The vocabulary this register runs on

These pages define the words this site uses in a narrow sense. None of them carries a vendor statement; they exist so the cells can be read the way they were written rather than the way the words sound. As of 2026-09-22.

Inclusion rule. Words this site uses in a narrow sense, where the ordinary sense would mislead. A term earns a page when a reader who assumes the ordinary meaning would read a cell wrongly. Order. Alphabetical by group name.

Most of the confusion in this subject is vocabulary. Watermark is used for a badge in a corner and for a signal nobody can see; a mark that survives an export and a mark that an export destroys are described with the same three words on different pages by the same kinds of company. A register that did not fix its own terms would be recording noise.

Definitions here are deliberately about reading rather than about engineering. What matters for a cell is whether a reader can check the claim, what operation would destroy the thing being claimed, and which of several similar-sounding objects the vendor was actually talking about. Where a precise technical account exists elsewhere, these pages point at the column that uses the word and stop.

No page in this section adds a row to the register or a value to a cell. Each one says what a word means here, what it does not mean, and where in the register the distinction changes an answer.

1The terms

• Burned-in mark — A mark that is part of the pixels, so removing it means changing the picture.
• Corner stamp — A mark confined to one corner, which is the cheapest to apply and the easiest to crop.
• Full-frame mark — A mark covering the whole picture, which turns output into a demonstration rather than footage.
• Moving mark — A mark that travels across the frame, which is what defeats a reframe.
• Brand mark — A vendor's own logo used as the watermark, which is packaging rather than provenance.
• Invisible watermark — A signal carried inside the picture that no viewer sees and software can look for.
• Content credentials — A signed record attached to a file saying how it was made, readable by ordinary tools.
• Provenance manifest — The container-level block a credential standard writes, and the thing a re-encode drops.
• Generation metadata — Any note in a file saying it was machine-made, named or not — and unnamed is not enough.
• Platform label — A label the destination adds after the file leaves you, which is outside every column here.
• Double label — Two marks on one frame, which is the outcome one vendor names as a reason to switch its own off.
• Detection signal — Whatever a detector looks for, which is not necessarily what the vendor calls a watermark.
• Feature grid — A sales table whose blanks are placed to make an upgrade obvious, not to describe a product.
• Cumulative grid — A grid where each plan is the one below plus additions, so absence above a line means nothing.
• Feature icon — A glyph beside a repeated line that carries the whole distinction, invisibly to text.
• Negative feature line — A feature printed as an absence, such as No watermark, which describes nothing.
• Benefit list — A per-plan list of inclusions, which is the sturdiest grid shape to read a boundary from.
• Omission reading — A value established by a line that is not there, which expires whenever the page is redrawn.
• Crossing point — The plan at which a visible mark stops, which is a packaging decision rather than a price for the mark.
• List price — The ordinary price of a plan, which is the figure a crossing point is quoted at.
• Annual basis — A monthly figure that requires a year's commitment, which makes two crossing points incomparable.
• Promotional rate — A first-period price, which describes a billing period rather than a marking boundary.
• Plan inheritance — The rule that a dearer plan includes everything below it, which makes upper-tier silence meaningless.
• Trial tier — A free offering that is a demonstration rather than a standing plan, which changes who a cell describes.
• Credit allowance — A balance of generation units, which often crosses the marking boundary at the same tier.
• Output cap — A limit counted in finished videos rather than credits, which bounds a free tier differently.
• Recorded field — One statement, one field, with the page it was read from and the day it was read.
• Evidence class — The label saying what kind of thing a value rests on, printed beside the value itself.
• Reading date — The day a vendor page was opened, which is the only date that proves anything here.
• Value since — The day a value is known to hold from, which stays put when somebody re-checks it.
• Stable identifier — A handle a row keeps when its value is corrected, so a change can be traced rather than lost.
• Not documented — A stated position that a vendor's pages say nothing, which is not the same as a blank.
• Stated position — A cell that records what the pages carry rather than what the product does.
• Applies-to note — The short qualifier beside a value saying which field it fills and how it was read.
• Scope as written — Recording the boundary a vendor put on a statement instead of generalising past it.
• Re-reading — Opening a source page again, which is maintenance rather than research and is dated.
• Register row — One entry across all four columns, which is a shape as well as a set of values.
• Inclusion rule — The sentence beside every table saying what earns a row, so a reader can spot what is missing.
• Re-encode — Compressing a video again, which rebuilds the container and drops whatever it was not told to keep.
• Transcode — Changing a file's format or codec, which is a re-encode with a container change guaranteed.
• Metadata strip — Deliberately removing attached information, which is a normal privacy step with a side effect.
• Container — The wrapper holding a video's streams and information blocks, which is where a manifest lives.
• Crop — Cutting frame area away, which is the operation a corner mark is vulnerable to.
• Reframe — Recomposing for a different aspect ratio, which is routine in short-form and moves every mark.
• Lossy compression — Discarding picture detail to save space, which is what an in-picture signal has to survive.
• Frame-rate change — Changing how many frames a second a clip has, which resamples the picture over time.
• Composite step — The stage where separate generated clips become one episode, which one vendor marks at.
• Intermediate clip — A file produced part-way through a workflow, which may not be in the same state as the deliverable.
• Deliverable — The file somebody is actually handed, which is the only one a marking policy can be checked on.
• Console surface — A vendor's own web interface, whose defaults can differ from the interface it documents.
• API surface — A documented interface into a model, where marking becomes an input rather than a tier.
• Request parameter — A field in a call that decides what output carries, which is the most precise control here.
• Documented default — What a product does when nobody chooses, which is the state most files are actually in.
• Limitations section — The heading where a document collects what a caller cannot change, and one mark lives there.
• Verification platform — A named service for checking whether a file carries a scheme's signal.
• Public reader — A checking route the holder of a file can run themselves, without asking the vendor.
• Internal detection — A capability the vendor keeps, which makes a marking claim real and unusable by anybody else.
• Metered access — Billing by usage rather than by tier, which leaves the crossing-point column with no subject.
• Two-route product — One set of models reachable two ways, where the route can decide what the file carries.
• Download route — The path by which a file leaves a product, which one vendor makes the subject of its statement.

Grouped by subject, then alphabetically, so the words that get confused with each other sit next to each other.

Elsewhere in the register: Generators, Fields, Readings, Side by side, Implementers, Questions, Findings, Source documents, Learn, Data. Field definitions live on the protocol page.