F

FAT

File allocation table. A table or list maintained by an operating system to keep track of the status of various segments of disk space used for file storage.

FDC

Floppy disk drive controller. A special-purpose chip and associated circuitry that directs and controls reading from and writing to a computer's disk drive.

field

One half of a television picture. One complete vertical scan of the picture, containing 262.5 lines. Two fields make a complete television picture (frame). The lines of field 1 are vertically interlaced with the lines of field 2 for 525 lines of resolution.

FIFO

First in/first out. A method for processing a queue in which items are removed in the same order they were added.

filters

Atomic components that provide the basic building blocks for processing data. Under the WDM Stream architecture, also known as a functional device or multimedia processing driver. Each filter's capability is described in part by a number of connection points called pins. Each pin can consume, produce, or both consume and produce a data stream such as digital audio. Specialized tasks can be solved by connecting filters by way of their pins into a topology—for example, to play filtered and mixed audio. Under WDM, a filter is implemented as a kernel-mode entity that is a device object usually implemented by a kernel driver. Under ActiveMovie, a filter is a User-mode entity that is an instance of a COM object, usually implemented by a DLL.

fps

Frames per second.

frame

A single screen-sized image that can be displayed in sequence with other slightly different images to create animated drawings. A video frame consists of two interlaced fields of either 525 lines (NTSC) or 625 lines (PAL/SECAM), running at 30 frames per second (NTSC) or 25 frames per second (PAL/SECAM). Film runs at 24 frames per second.

full duplex

In terms of data flow, indicates bidirectional data flow.

full-motion video

Video reproduction at 30 frames per second (NTSC-original signals) or 25 frames per second (PAL-original signals). See also frame.

functional device

See filters.