| Word | Description |
| Back Focus | The mechanical aligning of the imaging device with the focal point of the lens. Most important on zoom lenses to ensure the image stays in focus throughout the zoom range. |
| Balanced Signal | Method of transmitting video, usually over twisted pair cable, that consists of two equal but opposite signals being sent down two conductors. |
| Balun (Balanced Unbalanced) | A device that connects a balanced line, such as twisted pair, to an unbalanced line, such as coax cable. |
| Band Width | The frequency range that an electronic circuit can accept. |
| Bandwidth | The range of frequencies available for signalling the difference between the highest and lowest frequencies of a band, measured in Hertz |
| Base-Band Video | Unmodulated video signal suitable for display on a monitor but not a domestic TV. |
| Baseband | A full-channel bandwidth transmission where digital signals are placed onto a transmission line with no change in their modulation. |
| Baud | Unit of signalling speed. The speed in baud is the number of line changes (in frequency, amplitude, etc.) or events per second. At low speeds, each event represents only one bit condition, and baud rate equals bps. As speed increases, each event represents more than one bit and baud rate does not truly equal bps. |
| Baud rate | Data transmission speed. |
| Bit (Binary Digit) | The smallest unit of information in a binary system; a one or zero condition. |
| Black Level | The level on a video signal, just above the sync pulses, where black portions of the picture are represented. |
| Blanking (Field and line flyback blanking) | The operation of turning off the monitor display, or pick-up device, during sync pulses to avoid thin white lines appearing on the picture. BNC: Video connector, the most commonly used in CCTV. |
| BLC | BLC (Back Light Compensation) is a feature of CCD cameras which electronically compensates for high background lighting to give detail which would normally be silhouetted. |
| byte | The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications. It is an ordered collection of bits, in which each bit denotes the binary value of 1 or 0. Historically, a byte was the number of bits (typically 6, 7, 8, or 9) used to encode a character of text in a computer and it is for this reason the basic addressable element in many computer architectures. The size of a byte is typically hardware dependent, but the modern de facto standard is 8 bits, as this is a convenient power of 2. Most of the numeric values used by many applications are representable in 8 bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage. Signal processing applications tend to operate on larger values and some digital signal processors have 16 or 40 bits as the smallest unit of addressable storage (on such processors a byte may be defined to contain this number of bits). |