Video Compression Picture Types - Pictures/Frames

Pictures/Frames

While the terms "frame" and "picture" are often used interchangeably, strictly speaking, the term picture is a more general notion, as a picture can be either a frame or a field. A frame is a complete image captured during a known time interval, and a field is the set of odd-numbered or even-numbered scanning lines composing a partial image. When video is sent in interlaced-scan format, each frame is sent as the field of odd-numbered lines followed by the field of even-numbered lines.

Frames that are used as a reference for predicting other frames are referred to as reference frames.

In such designs, the frames that are coded without prediction from other frames are called the I-frames, frames that use prediction from a single reference frame (or a single frame for prediction of each region) are called P-frames, and frames that use a prediction signal that is formed as a (possibly weighted) average of two reference frames are called B-frames.

Read more about this topic:  Video Compression Picture Types

Famous quotes containing the words pictures and/or frames:

    “And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
    And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
    Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
    Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
    Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
    Of how life should be.
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)