When writing this article, I did look up the term “acronymised” and it looks like the formal definition is “to turn a phrase into an acronym.” However, that is not the meaning I’m associating it with in this context. Instead, I’m referring to a situation that many of us have come across at some point.
Have you been in a meeting discussing video broadcasting and then suddenly the presenter says something like: “Based on the SDI input the transcoder converts it to AVC with SCTE inserted over the ESAM interface, all in preparation for linear DAI…” You then experience a bit of a cold-sweat moment when you realise that you have no idea what some of the acronyms actually mean. At this point you either give up, switch off your attention and start daydreaming about walking barefoot on a sandy beach in the Maldives, or you discretely fish out your smartphone and start googling.
I think a lot of us have been in this situation. In all honesty, it is not humanly possible to know (and worse, to understand) all the acronyms that go around the broadcast and media industry. To make things even more interesting, an acronym can mean different things even within the context of media and broadcasting.
One thing I noticed when experiencing being acronymised is that I couldn’t find any good, concise source for this information in relation to media and broadcasting. There is a lot of very good information around, but it is spread all over the internet. Some of the acronym explainers I found are very generic. As the same acronym can mean drastically different things in different industry contexts, it doesn’t help massively.
We have tried to address this gap by creating an acronym dictionary on the realitech.tv website. This dictionary is specifically focused on the broadcast and media industry. Besides giving the definition of the different acronyms, we also provide explanations of what they actually mean, as well as some external links for further information. We plan to extend this dictionary over time and cover as much as possible of the media/broadcast world.
You can find the dictionary here: realitech.tv/dictionary
If you think we have missed out on some acronym(s), then please reach out to us on dictionary@realitech.tv
Oh… by the way, all the acronyms in mentioned above are covered in the dictionary.
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