a recording by how far in it is, written as minutes and seconds like 12:34, or hours, minutes and seconds like 1:02:15. In video it lets you link to, chapter or cut a moment. In logs and databases, a timestamp can instead mean a date and time.
• What is a transcript?A transcript is a written copy of everything said in a recording, in order, often with speaker names and timestamps. For a podcast or video it is the searchable text version of the audio. It differs from captions, which are timed to appear on screen, and from show notes, which only summarise.
• What is a video podcast?A video podcast is a podcast episode released with a recording of the hosts and guests as well as the audio, usually on YouTube. Some people call it a vodcast. The conversation is the same as an audio show, but the picture makes it easy to cut vertical clips from.
• What is a visual hook?A visual hook is what a viewer sees in the first moment of a short video that makes them stop scrolling: a striking frame, a sudden movement, a gesture or a line of on-screen text. It works before anyone speaks. In a podcast clip it is usually a tight crop on a face, an expressive beat or a bold caption.
• What is a VOD?VOD stands for video on demand: video you choose to watch when you like, not at a set broadcast time. For streamers it means the saved recording of a live stream, kept so people can watch it later. For clippers, a VOD is the long source file that the short clips are cut from.
• What is a VTT file?VTT is short for WebVTT, Web Video Text Tracks: a plain-text file that stores captions or subtitles as timed cues so a web video player can display them. It looks like an SRT file but starts with a WEBVTT header, uses a period in timestamps and can carry position and basic text styling. The file ends in .vtt.
• What is a watermark?A watermark is a logo, name or line of text placed over an image or video to show who made it or which tool exported it. In video tools it is usually a logo burned into every export on a free or lower plan and removed on a paid one. KeyMo adds no watermark on any plan.
• What is A-roll?A-roll is the main footage of a video, the shots that carry the story and the sound: a person speaking to camera, an interview, a conversation at a table. Everything laid over it to illustrate or cover cuts is B-roll. A podcast recording is almost entirely A-roll, so clipping one is mostly about choosing moments, not adding footage.
• What is an audiogram (podcast)?A podcast audiogram is a short video made from audio alone: a still image or cover art, an animated waveform, and usually captions, playing over a clip of an episode. It is not the medical audiogram, which is a chart of a hearing test. An audiogram suits audio-only shows; a real video clip adds a face.
• What is an Instagram Reel?An Instagram Reel is a short video you make or upload on Instagram, designed mainly for vertical viewing and edited with audio, text and effects. Instagram accepts ratios from 1.91:1 to 9:16, a 30 FPS minimum, and recording up to 20 minutes, but it recommends videos of 3 minutes or less to people who do not follow you.
• What is an L-cut in video editing?An L-cut is an edit where the picture switches to the next shot while the audio from the previous shot keeps playing. On a timeline the audio clip runs on past the end of its video clip, which draws the letter L. It lets viewers hear one person while they watch another person react.
• What is an MP4 file?MP4 is a common video file format, defined as the MP4 file format in Part 14 of ISO/IEC 14496. It is a container: one file that wraps video and audio tracks, and what is inside can differ. YouTube recommends MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio, and KeyMo accepts MP4 uploads.
• What is an SRT file?An SRT file is a plain-text subtitle file, named after SubRip, that stores each caption as a numbered block with a start time, an end time and the text. A player reads it and shows the words over the video at those times. The file contains no video or audio.
• What is aspect ratio?Aspect ratio is the proportion between a frame's width and its height, written as width:height. A 16:9 video is 16 units wide for every 9 tall, and 9:16 is the same shape stood upright. It describes shape, not size, so 1920x1080 and 1280x720 share one ratio even though one has more pixels.
• What is audience retention?Audience retention is how much of a video viewers keep watching, shown across the video's timeline. In YouTube Analytics it is a line graph: where the line stays high, people kept watching; where it drops, they left or skipped ahead. It tells you which moments earn attention, not just how long people stayed on average.
• What is audio ducking?Audio ducking automatically lowers one sound, usually music, while another sound, usually a voice, is playing, then lets it return to normal when the voice stops. The result is that speech stays clear over a music bed without you riding the volume by hand. It is the audio version of stepping aside.
• What is auto reframe?Auto reframe is software that re-crops a wide video to a new aspect ratio, such as 9:16, and moves the crop to keep the subject in frame. A centre crop takes the middle of the picture and ignores who is speaking. Auto reframe follows a face or the action, so the person talking stays on screen.
• What is average view duration?Average view duration is how long viewers typically watch a video per view, shown as a length of time such as 24 seconds or 6 minutes. YouTube calculates it from engaged views, so it covers viewers who stayed past the opening seconds. Average percentage viewed is the related figure that shows the same idea as a share of the video.
• What is bitrate?Bitrate is the amount of data used to store or stream each second of video or audio, written in kilobits per second (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps). A higher bitrate lets the encoder keep more detail but makes a bigger file. It is separate from resolution, which is the pixel count.
• What is click-through rate?Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of people who saw a link, ad or thumbnail and clicked it. The formula is clicks divided by impressions, written as a percentage. On YouTube it shows how often a thumbnail and title earned a view when shown, and it matters less on the Shorts feed, where viewers swipe instead of choosing.
• What is Content ID?Content ID is YouTube's automated system that scans uploads against a database of audio and visual files submitted by copyright owners. A match creates a claim, and the owner's settings decide whether the video is blocked, monetized with ads, or only tracked. A Content ID claim is not a copyright strike.
• What is content repurposing?Content repurposing is reusing one piece of content in other formats, such as cutting a long podcast episode into short vertical clips. The source stays the same; the shape, length and channel change. Done well it extends one recording's reach. Done carelessly it is reposting, which YouTube's rules treat differently.
• What is CPM?CPM is cost per thousand. In advertising it is what an advertiser pays for every 1,000 impressions of an ad. In clipping campaigns the same word is used for the pay a brand offers for every 1,000 views of an approved clip. The label matches, but who pays, and for what, does not.
• What is Creative Commons?Creative Commons is a set of public copyright licenses that let a creator say in advance how others may reuse a work. Each license combines conditions such as credit (BY), noncommercial (NC), no derivatives (ND) and share-alike (SA). It is permission with terms, not a release of all rights.
• What is diarization?Diarization is the step in speech-to-text that works out who spoke when. It splits a recording into turns and tags each one with a speaker label, such as speaker 1 or speaker 2. It tells voices apart but does not know names, so naming the people is a separate step.
• What is engagement rate?Engagement rate is the share of an audience that does something with your content instead of only seeing it. There is no single formula. Google Analytics counts engaged sessions as a percentage of sessions, YouTube reports engaged views, and many people divide likes, comments and shares by views. Say which one you use.
• What is evergreen content?Evergreen content stays useful and findable long after you post it, because its subject does not expire. A clip explaining how something works is evergreen. A clip reacting to last night's news is topical. Evergreen moments can be scheduled across months; topical ones have to go out fast.
• What is face tracking?Face tracking is software that finds a face in each video frame and follows it as it moves. When a wide 16:9 shot is cut to vertical 9:16, the crop follows the face so the speaker stays in frame. It works well with one person on camera and struggles with fast cuts and several speakers.
• What is fair use?Fair use is a US legal doctrine that can allow limited use of copyrighted work without permission, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. It is decided case by case, using four factors, and only a federal court can settle it. It is a defence you argue after the fact, not a permission you hold in advance.
• What is frame rate (fps)?Frame rate is the number of still pictures a video shows each second, written as frames per second or fps. A higher rate gives smoother motion and needs more data to store. YouTube names 24, 25, 30, 48, 50 and 60 fps as common rates, and KeyMo exports its clips at 30 fps.
• What is H.264?H.264, also called AVC or Advanced Video Coding, is a video compression standard that squeezes video into much smaller files so it can be uploaded, streamed and played. It describes the video inside a file, not the file type. YouTube recommends H.264 for uploads, and KeyMo exports its clips as H.264 video with AAC audio.
• What is headroom?Headroom is the space between the top of a subject's head and the top edge of the frame. Too little makes a shot feel cramped, and too much leaves the person sunk at the bottom. In a 9:16 clip the top edge also sits under app buttons and text, so a face-tracked reframe has to set headroom with that in mind.
• What is kinetic typography?Kinetic typography is text that moves, scales, changes colour or appears word by word in time with speech or music. The motion carries part of the meaning, so the words are performed instead of just shown. On short clips its everyday form is word-by-word captions, where each word lights up or pops as it is spoken.
• What is lead room?Lead room, also called looking room or nose room, is the empty space left in front of a subject in the direction they face or look. A person looking left is placed right of centre, with space on the left. Without it, the subject feels squeezed against the edge of the frame.
• What is letterboxing in video?Letterboxing is the black bars above and below a video that is wider than the screen showing it. The picture keeps its shape and the leftover screen space is filled with black. When a 16:9 video plays on a 9:16 phone screen, the bars take up most of the screen. Pillarboxing is the same idea with bars at the sides.
• What is LUFS?LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It measures how loud audio sounds over a whole programme, not how high its loudest peak reaches. A lower number is quieter, so -23 LUFS is quieter than -14 LUFS. LKFS is the same unit under another name.
• What is multicam?Multicam, short for multi-camera, means recording one event with two or more cameras at the same time and cutting between the angles. A podcast with one camera on each guest and a wide shot is a multicam shoot. The result is either one switched video or a separate file per camera that an editor syncs and cuts.
• What is pacing in video editing?Pacing is the rhythm of a video: how quickly it moves from one beat to the next, set by how long each shot, sentence and pause lasts. The pacing definition is the same in film and writing. In a clip cut from a podcast, pacing mostly comes down to how little dead air sits between the first word and the point.
• What is picture in picture?Picture in picture (PiP) is a small video window shown on top of a larger one. Editors use it for reaction shots, guest windows and screen shares. Phones and browsers also use the same words for a mode where a video floats above other apps. In a 9:16 clip, the narrow frame leaves little room for the inset.
• What is pillarboxing?Pillarboxing is the black bars at the left and right of a video that is narrower than the screen playing it. It happens when a 4:3 or vertical picture is shown on a wide display without being stretched or cropped. The bars are empty space, not part of the video.
• What is royalty free?Royalty free means you can use a piece of music, footage or an image without paying the owner a fee each time it is used or played. You still follow a licence. Royalty free does not mean free of charge, free of conditions, or safe from every copyright claim on every platform.
• What is short-form video?Short-form video is video made for fast, swipeable feeds such as YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and TikTok. It is usually vertical and runs from a few seconds to a few minutes. No platform sets one official length, so the label describes the feed more than the clock.
• What is speech to text?Speech to text is software that listens to spoken audio and writes it out as text. It is the first step behind automatic captions and transcripts. The output is a draft: it can mishear names and small words, so anything people will read should be checked.
• What is split screen?Split screen is a layout that shows two or more separate video images side by side, or one above the other, in a single frame. In film it can show two places at once. In podcast clips it usually puts each speaker in their own box, and in 9:16 the boxes are stacked.
• What is the DMCA?The DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 US law. Its best-known part lets a copyright owner send a platform a takedown notice for infringing material, and lets the uploader answer with a counter-notice. A takedown notice is not a lawsuit, and it is not the same thing as a YouTube claim.
• What is the For You page (FYP)?The For You page, shortened to FYP, is TikTok's main feed of recommended videos. TikTok's own pages call it the For You feed, or FYF. Each viewer gets a feed ranked by a prediction of what they are likely to watch, like or skip, so two people opening the app at once see different videos.
• What is the rule of thirds?The rule of thirds is a framing guide. Two vertical and two horizontal lines divide the picture into nine equal boxes, and the subject sits on a line or where two lines cross instead of dead centre. In a 9:16 clip, that usually means a speaker's eyes land near the upper horizontal line.
• What is transcription?Transcription is the process of turning spoken audio into written text, done by a person, by software, or by software that a person then checks. The written result is a transcript. In biology the word means something different: copying a gene's DNA into RNA. This page covers the audio sense.
• What is UGC?UGC stands for user-generated content: videos, photos, reviews or posts made by ordinary people rather than by a brand's own team. In marketing it also names a paid job, where a creator films original content about a product for a brand to use. UGC is not the same as clipping someone else's footage.
• What is vertical video?Vertical video is video that is taller than it is wide, most often 9:16, which at full HD is 1080 by 1920 pixels. It fills a phone held upright, which is how short-form feeds show it. A 16:9 recording becomes vertical by cropping a narrow slice around the speaker.
• What is virality?Virality is how quickly and widely a piece of content spreads beyond its first audience, through shares and platform recommendations. It is an outcome, not a setting you can switch on. No tool or editor can promise it, and a clip score can only suggest how well a moment might hold attention.
• What is watch time?Watch time is the total time viewers have spent watching your video or channel, usually shown in hours or minutes. YouTube Help defines it as the amount of time viewers have watched your video. It is a running sum across every view, so it grows with more viewers and with longer viewing.
• What is YouTube Shorts?YouTube Shorts is YouTube's format for short vertical video, shown in its own swipe-through Shorts feed as well as in search, the homepage and on channel pages. Per YouTube Help, a Short can run up to three minutes, a computer upload needs a square or vertical aspect ratio, and the maximum resolution is 1080p.