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English language (monolingual) [PRO] Tech/Engineering - Media / Multimedia
English term or phrase:onset camera
Could you please explain the meaning of "onset" in these sentences:
The monitor’s anamorphic image conversion function correctly displays horizontally squeezed 3G/HD-SDI signals from an onset camera system. ... Ideal for OnSet and live production monitoring. The sentences are from descriptions of professional monitors for video production/broadcasting.
Note that in my case, usage only differs when it comes to computers (offline/online) and "on" (onsite, etc.). The only words I do not hyphenate if same vowel are cooperative/cooperate as far as I can remember. That's it.
Personally, I don't like what Britain did with the "me" at the end of "programme" when it comes to computers. Why write programme every other time but here you say program as the Americans do?
PS: Not too long ago, I was seriously asking myself whether the plural of a PC mouse is mouses or mice.
Apparently, the acronym part is not correct, though. Which means I got totally confused: Do British say program but mice or would they have to break a rule for that one too?
Personally, I always write 'compound' adjectives like 'on-site', 'on-set', 'off-camera', 'on-air' with a hyphen; this is traditional usage in the (BBC-influenced!) world of film and TV which is my background, and I think it is unambiguous and readily understandable by all. Other types of terms have achieved widespread acceptance to a greater or lesser extent, and even Oxford acknowledges that it is fairly haphazard and dictated more by usage than any further rules. They assert that the tendency is for hyphenated words to get joined up as they become more widely accepted.
If you go on the M-W entry for "on-site" and skim through the comments, you'll find someone who says that in the movie business, they're mostly writing it as one word. That is I think an important observation regarding "on-set" as well. It may just be the industry.
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Collins leave it up to you in the case of cooperate or co-operate.
It's not that clear-cut. I do like "onsite" as an adjective (it looks really odd in headlines otherwise; talking about news business), I am not so sure about the adverb anymore. I may go back to saying "on site" - you got me thinking :)
David Moore (X)
@Björn:
07:48 Aug 25, 2014
I think 'co-operate' and 'co-ordinate' may still be legitimately written with the hyphen in proper English. I omit it for the US market.
Interesting, isn't it: 'US' was a wartime abbreviation for 'unserviceable'... No further comment!!!
Or "cooperate" - which is one word nowadays, even though the rule used to be: place a hyphen if same vowel. Coop, coop, you know :)
David Moore (X)
@ Björn, Tony:
07:42 Aug 25, 2014
It's strange, but here very obviously "OnSet" is stupidly used, in view of the well-established word 'onset' and its totally different meaning. As to 'onsite' and 'online': am I alone in utterly HATING the lack of a space or a hyphen after the 'on'? I daresay you'll all shout at me, and tell me that 'language evolves', but is THAT necessary, telling as it does of slovenly writing, laziness and (possibly) poor education?
Yes, although in that case, there are times when the hyphen should correctly be omitted; but it is always clear: she is on line / she is my on-line buddy.
The problem arises with words like on-set, because 'onset' is already a word in its own right; and for example, I always write re-inforce, so that the reader won't start reading the word as if it were 'rein'.
Right, that is exactly the sort of thing I was describing — 'on-set' and 'live TV' are not appropriate terms to be used in opposition, since 'on set' applies equally to live TV as it does to film-making; and film-making can equally well be 'on-set' as 'on location' (which really opposes 'studio')
So the writer was actually using the terms wrongly, as I said below.
I totally agree (and it's a point I often make, when I see people asking questions on KudoZ where the only problem in the Asker's failure to understand was a missing hyphen) that punctuation should be used to guide the reader and aid comprehension; particularly in the case of compound and/or multiple qualifiers, a judiciously-placed hyphen can make all the difference between e.g. one hit wonder and one-hit wonder! The same can be said about commas, as you rightly point out — and the so-called 'Oxford' comma is a good example where its presence or absence can sometimes make for laughable mis-readings. I think in BE, there is a tendency with familiarity for previously-hyphenated words to become joined up — a trend we have seen of course since the profileration of computers with the way software names are created; sadly, in AE, there seems to be an equal trend to simply omit the hyphen, without joining the words up.
Maybe — but such texts are often written on the basis of original material sourced from Japan; and the writing often seems to be by people whose expertise is more in the field of marketing, rather than any great technical understanding of the field in which they are operating. This is often betrayed by the way they make some kind of 'desirable feature' out of something of little technical relevance, along the lines of "Not only does it have zillions of horsepower, but it even has a blue cover!". This sounds to me very much like what is being said here — as Björn pointed out initially, there is no real contrast to be made here between 'on-set' and 'live'; that's the sort of mistake that might be made by someone who has only a hazy idea of what these terms actually mean in broadcasting.
Should have put a smiley face after "culprit" - that was not to be taken too seriously. However, I am quite frustrated with the source text. Having read enough manuals originating in the Far East, I am always a bit puzzled as to why successful companies apparently do not have enough money to find a translator who can - at least - get it somewhat right. In that respect, the German text seems to be better than the English one.
Frankly, what annoys me most in American English - not based on style guides but use on web pages etc. - is the tendency to omit the hyphen rather than write it as one word.
You may have a different opinion, but I rather see words that belong together written as one word instead of two with no hyphen (and used as an adjective). Or think about the tendency to omit commas. Some people in the US omit all commas in a sentence. This looks horrible.
And yes, I saw your "in the toilet" :) I personally think the conclusion you draw in your last post exactly describes what the translator must have missed here, probably thinking of journalists chasing after these stubborn pedestrians who don't want to answer questions :)
I didn't say that Americans were "the culprit" here — just that it is an unfortunate trend in modern US style — and please note that Japanese EN almost invariably tends to follow US style.
This is biorn out by observations in several of the major style guides on both sides of the Atlantic.
As you say, and that was my point exactly, there is no real opposition between 'on-set' and 'live' broadcasts — they are both subsets of 'all broadcasts', with quite a significant overlap of broadcasts that are BOTH 'live' AND 'on set'. My only point of contention would be that there are very few types of broadcast that could not be described as 'on set' — the opposition the writer might have been thinking of is possible between 'studio' and 'location' broadcasts; now we now that this is Japanese rather than native-speaker EN, it seems to me likelier than ever that this is the true meaning originally intended.
Tony, Americans are not the culprit here (don't know whether you're referring to such words as "onsite").
You can easily google the sentence and you will see it's from a very large and international company that is based in Japan.
"OnSet" is not a name...they apparently tried to make the word look hip or whatever.
By the way, I fail to see how you can make "on the set" and "live production" opposites in the second sentence. One does not have to exclude the other. The German pages don't even match the English ones, so I can't provide much help by looking into what's written in other languages here. But, if I remember correctly, the company said something somewhere about "in the studio" (for "onset") in contrast to "filming somewhere outside" (for "live").
Omitting potentially helpful hyphens is a highly regrettable trned in current US usage — though in this case, judging by Asker's second occurrence, they might actually be trying to make it into some kind of proper name, like PowerPoint instead of 'power point'. I somehow suspect that these are a special kind of camera, possibly the minitaure, robotic ones that we often see in TV programmes these days — the point being that traditionally, one always avoided allowing production resources like cameras to appear in shot, whereas nowadays they are quite openly visible in certain programmes (e.g. sports, light entertainment, etc.) As a result, they have been made more aesthetically pleasing, which might explain the coining of this special term. I can't otherwise see why the description would be applied — after all, by definition, cameras are going to be 'on set'. Where else would they be? In the toilet?! Personally, if this were the reason, I'd have thought 'in-shot' camera would have been a better term, just as has been applied to microphones for years.
David Moore (X)
How stupid ...
14:55 Aug 24, 2014
of the writer to leave out the hyphen. It's nothing but laziness and in any case it were better written 'on the set', IMHO.
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Answers
5 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +8
onset camera system
a system of cameras located at the filming set
Explanation: Onset = On-set, i.e. it refers to something that is located on / at the filming set.
So an "onset camera system" is "a system of cameras located at the filming set".
Aleksandra Kleschina Russian Federation Local time: 02:46 Works in field Native speaker of: Russian PRO pts in category: 4
peer agreement (net): +8