Virtuosa™ : Glossary

Most of the concepts and functions are explained in the Virtuosa™ help file, always accessible while running the Virtuosa™ application, by pressing the F1 key at any time. Here you can find the definitions of some of the most used keywords :


• Background : picture that is displayed in the background of the Virtuosa™ interface.
• Bit : smallest digital measurement unit. Can be 0 or 1.
• Bitrate : measurement unit that quantifies the flow of bits per second.
• Byte : measurement unit for digital files storage. 1 byte = 8 bits.
• CODEC : or compression-decompression, algorithms used to reduce the size of the audio and video files while maintaining maximum quality.
• CD burning : recording of a sequence of tracks onto a blank Audio CD, in Red Book format (standard for Audio CDs).
• CDDB™ : CD DataBase : system by which an Audio CD can be identified online and its track titles downloaded in the user's application.
• CD ripping : analog or digital transfer of tracks from Audio CDs to the computer hard drive. This may include an encoding phase.
• CD-R : CD-Recordable, hardware device able to record Audio CDs in Red Book Format.
• Drag-and-drop : process by which the user drags and drops track icons within a window, an application or across applications to trigger a process.
• Driver : software module allowing an application to communicate with specific devices.
• DRM : Virtuosa integrates Digital Rights Management technologies (DRM). These technologies allow the secure electronic download and streaming of audio and video files through digital networks. They also allow copyright information to be included in the audio file for accurate copyright management.To protect copyrights, the DRM technologies also embed anti-copy systems that prevent files to be duplicated, redistributed, converted or moved to other PCs. The number of CD burnings is also limited in certain cases.
• Encoding : process by which tracks are compressed in terms of size, while maintaining maximum quality for the selected bitrate.
• Jukebox : software application allowing users to create playlists, as well as to organize a music or movie collection.
• Mp3 : or MPEG 1 Layer 3, codec allowing audio compression and reaching a ratio of 12:1 with minimal quality loss.
• Playlist : sequence of audio and/or video tracks.
• Plugin : software module that "plugs in" an application in order to give it a specific additional functionality.
• Red Book format : standard for the recording of Audio CD, allowing compatibility with all existing CD players worldwide.
• Sample rate : frequency - or number of times per seconds - at which a source signal is sampled digitally. Measured in Hertz, or cycles per second.
• SDK : Software Development Kit, set of programming instructions, points of access and guidelines for plugin developers.
• Skin : set of graphic elements which allow to customize the appearance of an application interface.
• Track : audio or video file.
• WMA/WMV : or Windows™ Media Audio and Windows™ Media Video, audio and video file formats developed by Microsoft™ which may include DRM restrictions.

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