The vocabulary used across these chapters, set out in plain terms. Each entry is described as it applies to half-inch home video cassettes rather than to broadcast equipment.
- Control track
- A timing track recorded along one edge of the tape. It tells the machine where each diagonal video stripe begins, and damage to it shows as tearing or rolling at the top of the picture.
- Drop-out
- A brief white or coloured dash across the picture, caused by the tape losing contact with the head where dirt sits or the magnetic coating has shed.
- Head drum
- The tilted, rapidly spinning cylinder carrying the video heads. Tape is wrapped most of the way around it so each pass writes a long diagonal stripe.
- Helical scan
- The recording geometry that writes diagonal stripes across a slowly moving tape using a spinning drum, allowing a television picture to be recorded at a few centimetres of tape per second.
- Hi-fi audio
- Sound recorded by the spinning head drum in the same diagonal stripes as the picture, giving far better quality than the linear edge track.
- Linear audio track
- A narrow sound track running along the edge of the tape, recorded by a fixed head at the tape's own slow speed.
- Long play
- Any of the slower transport speeds that multiply a cassette's running time and visibly coarsen the picture.
- Pinch roller
- The rubber wheel that presses the tape against the driven capstan. When it hardens or wears, the tape is pulled unevenly and the picture becomes unstable.
- Print-through
- A faint ghost of a strong recording transferring between adjacent layers of a wound tape pack, heard or seen as a pre-echo.
- Shell
- The moulded plastic case holding the two spools, the guide rollers and the hinged lid that protects the tape when the cassette is out of a machine.
- Sell-through
- A cassette priced for buying rather than for renting, sold to households instead of to shops.
- Tracking
- The alignment between the video heads and the recorded stripes. Adjusting it removes the band of noise that appears when a tape was recorded on a differently aligned machine.