full motion video

See also: full-motion video

English

Alternative forms

• full-motion video

Noun

full motion video (countable and uncountable, plural full motion videos)

1. Video of sufficient quality to make motion appear continuous to humans, considered to require at least 16 frames per second.
   • 1985, Steven Golen, C Glenn Pearce, Ross Figgins, Report writing for business and industry:

     When most companies become involved in teleconferencing, usually their first interest is in full-motion video conferencing.

   • 1989 November, “Coming for Personal Computers: Full-motion Video”, in Popular Science, volume 235, number 5:

     Originally, 72 minutes of partial-screen (one-eighth) full-motion video could be stored. These pictures are fairly coarse — worse than low-quality VCR...

   • 1992, Association for Computing Machinery, Computer Graphics:

     To digitize and store a 10 seconds clip of full motion video in a computer requires transfer of an enormous amount of data […]

   • 1992 December 22, PC Mag, volume 11, number 22, page 346:

     But while the small screen and grainy full-motion video on a CD-ROM […] may wow computerphiles […] , it won't impress the MTV generation.

   • 2008, Mark J P Wolf, The Video Game Explosion:

     In reality, multimedia was associated first and foremost with the development of full-motion video. This fascination for a cinema-like illusion of motion […]

2. (video games) In-game footage that is pre-rendered, often using real-world scenes, as opposed to being rendered in-engine or in real time.
   • 1996, Prabhat K. Andleigh, Kiran Thakrar, Multimedia Systems Design, page 18:

     Stored full-motion video is useful for messages and information dissemination, whereas live video can be used for direct interaction, medical applications, manufacturing applications, and a variety of other process control processes.

   • 2004, Kevin Oxland, Gameplay and Design, page 161:

     In games, full motion video (FMV) truly began in the 16-bit era on the Amiga and Atari ST. Psygnosis, an innovative company that is now a distant memory, often put an awe-inspiring, beautifully rendered movie at the front ot their games.

   • 2005, William Abner, Gamer's Tome of Ultimate Wisdom 2006, page 125:

     Privateer II had real actors in full motion video sequences doing all sorts of silly stuff.

   • 2007, Jielin Dong, Network Dictionary, page 206:

     Full motion video (FMV) is a popular term for pre-recorded TV-quality movie or animation in a video game. FMV is simply a playback of something that was previously recorded. With modern computer hardware, games are rendered at much higher resolutions than typical FMV's, resulting in FMV's being easily spottable as "lower quality" than the game itself.

   • 2013, Matt Fox, The Video Games Guide, page 293:

     Fight through to the end of the tekken tournament with any of these eight original characters and you unlock a hidden character (including favorites like Kuma and Wang), as well as being treated to a short FMV (full motion video) sequence that expands a little on each fighter's motivation.

   • 2017, Nate Crowley, 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed), page 50:

     Enter the Full Motion Video (FMV) game – in which pre-recorded video was used to display action – and the seminal title Star Trek: Bee on the Bridge.

Usage notes

• Often used in marketing claims about video quality.

Synonyms

• (video games): FMV

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “video games”): in-engine

Translations

video of sufficient quality

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 全動態影像／全动态影像 (quán dòngtài yǐngxiàng)

• Dutch: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: liikkuva videokuva

See also

• Persistence of vision on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Full motion video based game on Wikipedia.Wikipedia